Is ‘Babylon’ Rome or Jerusalem?
In my commentary on the Book of Revelation, I presume without much discussion that references to 'Babylon' are in the first instance (for John and his readers) allusions to the ability of Rome and the imperial organisation. Someone commented to me that I don't give much space to debating this, or considering the other primary possibility, that it is in fact an allusion to Jerusalem, thus highlighting the twin pressures experienced by John'southward first readers from both imperial civilisation and an antipathetic Jewish community. The reason I didn't give space to this is that the 'Rome' position is taken by the vast majority of commentators, and that the reasons for the 'Jerusalem' position are non at all persuasive in my view.
But Peter Leithart's ITC commentary, rather surprisingly, does take the 'Jerusalem' position (whose previously best known exponent was Kenneth Gentry), so it is worth rehearsing some of the fundamental bug in the word.
The term 'Babylon' occurs in six places. The first is in a characteristic anticipation of what is to exist expounded more than fully later:
A second angel followed and said, "'Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries." (Rev 14.8)
It is worth noting here that Babylon has global significance, from the reference to 'all nations', and is depicted by John as a particular eye of idolatry, which I remember is what the 'adulteries' must exist referring to, cartoon on the OT employ of the sexual metaphor for spiritual unfaithfulness.
The second reference comes at the end of the sequence of bowls in chapter sixteen:
The great urban center split up into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. (Rev xvi.xix)
Here, Babylon is identified with 'the slap-up city' which is destroyed, creating a parallel with Rev xi.13 (to which we shall return), The judgement of Babylon is actually a very shut parallel to the sin of Babylon mentioned in 14.viii, though English translations disguise this: the 'vino of the fury of her adultery' is met with the 'wine of the fury of his wrath' and this parallel is an of import expression of the justice of God's judgements, for which God is praised in Rev 16.7 and in chapter 18.
The third occurrence introduces the vision and long narrative caption of the woman on the fauna in the desert in chapter 17:
This title was written on her brow: MYSTERY. BABYLON THE Keen. THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. (Rev 17.five)
Again nosotros detect the association between 'Babylon' and 'great', and the indication of global significance ('of the earth').
The concluding three mentions come in chapter eighteen, in the extended 'funeral chant' and mourning of the three groups of the kings of the earth, the merchants, and the bounding main captains, grieved at their loss when Babylon is destroyed. The starting time use of the name is past the angel who announces the destruction in Rev 18.2; the angel'southward 'mighty voice' signifies universal hearing of the message, and the reason for the autumn parallels and expands the earlier anticipation from Rev 14.8, adding 'the merchants of the globe grew rich from her excessive luxuries'. The post-obit command from the angel to God'south people to 'come up out of her' links to Jeremiah's telephone call (Jer 51.45) to leave the historical place of exile as it faced God'due south sentence and destruction.
The side by side mention comes in the declaration of woe by the kings of the earth (Rev 18.10), and this is paralleled by a similar refrain past the merchants and by the sea captains, though both of these simply refer to 'the keen city':
"Woe! Woe to you, great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and blood-red, and glittering with gilded, precious stones and pearls!" (Rev xviii.16)
'Woe! Woe to you, bully city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In 1 hour she has been brought to ruin!' (Rev 18.19)
Babylon is thus depicted equally a global power, one that prospered particularly through maritime merchandise, having customer kings ('kings of the earth') who worked in partnership, and whose merchandise led to the widespread prosperity of merchants. The repeated mention of pearls is also notable, and the vision of the great prostitute adorned with pearls and precious stones in chapter 17 is a literary counterpoint to the description of the bride of the lamb, the holy city, congenital with precious stones and having pearly gates.
If these were the but references to consider, and then I don't think there would be any debate. The only cosmic, trading, bounding main-faring power that accrued enormous wealth to itself is Rome, and this fits with many other themes, ideas and images in the text. But the waters are muddied and the state of affairs slight confused by the ane other mention of the 'great city', in Rev xi.8.
Their bodies volition lie in the public square of the keen city, which is figuratively chosen Sodom and Arab republic of egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.
This verse is notable as containing the only explicit reference to Jesus' crucifixion, and it illustrates the fate of '2 witnesses' (a duel personification of the people of God exercising the ministry of Moses and Elijah in their true-blue testimony). And, so the argument goes, this 'great city' was clearly Jerusalem, and then this must give u.s.a. the identity of Babylon.
But there are numerous problems with this argument. The first is in this text itself.Within the biblical tradition, Sodom was a by-word not simply for sexual immorality, but also for its violence, injustice, airs, fail of the poor and idolatry (Gen. 19:ane–25; Isa. 1:9–10; Jer. 23:14; Ezek. 16:46–l) and as a supreme instance of judgement, including the judgement that the city of Babylon would face (Isa. 13:nineteen; Jer. fifty:40). Egypt is consistently assumed to be the enemy of God, and is ofttimes the unreliable ally who should not be trusted for national salvation in preference to the call to trust in God (Isa. 31:ane). Rome/Babylon is identified with Sodom and Egypt 'figuratively', though the word pneumatikos can mean 'symbolically' or (peradventure better) 'spiritually', that is, by the insight of the Spirit who identifies what the spiritual or theological reality is. Although Jerusalem was the physical location of Jesus' crucifixion, the cultural location was that of Roman rule and bunco by the Jewish leaders with Roman dominance, and crucifixion was a Roman (rather than Jewish) penalization. Then (I would fence) it was in the nifty city's orbit that his death occurred.
And identifying Babylon as Jerusalem makes little sense of chapter 18, which draws extensively on Ezekiel's critique of Tyre (in Ezekiel 27), forth with other OT images of those who are oppose both to Jerusalem and the people of God.
In Leithart'southward commentary, information technology seems to me that this identification really pushes our reading of the text out of shape. The 'trinity' of dragon, creature from the bounding main and beast from the state, which are in nearly commentators identified equally Satan, Roman purple ability (which has come beyond the sea to Turkey) and local faith which has supported the imperial cult in this eastern part of the empire (equally evidenced past archaeology), becomes Satan, Rome and the Jews. of course, there is precedent in John'due south gospel for identification of 'the Jews' with the devil (John 8.44), and there is strongly antipathetic language of this sort earlier on in Revelation ('the synagogue of Satan' Rev iii.9) which corresponds with some of the tensions in the region that we know of from other sources. Just Rev 13 talks of the beast from the country 'exercising all the authorization of the offset beast' (v 12) and performing signs which we know occurred in the local cults (on ventriloquism and moving statues, listen to Radio 4'due south In Our Fourth dimension on automata) and these don't really brand whatever sense in relation to the role of Jews in the region.
This theory also pushes Leithart into seeing the 144,000 in Rev 7 as a different grouping from those 'from every tribe, language, people and nation', whereas a better reading, paying attention to the dynamic of 'seeing' and 'hearing' in the text, likewise every bit John's wider theological concerns, sees them every bit identified. At every point, John uses this kind of OT linguistic communication of the first covenant to draw the people of God who are followers of the lamb, just as Paul sees gentile believers as now incorporated into the 'Israel' of God.
Throughout Revelation, images and ideas from Roman majestic practice, mythology and propaganda are subverted by their integration with ideas from the (Jewish) Erstwhile Testament; identifying Judaism as the second enemy within the text makes niggling sense of this dynamic.
The other strange matter which Leithart's proposal does is force his hand on the dating of the text. If Babylon is Jerusalem, then the devastation of Babylon must exist the fall of Jerusalem in seventy at the end of the commencement Jewish war. Similar other 'preterists' (who believe that all of Revelation is referring to things that accept passed in history), Leithart dates the text very specifically to the fourth dimension just before this fall. And he does then (p 27) with this logic: Revelation is a text of crisis; nosotros must therefore expect for a crunch to detect its date; what greater crisis can there exist than the fall of Jerusalem? But this logic has a primal flaw: writers of texts exercise not survey all of history in this way in order to 'choose' at which point to write their text! Besides, it is non clear that Revelation is reflecting a crisis so much as creating 1; the messages to the assemblies in the 7 cities incorporate plenty of rebukes to complacency, and are not the kind of thing you would write to people who are already in crisis.
In fact, the show for dating is very mixed, with some clues pointing to an before date, and others to a later date. Bu there are some external details worth noting which do appear to back up a later date of writing. Laodicea was destroyed past an earthquake in Advertisement threescore, and the message to the assembly in that location seems to assume that it is prosperous and well established, which could inappreciably be the case if John was writing in the late 60s. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, says (Philippians11) that the church in Smyrna did non be in the fourth dimension of Paul which would imply a later appointment for Revelation. And Epiphanius, writing much later (in his Panarion), notes that it was believed there was no Christian community in Thyatira until late in the first century. This external evidence must be prepare aside to support an early on date—and in fact the argument connecting 'early date' and 'Babylon is Jerusalem' is entirely circular.
It is worth noting that, even if Babylon does primarily refer to Rome for John's showtime readers, that does not exhaust the poetic surplus of meaning in the text, and Leithart is very skilful at pointing that out. I take explored elsewhere why this is at a literary level, considering of the detail nature of the metaphors that John deploys. (For an example, run across the analogy above from Luther's Bible of Babylon wearing a papal tiara.)
But identifying Babylon with Jerusalem does not fit the details of the text, does not take proper account of historical issues we notice in the text, and ultimately depends on circular reasoning most the dating of the text. Information technology pushes our reading of the book out of shape—and is rightly rejected past the vast bulk of commentators.
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