Mystery, Babylon the Great, Part 1
Was Jerusalem the Harlot of John’s Apocalypse?
The book of Revelation has long proved to be so impenetrable that it remains either largely avoided, or subjected to the wildest modern-day fantasies. But, as historical-contextual research continues to gain traction outside of academia, a realization is dawning that John’s Apocalypse is not an account of the end of the planet, at all, but a carefully composed, profoundly Hebraic work concerning the violent descent of one Age, and the rise of its successor. This New Age promised to be an entirely different order of things — a covenant kingdom, depicted as a heavenly city, with a new government, new culture and new mandate to go along with a brand new kind of citizen.
Still, as Jesus himself implied in the earliest of his parables, for new wine to flow freely, it was necessary that old wineskins — those wrapped up in the Old Covenant of Moses— be removed. How exactly this removal took place is the subject of much debate. Yet, whatever we may believe about apocalyptic prophecy, it cannot be denied that the dramatic end of Jerusalem and her temple was the most terrifying event of the New Testament century— just as the destruction of her earlier incarnation was to Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel and the rest of Israel and Judah.
In John’s fascinating work we see a series of catastrophic visions woven together, often in sevens, then repeated from differing angles. Literary experts have pointed out that these are pseudo-poetic constructs called Hebraic chiasms that seem to be announcing a coming covenantal wrath. This jives with the cries of Old Testament prophets against a corrupted system that had been prophesied about as far back as Israel’s entry into Canaan (Deut. 30–32).
Then, in Revelation 17, apocalyptic action seems to pause. In this interlude, an angel carries John away into a wilderness. There he spies a woman clad in luxurious garb sitting atop a fearsome scarlet creature. On the woman’s forehead a name is written, which John calls a mysterion — information that can only be known by revelation from God:
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS
AND THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH
But who is she, and what is this badge of dishonour supposed to mean?
I believe that this female figure, spiritually named Babylon, is none other than Jerusalem itself — not the modern, bifurcated city of the nation of Israel, but the Jerusalem which sat among seven hills in the Roman province of Judea prior to AD 70. The great capital around which all Israelite political, economic and religious life had revolved for centuries.
In this and two other articles, I will attempt to show that there are at least thirteen good reasons to believe this is so.
1 THE GREAT CITY WHERE JESUS DIED
In 17:18, the angel explains,
The woman whom you saw is the great city that holds reign over the kings of the land.
The descriptor “great city” is used ten times throughout Revelation in reference to Babylon, a city which in the natural had dwindled into insignificance after the death of Alexander the Great. However, minus the Babylon appellation, “great city” is first mentioned in Rev. 11:8 as the place where “their Lord was crucified.” The simplest and most obvious explanation is to evoke the recent memory of Jesus’ death on the hill outside Jerusalem. In fact, to any Jewish reader, this phrase would have been recognizable as an allusion to something Jeremiah prophesied about Jerusalem centuries earlier:
People from many nations will pass by this city and ask one another, “Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?” And the answer will be: “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and have worshiped and served other gods.” (Jer. 22:8)
2HER WAR AGAINST JESUS’ FOLLOWERS
In 17:6, John writes,
And I saw the woman drunk on the blood of the holy ones and on the blood of the witnesses of Jesus.
As depicted in the book of Acts, Jerusalem’s temple leaders sought to stamp out this new Nazarene sect now multiplying at an alarming rate throughout the region. Their grievous treatment of the prophets, and now the Son (Acts 2:36; 7:51–52), proved that Jesus’ parable of the vineyard tenants had been both historical and uncannily prophetic (Luke 11:49). There is no question that Jerusalem was the epicenter of anti-Christian persecution, with Christ himself, Stephen, James the son of Zebedee, and James the Just, along with many unnamed others put to death at the behest of the ruling Sanhedrin.
In 18:21, a mighty angel picks up a millstone-like rock and throws it into the sea, saying,
Thus, with a sudden rush, Babylon the great city will be thrown down, and indeed never be found again.
This is likely an allusion to Luke 17:1–2, where Jesus comforts the disciples regarding the traps and abuses that would soon be set against God’s beloved.
It is impossible that causes of faltering will not come, but alas for the one through whom they come. Better for him that a millstone be placed round his neck and he be thrown into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to falter.
No activities fit this description so well as those of the persecutors and Judaizers who plagued the church prior to AD 70 (Luk 21:12, Acts 22:19; Gal 1:7, 2:12; Rev 2:9, 3:9, etc.).
Later, the same angel states,
the blood of prophets and saints, and of all those slaughtered in the land was found in you.‡
Apart from echoing Jesus’, “It cannot be that a prophet should perish outside of Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33; cf. Acts 7:52), one cannot miss the similarity to Jesus’ rebuke against the city’s religious elite in Matthew 23.
Snakes! Brood of vipers! How can you escape being condemned to hell? This is why I am sending you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some of whom you will flog in your synagogues and hound from town to town. So all the righteous blood shed on the ground will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah…whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. ‡
Which itself echoed His cousin’s riverside diatribe (Luk 3:7). Little wonder then that Jesus, heartbroken, wept over the city (Mat 23:37, Luk 13:34).
3 BABEL THE CORRUPT
Babylon, in 17:5 is the culmination of a progression that has so far gone from the holy city, to Sodom, to Egypt. Now, she has reached the lowest point in her degradation, for Babylon was once Babel, the chief city of Nimrod, the first tyrant king recorded in Scripture. As we know from Genesis, the city was host to an infamous tower (really a ziggurat) devoted to the idolatrous worship of the cosmos.
Given the strict anti-pagan, anti-idol attitude of the Jews since Ezra and especially the Maccabean era, this might seem a curious parallel. However, Jerusalem’s temple culture had seen a move toward a different kind of idolatry to a degree that would have made Aaron blush. By the first century, the tyrannical influence of Herod the Great and his kin, the greed of the Roman prefects, the captivating hold of the Pharisees over the common people, the conniving of the Sadducee Annas and his sons in dominating the priesthood, the slow-burning rise of the violent Zealot movement keen on hastening their messianic “clock,” and later, an endless parade of politically motivated appointments and assassinations thoroughly corrupted the city’s ruling theocracy.
4 CAPTIVE IN SPIRIT
As the Babylonians had in the natural during the time of the first temple, so Jerusalem had taken her people spiritually captive in the elitist cult system that characterized the Second Temple period. This is clearly heard in Jesus’ impassioned invective against the religious leaders in Matthew 23, and represented an ironic twist that no Jewish audience could have ignored. For just as Solomon’s city and temple had been destroyed by the armies of Babylon in 586 BC, so once-mighty Babylon had met her demise in the later Medo-Persian invasion.
For Jerusalem to take on the name of her former conqueror then would have been an alarming and ironic prospect from a prophetic standpoint (the might of Persia having been supplanted by the Greeks and then Rome). Similarly, being tagged as “Egypt”, should the terrible plagues which had come upon Israel’s old nemesis now be inflicted upon her?
Remember that Daniel had once urged his trio of friends to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning another mysterion— Nebuchadnezzar’s dream — so that they might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. In the same way, the purpose of John’s apocalyptic letter was that whoever read it would be blessed, i.e. its interpretation would have saved the lives of both commoner and sage in the coming tribulation.
Note that although it was Jerusalem who was directly in harm’s way, Revelation was addressed to seven churches in other cities. It was vital that Israelites of the dispersion, who still made up the majority of the Christian population, avoid returning to the city when things began to “hit the fan”. It is entirely possible that, embedded in foreign cultures, these churches of the exiled had forgotten or misunderstood Christ’s prophetic warnings.
5 PATTERN OF DESOLATION
The ten horns that you saw, and the beast, these will hate the whore, and will render her desolate and naked, and will eat her flesh, and consume her with fire…
The word desolate here in 17:16 (used also in 18:17,19), referencing the harlot, is reminiscent of Jesus’ own prophecy about Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37–38.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who have been sent to you…See, your house is left to you desolate.
As well as Luke 21:20.
When you see Jerusalem surrounded by arms and encampments, know that her desolation has drawn near.
Which is itself an allusion to Daniel 9:27 (note the Septuagint rendering):
Upon the temple an abomination of the desolation will be; and until the completion of time, completion shall be given unto the desolation.
The linking of the whore of Babylon with Jerusalem’s house, a besieging army, and the destruction of the temple are extremely compelling pointers to AD 70 being one of the main subjects of the Book of Revelation.
N E X T → Mystery, Babylon the Great, Part 2
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