Ezekiel's Prophecies under the Influence of Mesopotamian Literature: Hidden Transcripts against Empire
PhD thesis — Claremont School of Theology, 2018. Full text: https://archive.org/details/Ph.D.DissertationFinalDraftINCHOLYANG
Arguments
Ezekiel's Prophecies under the Influence of Mesopotamian Literature: Hidden Transcripts against Empire
It's a case study in how the powerless talk back — encoding dissent in the empire's own symbols so the message passes censors while the intended audience gets it.
The book of Ezekiel — long read as pro-Babylonian for never criticizing the Neo-Babylonian Empire — is actually resistance literature: it uses Mesopotamian divine-abandonment motifs and encodes criticism of Babylon through the Babylonian New Year (akitu) festival's own symbolism, announcing YHWH's temple as the world's center and YHWH's kingship over even Marduk.
Why it matters
It's a case study in how the powerless talk back — encoding dissent in the empire's own symbols so the message passes censors while the intended audience gets it.
Use when: When you can't attack power directly, steal its symbols — subversion works best in the language of the thing being subverted.