Gender in the Apocalypse: A Story of Containers

Abstract

Drawing on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, this article examines the function of the text of Revelation as a container and the depiction of containers in the text. The assessment that containers do not hold tight but enable a process of transformation helps to deconstruct the gendered binary between container characters like the Whore of Babylon, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Messianic hero. If Revelation is conceived as a container of violence, it is a container story that does not necessarily hold; that is, violence can flow out of the text, but it can also be transformed by the text as it comes into contact with the readers.

Introduction

Revelation contains both phallus moments and womb moments. The messianic figure uses phallic weapons, a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron, to subjugate his enemies. ¹ The phallic horns of the beast participate in the Whore ² of Babylon’s violent destruction. Female figures are, in contrast, depicted as containers ³ of offspring, be it the messianic son of the woman in ch. 12 or the damned children of Jezebel in ch. 3 and the Whore of Babylon in ch. 17. The adorned bride of ch. 21 who embodies the heavenly Jerusalem is a container for those who are on the right side. The juxtaposition of woman and city in the images of Babylon and Jerusalem is sustained by the ancient Mediterranean perception of women and cities as containers: ‘Just as the city had walls to contain inhabitants, so ancient physicians defined women’s bodies as having uteruses designed to “contain” children … As containers women and cities could also be entered and exited’ (Huber 2023: 266).

At first sight, this is a story of gender binaries. The male hero conquers, whereas female figures are evaluated according to their ‘container function’. ⁴ Moreover, the metaphorical world of Revelation uses imagery of sexual violence against women to depict God’s victory over his enemies. Jezebel is ‘thrown on the bed’ (2.22). ⁵ The fall of the Whore of Babylon is depicted as the violent subjugation, destruction, and erasure of a female body, which provoked Tina Pippin’s famous sentence: ‘The Apocalypse is not a tale for women’ (1992: 78).

The notion of binary opposition describes an either-or structure that establishes a harsh contrast between opposites, with one of the opposite notions being inferior to or derived from the other. Several scholars have shown that gender binaries in Revelation can be deconstructed (see, e.g. Breu 2022; Frilingos 2003; Huber 2008, 2021; Moore 2014). In addition, Lynn R. Huber has done so by emphasizing the analysis of the whole narrative as the propagation and subversion of gender ideals instead of research on female characters alone (see Huber 2019: 352).

In this article, I argue that the construction of gender in this book does not run only along the lines of female versus male figures. I offer a reading that questions the assumption that male readers should identify with male aggressors, whereas female readers have to choose between characters who are violently oppressed or defined as whore or virgin. ⁶ Based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s influential Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (2019), ⁷ I suggest instead that the narrative of Revelation as a whole functions as a container and contains ‘carrier bag moments’. We will see how a twofold focus on both the container function of the text and the containers it constructs helps to undermine the seemingly clear dichotomy between men as penetrating aggressors and women as penetrated containers. As a result, instead of an either-or structure that divides between phallus and womb, a both-and structure is established.

After an introduction to Le Guin’s essay, a narrative analysis of ‘carrier bag moments’ shows that the notion of the text-as-container mirrors its depictions of cosmic change. As a container of violence, the text relies on both phallus and womb to instigate a process of transformation.

The focus on container moments in the text thus offers a viewpoint on Revelation that takes the narrative, and the characters it constructs, into account. It helps to emphasize fluidity instead of binary oppositions. Moreover, it offers a meaningful approach to violence in the text. Deconstructing binary gender oppositions in the text of Revelation and its interpretation allows the violence that overflows from the text into lived experience to be confronted with its necessary transformation.

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

In her short essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, author of speculative fiction Ursula K. Le Guin distinguishes between two modes of storytelling: the killer story and the life story. The killer story is centred around the hunter in the stone age. He is a hero who fights with sticks, spears, and words (2019: 33). Accordingly, the killer story is a teleological narrative in the shape of an arrow or spear, ‘starting here, going there’, with conflict as its main impulse. The focus of the hero subjugates all the other characters to serve the story of the central figure (27).

In contrast, the life story is a narrative that puts things into a relation with each other and, thus, preserves them, yet enables new perspectives on them. Le Guin establishes the notion of the life story based on anthropological findings. Weapons were not the first human instruments but instead ‘a container to hold gathered products…’ (29). Accordingly, the life story holds something: ‘A book holds words. Words hold things’. In the life story, the hero with the weapon is only one aspect of many, whereas the narration that holds like a bag is the real hero. The things that the container holds are put into a powerful relation with each other and with the readers (34). In the container, the figure of the hero is decentralized ⁸ into a network of ‘beginnings without ends, of initiations, of losses, of transformations and translations’ (35). The life story questions the centrality of conflict and evades a clear dichotomy because it ‘cannot be characterized either as conflict or as harmony, since its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process’ (35). Things are put into the bag, taken out again, maybe thrown out or lost; they bump into each other, destroy each other, or gain new meaning from each other. The relation of the reader to the things in the bag can change. When my son puts a random stone that he found on the street into his pocket it seems of unprecedented worth. It becomes a treasure. When, weeks later, he takes it out of his pocket, it has lost its glittery fascination and is just a stone that he throws into some dark corner of our apartment to make room for new treasures. Thus, the carrier bag story is not a definite depository, but it is defined relationally. Le Guin goes on to reflect on her own work as a writer of speculative fiction according to the carrier bag theory. The genre is less apocalyptic and less mythological than realistic when seen as a ‘cultural carrier bag rather than weapon of domination’ (36). She concludes:

Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction … is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. (37)

Thus, the life story is not conclusive, but it creates a process-oriented entanglement of its content. The carrier bag as container does not hold tight.

In this typology of two ways of storytelling, Le Guin constructs a dichotomy between the male hero with phallic weapons and the female carrier bag which is connected to the womb that she projects into the stone age. ⁹ It is, however, a useful instrument to help us focus on different aspects of the same story. In the following analysis, I propose that Revelation contains both—the killer story and the life story, the phallus and the womb. Yet, we shall see that the boundary between them is not identical with the contrast between female or male figures.

Containing Containers: The Story of Revelation as a Carrier Bag

One aspect of Revelation is the killer story. Conflict is its central feature (see Schmeller, Ebner, and Hoppe 2013; Yarbro Collins 1996: 198–217). It depicts combat—a cosmic fight (see Yarbro Collins 2001) that leads to God’s enthronement. It is a spear-shaped narrative with a clear telos. ¹⁰ Jesus is the central hero around whom the narrative unfolds. He is vividly described in 1.12–19 and 19.11–16. Among other features, he is characterized by a sword coming out of his mouth (1.16; 19.15; see also 2.12, 16). It kills Satanic powers (19.21). ¹¹ This messianic figure reigns over the nations with a rod of iron ¹² (12.5; 19.15; cf. Ps. 2.9) and transfers this capacity to those who hold fast to his testimony (2.27)—to the winners of history (see Huber 2016; 2019: 360; Söding 2008) who ‘solider on’, as Eric J. Gilchrest puts it (2013: 222). In this killer story, the hero threatens with weapons by which he secures victory in a cosmic fight. These aspects of the story are not to be denied.

However, in all its ambivalence, ¹³ Revelation is also a life story. In the context of a—at least perceived (Yarbro Collins 1984: 84)—severe crisis, the hero fights against a powerful empire. He is not anti-imperial but alter-imperial ¹⁴ because he fights violence with violence. He does not abolish the mechanisms of empire, but he creates a new empire. He does so for a minoritized community that is entangled in the mechanisms of the Roman empire (Hidalgo 2023: 227). If understood as a response to the destruction of the temple in the Jewish War after which it functions as a ‘homing device’ of a minoritized and scattered community (Hidalgo 2023: 220), Revelation is not just a text about winners and heroes who unfold their killer story, but it is also a life story that preserves and contains hope for change. In the book of Revelation, as we shall see, some things are kept and contained, some are thrown out, poured out or overflowing, others are locked away. It depicts a continuous process of transformation.

In the following portrait of container moments in the book of Revelation, I show in which respect Revelation is not only a killer story, but also a story-as-container and a story about containers. Three different aspects are to be distinguished: (1) the text of the Apocalypse itself is portrayed as a container. Within this text, material texts are represented as opened and closed containers. I will also discuss the containers which are outpoured in this section; (2) The topography of Revelation depicts places that serve as containers. These container-places hold the wicked or unleash their destructive powers. The female city figures—the Whore of Babylon and the heavenly Jerusalem—also function as topographical containers, whom I discuss in a third part on (3) characters who serve as containers.

The Text of Revelation as Container

The text of Revelation is a container and contains other texts that are opened and closed. Especially in the prologue and the epilogue, the Apocalypse appears as a container of prophetic words (1.3), of plagues, and the utopian visualization of the heavenly Jerusalem (22.18–19). Revelation reacts to the threat that things might be put into this container that should not be there: Those who want to add something to it are threatened with the idea that the carrier bag is opened and the plagues contained in it flow out. On the other hand, those who take something away from the bag will also lose what is promised by the text. The outpouring or opening of containers is a threat within the framework of the story: In ch. 8, an angel takes a censer filled with fire and throws fire onto the earth, causing thunderstorms and earthquakes (8.5). In ch. 16, seven angels are exhorted to ‘Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God’ (16.1). ¹⁵ The seven bowls are depicted as containers of wrath that do not hold it anymore. God’s wrath breaks free. The integrity formula in 22.18–19, thus, suggests that also the reader should refrain from unleashing the implications of opening this carrier bag by taking away or adding to it. The container of the text must stay intact. However, this emphasis on keeping the container closed also implies the possibility that this carrier bag might not hold tight. Accordingly, listeners are repeatedly exhorted to become carrier bags of the words contained in this text. They should keep its content (τηρέω; 1.3; 22.7, 9), but also Jesus’s deeds (2.26) and words (3.8, 10) and hold fast what they already have (κρατέω; 2.13, 25; 3.11). The treasures in this carrier bag are to be kept through active endurance (ὑπομονή; 1.9; 2.2, 19; 3.10; 13.9; 14.12). The emphasis on keeping, holding fast, and enduring also demonstrates that this is a constant fight. In other words, there is no guarantee that treasures that had once been put into the carrier bag will stay there.

The notion of the book as container and the threat that this container is opened also applies to texts within the text. Representations of material texts are opened and closed within the book of Revelation (Gradl 2014). In this respect, the act of opening scrolls by opening seals is central and serious. Only the lamb is qualified to do so (5.2; 10.8). It opens the seven seals (6.1–17; 8.1) with fatal consequences for the inhabitants of the earth. In this process, heaven is compared to a scroll ‘rolling itself up’ (6.14). The process of sealing and unsealing is also transferred to John as the writer of the text. The exhortation to seal what the seven thunders have revealed (10.4) is contrasted to the admonishment to unseal the words of prophecy in the epilogue (22.10). The sealed text does not stay sealed. This also applies to the opening and closing of the book of life. The book of life contains those who are on the right side and, consequently, those who are damned are not written in this book (13.8; 17.8; 20.15). It gives access to the heavenly Jerusalem (21.27). However, the book of life is not a definite repository. Names can be removed from it (3.5). ¹⁶ Scrolls serve as containers in that deeds are recorded in them:

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. (20.12)

The dialectics of opening and closing, sealing and unsealing, holding tight and loosing, containing and unleashing insinuate that the story of Revelation-as-container enacts a situation of upheaval, an unending story of in-progress-transformation. The opening and closing of texts correlates to a process of cosmic change.

Places as Containers

The text of Revelation not only serves as a container, but it also provides places that serve as containers. These places hold tight or are opened. One of them is the temple as container of the ark of the covenant. It is no longer a closed container: ‘Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple’ (Rev. 11.19). In contrast to the temple, there are places which serve as containers of the wicked. In ch. 9, the ‘bottomless pit’ (9.2) is opened to unleash smoke, furnace, and locusts. Revelation makes sure that Satan is locked away in a secure container: The angel ‘threw him into the pit and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended’ (20.3). After the thousand-year interim, Satan is unleashed until the lake of fire becomes his final container. He is united there with the beast and the false prophet (20.10). Hades and those who are not contained in the book of life also end up there (20.14–15; 21.8). If hell is here imagined as a place, the lake of fire is a place that contains this place. The sea and hell, former containers of the dead, are opened and give the dead free for judgment (20.13).

Places as containers are not necessarily definite repositories. They open and close before the final judgment; they unleash and contain. The lake of fire, however, is a definite repository for the wicked. By containing them, it levels their power and puts them into a relation with each other. Thus, cosmic change is illustrated by a scenario of different container places who are opened or closed.

Characters as Containers

The dialectics between containers that hold and containers that do not hold, between opening and closing, can also be analysed in the inventory of figures in the book of Revelation.

Jesus

I argued before that Jesus is clearly the hero of a ‘killer story’ in Revelation, but the focus on carrier bag moments also shows that he is not only a penetrating aggressor but also a penetrated container. He appears as a container that notably does not hold in the message to the assembly in Laodicea: ‘because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth’ (3.15). Jesus’s mouth does not necessarily hold tight what it once contained. Not being preserved in Jesus’s stomach equals not being written in the book of life. Jesus can be understood as the hero of the killer story because he is not a container who preserves things, but things depart from his body, especially the sword that is coming out of his mouth and the Laodiceans who are vomited out of his mouth. He enters the space of others to share a meal with them: ‘I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me’ (3.20).

However, he is described as pierced in 1.7 and so, alongside being a penetrator, he is also penetrated (Frilingos 2003). Exhibited in the throne room (5.6), the pierced lamb is feminized: ‘according to the protocols of Roman gender, only feminized bodies, including the bodies of slaves and the defeated, are placed before the penetrating gaze of others. In this way, the Lamb redefines what it means to be a victor, an ideal man’ (Huber 2019: 362). This does not align with the killer story of the hero and his phallic weapons. The body of Jesus, presented as the pierced lamb, is not a container that holds things. Jesus in Revelation is not really part of what Le Guin would call the life story. Anyway, he is not only a seal opener of container texts that no one else is able to open but also a door opener of container spaces: ‘I have set before you an open door that no one is able to shut’ (3.8). The lens of killer story and life story as two aspects of the same text, thus, shows that ambivalence is also inscribed in the main character. Jesus uses his heroic phallic capacities and weapons to open a new space and a new container for the previously oppressed.

John

As a character in his narration, John also embodies the dialectics of opening and closing. The container of his body is overflowing: ‘And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it’ (5.4). The kings of the earth also cry when they watch Babylon’s downfall (18.9; cf. 18.11, 15, 19). John’s bitter crying and the crying of those who see Babylon defeated correlates with God’s ability to remove all tears (7.17; 21.4). More relevant is, however, the passage in which John, in contrast to Jesus who spits something out, takes something in. He swallows a scroll in 10.9–10 as Ezekiel swallowed a scroll before him (Ezek. 2.8–10; 3.3). John’s body, thus, becomes a container—not only of the scroll in the book of Revelation, but also of the correlating text in the book of Ezekiel. His body is opened up and connected to this other body but also to the text it receives. This happens as John ‘submits to the will of hypermasculine heavenly powers … John depicts himself as “put in his place”, or effectively feminized within the ancient understanding of gender…’ (Huber 2023: 138–39). By functioning as a container of text, his role as a receiving medium in the transmission of its message is emphasized. The gesture of eating the text that he also proclaims shows that his body is a container that preserves but also changes the text’s contents (see Breu 2020: 302–12). This aligns with Seneca’s thoughts on the body of the author as a container of previous texts:

the food we have eaten, as long as it retains its original quality and floats in our stomachs as an undiluted mass, is a burden; but it passes into tissue and blood only when it has been changed from its original form … we should see to it that whatever we have absorbed should not be allowed to remain unchanged, or it will be no part of us. We must digest it. (Seneca, Ep. 84.6–7; LCL 76.280–81)

As a container, John’s body is safeguarding and likewise hiding the text: ‘It is thus sealed in John’s stomach, safe from “outside” harm but simultaneously destroyed, making it illegible’ (Strømmen 2016: 68). John safeguards the scroll but he does not keep the content to himself. The gesture of eating enables him to prophesy again (10.11). He is exhorted to prophecy and to write, which must be understood as an act of digesting the scroll and thus making it legible for ‘peoples and nations and languages and kings’ (10.11). Swallowing the scroll is a carrier bag story in Le Guin’s sense because it implies constant processual transformation alongside preservation. John is a container that keeps and safeguards as much as he is a container that is opened and transmits what it had previously digested.

In the next subsections, female bodies as containers will be discussed. It will be shown that their function as containers is emphasized and associated with positive or negative connotations to a larger extent than the ‘container function’ of male characters.

Earth

In ch. 12, the dragon-serpent and earth compete in a fight between male aggressor and female container. The serpent threatens the woman who had given birth to a son. He sweeps away the stars with his tail and plans to devour her child (12.4). After a fight with the archangel Michael and his combatants, the dragon is thrown out of the heaven-container (12.9: ‘Rejoice then, you heavens and those who dwell in them!’ 12.12). He, however, still pursues his goal to get hold of the woman and her child: ‘the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood’ (12.15). A competing container-character steps in to rescue the endangered woman. Earth (γῆ), a well-known figure from Greek mythology (Gaia), opens her mouth and swallows ‘the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth’ (12.15; Num. 16.32: ‘The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up…’; cf. Exod. 15.12). Earth is a frequently overseen active female character in the book of Revelation. She acts on her own and is, apart from the Messiah himself and the archangel Michael, one of the few who can oppose Satan successfully (Friesen 2005: 186). Her container function is powerful and saving.

The Heavenly Jerusalem

Like the earth, the heavenly Jerusalem carries positive connotations. Unlike the earth, it remains passive, descending from heaven as a ‘prepared’ bride (21.2). She is described as a container, a city, and a ‘home of God’ (21.3) that is preciously adorned. Her wealth is part of a ‘reversal narrative’ (Gilchrest 2013: 222) because, in contrast to the wealth of Babylon, her wealth serves as a public good that is ‘publicly accessible’ (223). The bride is to be entered through the gates by those who have washed their clothes (22.14). Her gates are open for this purpose (21.25; cf. Isa. 60.11b). She is a container for the most valuable treasures (21.24, 26) and sets boundaries to those whose ethical standards do not correspond to her purity (21.27; 22.15). The openness of the container is more obvious in Greek than in English translation, designating God’s dwelling place as a σκηνή, a tent (cf. Exod. 40.34–35): ‘God will camp among and with the people as God did after the escape from oppression in Egypt’ (Huber 2023: 327–28). The image of the heavenly Jerusalem depicts a process. She is on her way down from heaven; she says ‘Come’ together with the Spirit (22.17). The process of entering her is not yet accomplished. The gates are still open for those who wish to be part of this container. The open body of this female figure is positively connoted, whereas the open body of the Whore of Babylon is described negatively. Her container function is as powerful as the earth’s but this power is, as I will show in the next subsection, a threat.

The Whore of Babylon

This figure and her downfall are depicted in Rev. 17–19. She is portrayed as a container gone doubly bad: She is characterized first by overflow and borderlessness, second by her role as a mother of harlot children.

In contrast to the heavenly Jerusalem, who is a container of a life in God’s presence, the Whore of Babylon is a city-woman who must be abandoned (18.4). ¹⁷ No human being shall remain in the abandoned city that becomes a ‘dwelling for demons’ and a ‘haunt’ for unclean spirits, birds, and animals (18.2). She is drunk with the blood of the saints (17.6). It, therefore, comes as no surprise that, after her defeat, ‘in her’ (ἐν αὐτῇ) is the blood of the prophets and saints found (18.24). As a container, she fulfils the enclosing function of a city but encloses the wrong things. Simultaneously, she does not hold tight because she embodies overflow and excess. Her drunkenness, her sexual activity with many men, her rule over ‘peoples and multitudes and nations and languages’ (17.15) and ‘the kings of the earth’ (17.18), her sins ‘heaped high as heaven’ (18.5), envisage her excess. Her luxury is mentioned several times (18.3, 7, 9, 11–13). Its value and her seemingly eternal power are misjudged by many because they can be destroyed in only one hour (18.17). What had been put into the carrier bag of kings and merchants as a precious treasure now loses its spark. The luxury of the Whore is exposed as exploitation (Siitonen 2011: 153). ¹⁸ The Whore of Babylon is a container of wrong things and a container that does not hold tight. Her quality as a container changes with her downfall:

and the sound of harpists and entertainers and of flutists and trumpeters will be heard in you no more, and an artisan of any trade will be found in you no more and the sound of the millstone will be heard in you no more. (22.22; cf. 22.23)

This devastation of the previously luxurious container corresponds to the revenge of the kings that leaves her desolate (17.16; ἠρημωμένην). The word ἐρημόω combines the connotation of desolate cities with the spatial construction of a female body. The term often refers to deforestation, depopulation, or the plundering of cities after defeat. ¹⁹ It is also connected to the end of fertility because the adjective ἔρημος (Gal. 4.27; cf. Isa. 54.1) refers to a woman who has no children. In this respect, the depopulation of a city and the childlessness of a woman are linked (Fletcher 2014: 159). The Whore of Babylon, initially the mother of harlots (17.5), ²⁰ is banned from the creation of more offspring after her desolation. Babylon has failed as a mother. Michelle Fletcher argues that the Whore of Babylon is ‘a real threat in the literal narrative of the book of Revelation’, because she counteracts God’s creative power (cf. 21.5). She embodies ‘unbridled procreation with a woman who is penetrated by everyone, rather than controlled creation from the divine’ (2014: 163) and is therefore a direct competitor of the divine empire. The female body as a powerful container of offspring thus becomes a threat.

As a result, we can read the Whore of Babylon as a negatively connoted female container figure. Against the background of Le Guin’s distinction between weapons and carrier bags, she is contrasted with Jesus, the heroic figure. However, as a character who also embodies the Roman Empire, ²¹ the Whore of Babylon does not simply establish a contrast between male and female figures or male and female readers. She also visualizes the ambivalent situation of all human bodies in relation to social or political systems. These are closely entangled with all human bodies. In this respect, all human bodies are containers that do not hold tight. Entangled with their environment, they depend on systems they did not create and still strive for self-sufficiency. They are constantly confronted with the question of what they let in and what they reject, of where they draw boundaries and where they open them. Thus, if we consider Babylon as a carrier bag, the image challenges the preconception that those readers who identify as women are particularly affected by the violence against Babylon while readers who identify as men should identify with those who do violence to Babylon. This is because the carrier bag image visualizes the human phenomenon of being penetrable and not always able to decide what they become a container for.

Summary

This collection of carrier bag moments in the book of Revelation shows that there is not necessarily a clear dichotomy between the story of the hero and the story of the container. In Revelation, earth is a containing hero; Jesus is the hero with the sword who has previously been penetrated; John has to swallow a scroll and pours out tears; the text preserves and changes, seals and flows out. The text-as-container and the containers in the text show that the book does not depict a definite closure but a constant process of becoming that oscillates between safeguarding and transformation, and even conceives of safeguarding as transformation.

Conclusions: Containing Violence

Revelation is a killer story. It is, however, also a life story. This means, according to Le Guin’s carrier bag theory, that it is in constant transformation, which has implications for its violent potential:

• (1) By containing—in the sense of participating in—violence against women, a hero and his victory, Satan and excess, the narrative is also in danger of not holding tight. This would imply an overflow of violence from the text that can become a motivation for actual human violence.

• (2) By containing—in the sense of carrying—violent images, Revelation as a cultural carrier bag also visualizes the dark sides of human existence without bracketing them out. This cultural carrier bag, then, serves as a reminder of the reality of systematic violence against women. Like Le Guin’s speculative fiction, it is not just a phantasy ²² about the end of times but ‘a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story’ (Le Guin 2019: 37). Revelation, thus, becomes part of the unending process of throwing things out of and bringing other things into this carrier bag that organizes human relations.

• (3) In this unending process, deconstruction of binary gender oppositions is key. The carrier bag of Revelation contains both—phallus and womb—and they do not necessarily need to be pitched against each other. Maybe both are needed in the project of overcoming violence and acknowledging entanglement. Focusing on the deconstruction of binary oppositions highlights the shared experience of human bodies of being penetrable and entangled without ignoring power relations between them.

• (4) Deconstructing binary gender oppositions involves paying attention to ambiguities. The carrier bag approach preserves the ambiguity of existing simultaneously inside and outside the text. It establishes a connection between the text, its characters, and its readers. They are all containers that do not hold tight; they are entangled with their environment and confronted with questions about where to draw and displace boundaries. As scholars focusing on gender in Revelation, we are, in this respect, outside the text, confronting it with its violent implications. However, we are also inside the text, as human experience is contained within it. The carrier bag approach also maintains the ambiguity between killer story and life story. It neither redeems the text from its violent potential by pointing to its life story aspects, nor does it condemn it for its violent imagery by ignoring the life story aspects. Considering the tension between destructive violence and positive transformation is worthwhile, as it emphasizes possible violent implications of transformation processes.

Like a carrier bag, the book of Revelation contains violence as part of human experience. However, it also contains continuous hope for change. Research on gender in the book of Revelation could contribute to this change by focusing on deconstructing binary oppositions and carrying ambiguities.