"BABYLON" IN REVELATION

 

                                                             Babylon (2013 collage)

This is an update to an earlier post titled “Fallen, Fallen is Babylon the Great.” In that document, I briefly summarized some of the locations in which scholars have placed “Babylon.” Below are more details coming out of a few additional commentators, who seem to not yet be in agreement as to what the word really stands for. I will concentrate mainly on those scholars attempting to explain the laments for Babylon contained in Revelation 18, divided below according to their respective interpretive camps.

Jerusalem

Ford states, “The second lament [in Revelation 18] is sung by the merchants. These people were not dissociated from the temple in Jerusalem, for merchants were employed both in the building of Herod's temple and in its maintenance...Most commentators suggest that the text is influenced by Ezek 27:12-24, the oracle against Tyre. However, while there is some association, the wares cited differ considerably; those cited below appear to be more in keeping with those which would be used for the temple and its services...Jeremias describes the slave trade: 'In Jerusalem there was a stone upon which the slaves were displayed for auction.' Josephus frequently refers to male and female slaves, especially in association with the court of Herod the Great. Jeremias concludes that foreign trade had a great influence on the holy city, and the temple drew the largest share. The chief items were food supplies, precious metals, luxury goods,and clothing materials.”

Beagley feels that “Babylon” fits Jerusalem just as well, if not better than, Rome but offers little evidence on which this belief is based.

A modern city to be built on the site of old Babylon

In a vain attempt to salvage their belief that all Scripture must be taken literally, Walvoord and many other premillennial dispensationalists insist that this passage in Revelation refers to a future city located on the site where Babylon originally stood.

Typical of this approach is Phillips, who says: “In a coming day, the last of the Gentile world rulers will boast over a rebuilt Babylon. The fact that many Bible prophecies concerning Babylon have not yet been fulfilled and others have been only partly fulfilled make it imperative that Babylon should rise again from the dust in order to meet its final doom.”

Rome

It seems obvious to most other Bible scholars that the details behind the descriptions of “Babylon” in various chapters of Revelation stand the Roman Empire of John's time. One obvious example would be the fact that the Whore of Babylon sits on seven mountains. But the description of world trade in Chapter 18 also adds greatly to that identification.

Morris, for example, says, “Rome was the center of the world's trade and during the first century engaged in unparalleled ostentation and extravagance...Contemporary Rome formed a magnificent pattern for John's Babylon. It shows that John was not a mere fanatic denouncing without cause. It also illustrates the way the whole world may depend on trade with one great center...”

Mounce: “The tremendous volume of this trade [with Rome] may be inferred from contemporary writers such as Pliny and Aristides. The excessive luxury of Rome and its passion for the extravagant are discussed at length by Barclay. “At one of Nero's banquets the Egyptian roses alone cost nearly $10,000. Vitellius had a penchant for delicacies like peacock's' brains and nightingales' tongues. In his reign of less than one year he spent $20,000,000, mostly on food...In the Talmud it is written, 'Ten measures of wealth came down into the world: Rome received nine, and all the world one.' Small wonder that the suppliers of such gross extravagance mourned the passing of their market!”

Spenser puts it this way: “In John's day Rome was the center of world commerce – Rome was the whole world, and all the world was Rome.”

But the identity of “Babylon” doesn't even stop there, as Ellul explains: “When we have 'deciphered' that Babylon is Rome we have not explained the symbol in the least; we have simply situated the text historically, given its historical reference, which is a wholly different thing.”

World Systems

Thus, Rome is only a starting point for understanding the meaning of this passage, as agreed by a number of prominent Bible scholars. Ellul continues: “Babylon is not the symbol of Rome; it is Rome, a historical reality, which is transformed into the symbol of a more profound and polymorphous reality of which Babylon has been the expression...she concentrates in herself all human activity, and, even more, she is the point of intersection of the two historic forces that had been shown to us at first: that of political power and of economic activity. She is, finally, the place of the happiness of man under all its forms, happiness material and intellectual, happiness of luxury and even of human love.”

Similarly, “The question is: what does Babylon represent?” (Hendricksen) He concludes after a study of Rev. 18: “Babylon, then, is the world as center of seduction at any moment of history; particularly during this entire present dispensation...Babylon's fall refers not only to the final destruction of the world, viewed as a center of antichristian culture and seduction at the moment of Christ's second coming, but also to the demolition of every preceding concentration of worldly enticement. Babylon's fall takes place throughout history but especially on the great day of final judgment.”

Beale: “Babylon is the prevailing economic-religious system in alliance with the state and its related authorities and existing throughout the ages...the words used in 18:16 and 17:4 to describe the woman's [i.e the whore of Babylon] attire appear in 18:12 in a list of products of trade (cf. 18:12-14). Therefore the woman is portrayed as dressed with these products to identify her with a prosperous trading system. She is the symbol of a culture that maintains the prosperity of economic commerce. In the first century that culture was Rome.”

Bruce says that “what is here portrayed is not merely the doom of an ancient city, but the sure collapse of all human organizations, commercial and otherwise, that leave God out of its reckoning.”

Finally, Oswalt says basically the same thing but approaches it from an entirely different angle in writing about Isaiah 23. “As Babylon, the great city at the eastern edge of the world, opened the section [beginning with chapter 13], so Tyre, the great city at the western edge, closes it. Just as Babylon was described in general, universalistic terms, so is Tyre. Just as difficult to pin down the precise historical events to which Ch. 13 may have been referring, so also it is with this chapter. So much similar are the two chapters that the Book of Revelation uses language here applied to Tyre to describe the great world-city Babylon (Rev. 18:11-24). All these factors lead to the conclusion that Tyre here, like Babylon at the beginning, is being used in a representative way.” And, of course, the same applies to the conjunction of of “Babylon” in Revelation with a description that was earlier applied to Tyre.