Babylon New Testament: Encyclopedia II - Babylon New Testament - Book of Revelation

Babylon New Testament - Book of Revelation

In the Book of Revelation the destruction of Babylon, a city which seems to be a symbol of every kind of evil, is foretold. The connection with the actual historical city of Babylon is purely metaphorical, as the connection of "Jerusalem" in the poetry of William Blake can bear no relation to the actual history or geography of the city of Jerusalem. Virtually all New Testament scholars believe that "Babylon" is here used as a metaphor or euphemism for the power of the Roman Empire, which was oppressing the nascent church as the Babylonian empire had oppressed the Jewish people in Old Testament times.

Elsewhere in the Book of Revelation, Babylon is the name of a whore who rules over the kings of the earth and rides upon a seven-headed beast. In one of the Bible's most famous cases of numerology, the beast is assigned the identifying number 666 (believed by a few scholars to be Nero). See also: Whore of Babylon

Whom or what Babylon refers to in the Book of Revelations has been the subject of much speculation over the centuries:

• As noted above, the standard scholarly interpretation is that Babylon symbolises Rome and the "Whore of Babylon" therefore either refers to the Roman emperor, or personified the power of the Roman Empire under whom many early Christians and Jews were persecuted, tortured, and marytred for their beliefs because they wouldn't submit to the Roman Emperor as a god. Many scholars believe that the early Christians used "Babylon" as a euphemism for pagan Rome, so that their small community wouldn't be found out and persecuted even more.
• Some Fundamentalist Protestant commentaries on the Book of Revelation treat the occurrences of the city Babylon in that book as both the City of Rome and the Catholic Church personified in the institution of the papacy. Some Protestant denominations today do not give credence to such arguments however.
• Some have believed, as a variation of the mentioned possibility, Babylon to be all false religion, including the Jehovahs Witnesses and some Mormons.
• San Francisco is sometimes called (in varying degrees of seriousness) as "Babylon by the Bay".
• A modern interpretation is that the Whore of Babylon refers to the institution of multinational corporations. (whore - one whose loyalty can be bought; rules over the kings of the earth - is more powerful than any individual secular government.) While this might be acceptable as an oratorical figure of speech, serious Biblical scholars would regard it as an abuse of an ancient text to suppose that this was the intended meaning of the phrase.
• See below for the Rastafarian interpretation.
• Fritz Lang's film Metropolis interpreted Revelation's "Whore of Babylon" as the android Maria.
• In William Shakespeare's play Henry V, Falstaff's dying words refer to the Whore of Babylon. This is probably a final touch of comic relief in Falstaff's career, since he intends a spiritual or Biblical meaning, while Mistress Quickly takes it to mean a literal prostitute, one he knew and she had not.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Book of Revelation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki