Women reading (interpreting) women characters in the Apocalypse demon strate that the category of gender is an important component in any reading strategy, particularly where women are drawn to type, theologically and ideologically, as they are in the Apocalypse. Using the letter to Thyatira (Rev. 2.18-29), and the attention given the woman prophet in the Thyatiran community, this study surveys interpretations from other woman scholars and introduces anthropological studies that link women, sex and food, a triad John also utilizes in the Thyatiran letter. In sum, Thyatirans are literally 'eating culture', and the conflict represented in the letter is a conflict for authority, a conflict about who will set and maintain group boundaries—a woman prophet who is an insider in the community or John, an outsider, who has the only voice the reader hears?
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