Loading...In this thread I have been discussing the importance of putting the book of Revelation in its own historical context instead of transplanting its (bizarre) symbols and message into the 21st century, as if the author was trying to communicate not with the churches that he actually names as the recipients of his book (in Asia Minor at the end of the first century) but with us (in America in the twenty-first). Instead of modern interpretations (666 is Saddam Hussein! The Whore of Babylon is the Roman Catholic Church!), surely it is better to interpret the book in light of what the author and his audience would have themselves understood.
That can be illustrated many times over from the book; for this post I would like to do so by returning to one of the key images that I have posted about several times before. Apologies if this is old news for you from a relatively recent post, but to make my point about the book of Revelation as a whole, this is the most relevant and important issue to address. So, here we return to a key passage that describes the author’s arch-enemy, the violent and horrifying opponent of the Christians, the “Whore” named “Babylon” in Revelation ch. 17.
In a previous post I summarized, rather tersely, the narrative flow of what happens in the book of Revelation. It is important here to stress that none of this breathtaking vision can be read literally as an indication of what, chronologically, will happen at the end of time. That’s because it is impossible to place the events it portrays in
Want do see why the most common way of reading Revelation is simply wrong — not just in a detail here and there, but because of its very approach? Keep reading. Not a member of the blog yet? JOIN! Click here for membership options a linear timeline: as we have seen, the universe has collapsed less than a third of the way into the book (chapter 6). Moreover, the author himself indicates that his account is symbolic, and in fact gives keys to the interpretations of his symbols. This can be readily demonstrated from a particularly key passage that describes the ultimate enemy of God for this author.
In chapter seventeen, one of the seven angels who will pour out bowls of God’s wrath on the earth takes the prophet and shows him a “great whore who is seated on many waters” (17:1). He is told that this prostitute has “committed fornication” with the kings of the earth. He goes into the wilderness and there he sees a woman sitting on a scarlet colored beast that has seven heads and ten horns. The woman is luxuriously arrayed in purple and scarlet, wearing gold, jewels, and pearls; she is holding a golden cup filled with abominations and on her head is “written a name, a mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.’” We are told that the woman is “Drunk with the blood of the saints and …of the witnesses to Jesus” (17:6). In the King James Version of the Bible we are confronted at this point by a slight problem with Jacobean English: we are told that the prophet looked upon this great Whore “with great admiration.” Modern translations rectify the problem. The prophet was deeply amazed. As well he might be.
Who or what in the world is this “Whore of Babylon”? The prophet himself cannot figure it out, but the angel explains to him by assuring him: “This calls for a mind that has wisdom” (17:9). He first indicates that the beast on which the woman is seated is destined to ascend from the bottomless pit (17:8). Looking ahead, the reader knows that in 20:2 it is Satan who is bound for this pit; moreover, there he is called the Dragon, the Serpent of old. The woman is supported, then, by the Devil himself.
But who is the woman? A future anti-Christ? One of the violently anti-Christian countries on earth of our day? Russia? China? The ultimate religious enemy of TRUE believers (the Catholic Church? Islam?)
Nope. The angel goes on to explain that the seven heads of the beast are actually seven mountains on which the woman is seated (17:9). Anyone living in the ancient world would by now have no trouble figuring out who she is. For those not who do not understand the clue, the angel provides the final answer “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (17:18).
Who is the city ruling the world of John’s day? Rome, famous even in antiquity for being the city “built on seven hills” (= the beast with seven heads). Why is she called “Babylon”? That was the city that in 586 BCE destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple under the direction of the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar. Now, six centuries later, it is Rome who has destroyed Jerusalem and burned its second temple, under the Roman emperor Vespasian, in 70 CE. This is the city ruled ultimately by Satan, the enemy of God, the city responsible both for the economic exploitation of the earth (hence her luxurious attire and many jewels) and for the persecution of Christians (she is drunk with the blood of the martyrs). Thus for the author of Revelation, the enemy of God is the Roman empire and its rulers. It is not some wicked woman bound to appear soon in the twenty-first century or a wicked country or religious group among us now already.
In Hebrews 5:5, the author writes “In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.”
Is this an Adoptionist Christology?
IT can certainly be read that way.
Do you think the author of Hebrews had an Adoptionist Christology? Is there enough information for us to tell?
I think his christology is complicated. HE thought Jesus was very human but also more than human, superior to anything in the Hebrew BIble other than God himself. SO it would depend on what you yourself mean by “adoptionist.”
Using numbers that correspond to letters in the Hebrew and Greek alphabet, we have a plethora of candidates who fit the 666 clue for the beast.
Since Solomon had 666 talents of gold, is it possible that 666 refers to the monetary system under the Roman Empire? After all, you cannot buy anything without the mark of the beast or the number of his name.
THe problem is that the angel indicats that it is the number “of a man” (not an economic system or a sum of money).
I think I am correct in thinking it was marginal whether Revelation made it into the accepted canon of the New Testament. By the time the Church was close to a consensus as to what should be included in the canon it had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Did the reference to the whore of Babylon as an enemy of God form part of the arguments against the inclusion of Revelation, as the Church was now fully part of the Empire ?
Not so much, since pagan Rome was largely seen as a problem, and many thought it’s eventual downfall would lead to the kingdom of GOd.
Heh. It’s a nice coincidence Leviathan is supposed to have had 7 heads.
Unfortunately I could imagine a fundamentalist believing that the seven hills of Rome could be actual fossilized Chaos Dragon heads.
Something else I find interesting is how there are already seeds in Revelation of predicting the end times into perpetuity, with having Rome and Babylon equated with each other, despite them being at their zenith of power centuries apart.
Good Morning ☀️,
I have a thesis about the origin of the name Yahweh. I would predict that that term was only used once in Exodus 3.14 within the Pentateuch. With your scholarship expertise, can you guide me how I can confirm the number of times this expression was used?
Also if I you are interested how can I discuss it with you?
I”m not sure what you mean. THe name Yahwah is used extensively in the Pentateuch.
What got translated to “I am” in English was it written this way in ancient manuscripts? (Excluding the verse “I am who I am” )or was it written as “Elohim” or any other form like “Hashim” for example.
The concept is that Yahweh “ I am” which was the perceived name of Moses deity would be a later addition to the Pentateuch & not something that was intended by the Pentateuch author from the initially written document.
Moses intended to have an invisible nameless deity but later generation made the Yahweh selection.
I struggle to think this would have come out of a deep meditation.
It is tempting to refer to the largest religions around when the Revelation was written, and their cognitive concepts of our own being. This is in full harmony with modern psychology which of today.
“The Whore” is the «Self», a Self (consiousness)divided into both physical, mind and spirit. The “Self which is manifested “in many waters” (many life forces), as like full control over it, is some of our initial problem which have locked/”trapped” us in our conditions. The great whore is the spiritual act of self created ego and conscious indulgent activities /gratification of desire of our “Self”, the part of us which is trapped. The woman is by this a symbolic ability to nurture these forces/conditions toward maturity
Addressing the “Whore” and “Babylon” is collective an essential part in the story, and an essential part for transformation.
This story is not new.
How do you feel about the conflation between Babylon and Rome being tied to their shared pagan religion? That they were simply viewed as goyim and the OT being an ancient story of the dichotomy between the true God of the Israelites and the pagan polytheism of the “nations”. So the author of Revelation has correlated Rome with Babylon because they’re not necessarily viewed as being different but rather one is just am extension of the other via transmission of the mystery systems that they share in common.
Interesting idea. I guess, though, since 99% of the cities of the EMpire were pagan, then it wouldn’t make sense to call just two of them Babylon since all of them would have been Babylon. Often it is thought that Rome was Babylon precisely because like Babylohn it wiped out Judea and Jerusalem in particular, destroying the temple as the Babylonians had done 600 years earlier.
What factors led at least some early Christians away from Paul’s conception of Roman authorities in Romans 13 towards Revelation’s less charitable view of Rome?
Rejection and persecution! They’ll destroy good relations every time.
Hi Dr. Ehrman!
Are there any books that you can recommend which you found particularly influential? Thank you!!
THousands. It completely depends on what aspect of NT/Early Christianity/Ancient religion you’re most interested in.
I see what you’re saying! Well I suppose right now I would be interested in understanding how Christianity has become so drenched in right wing politics and extremist notions of hell and homophobia and misogyny etc…
So maybe anything to do with the evolution of ancient Christianity into that form seen today
Or
If those right wing beliefs are biblically accurate
Or,
Who was Jesus in his own context and what did he actually teach and believe
Anything of that sort.
What I’ve loved about discovering your work is reading Christianity through the lens of history instead of modern politics and bias (and I suppose seeing that we have more freedom of interpretation than is often presented to us).
Ah, right. Yes, those are incredibly important topics. But you would need to ask an expert in modern American religion. If you look for books an Christian Nationalism or THe CHristian Right you’ll find lots.
Will do! Thanks Dr. Ehrman!
Do you by any chance have any recommendations on authors in that sphere?
YOu might try Yaakov Ariel in my department? Or even better, just check out the books on Amazon and write one of the authors?
Thank you so much!
Em.Freedman,
“Christianity has become so drenched in right wing politics and extremist notions of hell and homophobia and misogyny”
There are churches which have moved out of the homophobia of the past, as well as the idea that hell is a physical place of pain, and accepting the role of women in their church.
There is certainly a movement toward the acceptance of all, as *Jesus* practiced.
The liberal west has ironically moved closer to Jesus’ teachings than the Christian churches of the past and even those churches today which still cling to the past.
Ah! I completely agree!! At my high school (which is private and thus institutionally Christian) we have a lovely chaplain who preaches a very inclusive message! So I have no doubt that many practice in this way.
But I also know that many don’t and that Christianity has often been embedded in the right wing, and so I’m interested in how that political ideology has I suppose hijacked the religion. And how a fundamentalist reading seems to lend itself to this stance (as conservatives claim)
What is so interesting is seeing how scholars like Dr Ehrman and Matthew Vines look even deeper into the text to unpack how an even more in-depth and historical understanding of scripture does not in fact lead to the oppressive ideas propagated by the Christian Right today, and thus seeing how right wing ideologies are not in fact as biblical as they are often claimed and thought to be. Which is very exciting (:
(I mean of course historical patriarchal misogyny etc. cannot be overlooked, but that’s where we need to move past a fundamentalist reading)
It has to be said that the image of the whore of Babylon has given rise to some garish and lurid artwork over the years, most of which (judging from a quick glance at Google images) is either highly misogynistic or anti-Catholic. But, in fact, it should be anti-Imperial Rome – a variation on Life of Brian’s ‘Romanes domus eunt’ (Yes I know the Latin is wrong, as in the film 😉).
When Satan is called the Dragon, the Serpent of old, do you think this imagery has its ultimate origin in the Mesopotamian myth of Tiamat? I’m not saying John had the Tiamat myth in mind when he penned Revelation (he probably didn’t even know it), but do you think he had Leviathan from the OT in mind and/or the Serpent from the Garden of Eden?
Yes, Tiamat and other related myths from the Ancient Near East of creation coming from a god’s victory over a sea monster. Adele Yarbro Collins has a book on this, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation.
If that is Rome then why it is a woman, and why it is a prostitute? Is it a woman because of the gender of the Italian word for city, la città (sorry, I do not how the city would be in Koine Greek)? Thank you.
The main god of Rome was Roma, a female; in other references from the period she is often taken to represent the city itself. She is portrayed as a prostitute here in order to say that she’s not a goddess but a whore.
I believe the prostitute symbolically represents a system of religions, and the animal, the beast, represents a political system. The people were one and the same. Rome, the political system of the day, supported many religions. Devout Jews opposed these religions. They saw themselves as Jerusalem, the chaste woman who was faithful to her one God. The less devout caved to pressure and participated in other religions. Therefore, they fornicated with the prostitute.
Daniel 7:3 And four great beasts came up from the sea,
diverse one from another.
Daniel 7:17 These great beasts, which are four, are four
kings, which shall arise out of the earth.
I like your point. First, I was thinking of an accusation in corruption, but did not like the idea: it is rather unusual that somebody worries so much about the corruption in a distant land. And a mere insult would be also too shallow for such an exalted revelation. The idea of religion promiscuity fits much better.
What Dr. Ehrman says about Roma representing the city of Rome also holds true for Jerusalem and “the wife of the Lamb.” Like I said, the people are one and the same. All together, they make up both political and religious systems.
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. Revelation 21:9-10 (RSV)
Bart, you got off to a good start talking about historical context instead of transplanting its symbols into the 21st century. But but then you lost it when you started employing the literal hermeneutic that today’s faux Christians use. You claimed that Rome was the city that ruled the world of John’s day. However, the world the scriptures are concerned with is the covenant world of Israel, not the entire planet. For example, in…(Rev 17:18) “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth”
…words like ‘earth’ were just as symbolic as ‘woman’, ‘city’ and ‘kings’. The Greek word for ‘earth’ in Rev 17:18 ‘ghay’ does not even refer to the entire planet, but to a region. In this case, the region where descendants of Abraham had been dispersed to throughout the Roman empire. The ‘kings of the earth’ were Jewish religious authorities.
The whore was Jerusalem and what it represented at the end of the age…a spiritually adulterated Israel. The entire text of the Revelation pertains to the end of the old covenant religious system and temple community and that end’s vindication of Jesus’ small cult of Jews and non-Jewish descendants of the tribes of Israel who had been persecuted by unfaithful Jews. The entire New Testament is describing the gathering into Christ of the elect of Israel, circucumcised Jews and non-circumcised non-Jewish descendants of the tribes of Israel who had been dispersed among pagan cultures within the Roman empire before the end of the age of the old covenant religious system and temple community, which was in AD70. John got his imagery from the Old Testament, especially Ezekiel, where we see that ancient Israel was at times considered a harlot, or prostitute.
We see the same thing in the Revelation. In Rev 18:16, the woman (the great city) was clothed in “fine linen, purple and scarlet” and “adorned with gold, precious stones and pearls” (denoting royalty), like a royal wife or queen. We saw earlier that the ‘great city’ and the ‘whore’ were the same thing.
(Rev 17:18) “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth”
Later, judgement comes on that “great city”, referred to with a feminine pronoun “her”.
(Rev 18:18) And cried when they saw the smoke of HER burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!
In Rev 11:8, we see that the “great city” is where the Lord was crucified.
(Rev 11:8) and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.
The whore, which was also the ‘great city’ can only be Jerusalem and what it stood for, Israel’s adulterous old covenant religious system and temple community.
(Matt 23:37) “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you
Thank you Bart; as you say, the ‘Whore of Babylon’ in the prophet’s own day could be identified with Roman imperial rule.
But John is profligate with symbolic terms for his cities; not just Babylon, but also Sodom and Egypt. Revelation 11:8. Are these different places; or are they symbolically bound together through a common underlying evil principle of oppressive domination and rule?
Might it not rather be that Rome is – for John – simply the current location of a continuing malevolent and dominating power, opposed to God and oppressing his faithful people, that had previously ruled from Antioch, Babylon, and Egypt; and in the future might rule from some other imperial city?
YEs, he certainly is profligate with his symbols. BUt I think 11:8 must be referring to Jerusalem. It is “prophetically” called “Sodom and Egypt” in places such as Isa 1:10; 19:1; Ezek 16:46; 20:7 etc. Significantly, it (not Rome) is where the “Lord was crucified” (v. 8). Also the death and resurrection of the witnesses then is a kind of replication of the death and resurrection of Jesus, who also is raised and ascended to heaven (lots of parallels if one looks closely: earthquake; fall of city; etc. The passage is not, of course, meant to be a strict replication of the Gospel narratives).
Do you think the author of Revelation was familiar with our Gospels?
No, there doesn’t seem to be any good evidence for it.
Jerusalem was “Sodom”??, Jerusalem a “great city”? And one where we can find “every people, tribe, language and nation” ?
“Every people”, Gauls, Britons,Scythians …
Every other occurrence of “great city” in Revelation is in relation to Rome: 16:19;17:18;18:10-16-18-19-21.
And Rev 11:8 reads “where ALSO (ὅπου καὶ) their Lord was crucified”
Perhaps this “ALSO” means that Jesus was ALSO crucified in Rome, symbolically (“a kind of replication of the death and resurrection…”)
When? When Nero almost wiped out all chrisitan community in Rome, including Paul and Peter (the two witnesses). But god didn’t forget his two witnesses killed without burial in Rome streets, and “ after the three and a half days ” he raised them up “and they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies ( the beast that comes up from the Abyss ) looked on. ”
I was taught growing up in my fundamental church that the whore of Babylon was the Catholic church precisely because of those specific verses identifying it as Rome.
Basically those of my denomination who had preconceived notions that the book of Revelation applies to current events figured that Rome = Roman Catholics.
Ah yes…..The “whore of Babylon” which centuries later, particularly in New England’s evangelical subculture, came to be the Catholic Church. And….as you pointed out, it took American Fundamentalism to provide the apocalyptic ravings a whole new lease of life. So as we consider re-cycled thematic discourse, are we seeing repurposed and redefined 7 Angels from Genesis, particularly Moses? Angel 1 – Causes sores seen in Plague of Boils. Angel 2 & 3 – Oceans of Blood – Plague of Blood. Angel 6 – Evil spirits disguised as frogs – Plague of Frogs. Angel 7 – Thunder & Lightning – Thunder & Lightning from Mt Sinai.
That aside, what are your thoughts on the gematria pointing rather to Caligula? I am thinking of the more “recent” discovered fragments from dumps outside Oxyrhynchus and the work of David Parker which may run counter to the Benary 666 solution.
Do you mean 616? THat still spells “Kaiser Nero” interestingly enough. I think it’s pretty clearly Nero.
I tend to think you are right there Bart.
.. but there is a question as to why none of the early interpreters of Revelation – especially Irenaeus – appears to have fingered Nero a the person intended ?
I think the earliest Christian to identify 666 as Nero was … John. 🙂 Seriously, my sense in general is that authors living in different countries and different contexts a hundred years later simply didn’t have any particular purchase on the symbolism of the Apocalypse any more than on the meaning of the teachings of Jesus. Their views are veyr interesting and need to be read very carefully — but they are principally important for understanding how these texts were understood in their own day. It’s interesting that many readers will absolutely confirm that that’s the case when it comes to understandings from the time that differ radically from their own views (e.g., Gnostic interpretatoins of the Passion) but say it is *not* the case when it comes to understandings they happen to have! (Have you ever noticed how apologists use Papias as gospel truth when it comes to the identificatio of Matthew and Mark but want nothing to do with him when it comes to the death of Judas and the millenial blessings of the kingdom! ANd he’s getting them from the same source.) But as to Revelation, my sense is that the readers by Irenaeus’s day — think Montanists, etc. — were thinking alreay that it will happen “soon” in their own day, and interpreted it accordingly.
It seems to me that the practice of taking a prophecy out of its original time and space is a reaction to the failure of that prophecy to come to pass. The same thing happened to the book of Daniel when Michael failed to show up and the Maccabeans succeeded without angelic help. Rather than discard Daniel, its readers simply shifted the date forward. Again and again and again. I’m reminded of the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
It would be interesting to know which churches favored or opposed the inclusion of the Revelation to the Canon. If it were mostly eastern churches that were pro, maybe, it would be another argument that the woman on the beast was Rome. Of course, the final decision was done many years after the Revelation was written, but still the church fathers were closer to the time of the Revelation and made more sense out of it, that we can do now.
Yes, generally speaking Revelation was accepted in the western churches but not the eastern.
“This calls for a mind that has wisdom” seems gnostic?
GNostics would have related to that line, for sure; but it’s very common in non-Gnostic circles, an ancient equivalent of “Hey, use your head!”
Could Revelation just be “ancient Sci-fi”? It had to be far out to make it interesting and intriguing. Maybe John used familiar Christian symbols and locations for intrigue and some reality. Was he the ancient Philip K. Dick, George R. R. Martin or J.K. Rowling applied to the fledgling Christian faith?
When you say “just” do you mean that he may have simply been writing fiction? It is a kind of ancient science fiction, I’d agree; but there’s also a lot more to it than that.
I know that most interpretations of 666 are done using it the corresponding numbers to the Hebrew or Greek alphabets. That seems to yield a plethora of candidates.
I have a different idea. 666 is the number of talents of gold the King Solomon owned. Is it possible that the author was referring to the monetary system controlled by Rome? After all, you can’t buy or sell without the mark of the beast or the number of his name.
I am a fan of your work. It has made my journey out of Babylon easier.
This topic is of great interest to me. I’ve been studying Babylon for close to two years now, and I think she’s pretty easy to understand as the apostate church.
This link is a page that I’ve been working on for more than a year, it still needs work, but the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the apostate church as Babylon, meaning the great apostasy has already happened, and Babylon’s identity couldn’t be more apparent.
http://listenbelieveandfollow.com/who-is-babylon/
“Why is she called “Babylon”? That was the city that in 586 BCE…”
Circa that 6th C, Babylon has a kind of exodus, where it rejects its ethnic leaders, the Chaldeans.
Nabonidus — King of the Universe with the Aramean mom — goes to Tema, Arabia and creates the first Nabataeans.
Near-identical stellas of his are found
in Babylon, Arabia, and modern Turkey (near Nabataean Abgarid Edessa where they are excavating that early 2nd C city.)
Nabonidus is also casually called the “first archaeologist”. He preserves texts that he thinks goes back to the first recorded history. Imo, it’s these texts that Jesus and disciples are referring to.
Melchizedek and his Aramean “God Most High” and the Babylonian “Lord of Heaven and Earth” suddenly reappear in the New Testament. Jesus’ mom being a doule wouldn’t prevent him from receiving noble lineages, children of handmaids did. Women were at some periods considered to be soil for a seed — in Jesus’ case, maybe for The Secret Seed.
Imo, unlocking Revelation’s symbols should be further helped by looking at Nabonidus’ descendants’ symbols. They liked symbols.