Babylon (New Testament)
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Babylon occurs in the Christian New Testament both with a literal and a figurative meaning. Babylon was later the nominal seat of a Latin archbishop, of a Chaldean patriarch and of a Syrian archbishop. But according to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: "Babylon" [1] (http://www.studylight.org/enc/isb/view.cgi?number=T1074), there was probably no Christian community in the actual city of Babylon during the time when the New Testament books were written (roughly, the second half of the first century). There are passing references to the historical Babylon of the Jewish past in Matthew 1:11,12,17 and in Acts 7:43, but these are literary. In 1 Peter 5:13 Babylon is designated as the place from which that Epistle was written, but this has traditionally been interpreted as an example of the figurative sense of "Babylon", as a euphemism for Rome, which will be discussed below. There no reason to believe that any of the events of the New Testament literally transpired in the actual city of Babylon, nor has that been claimed by any significant commentator.
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. 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 personifies the power of the Roman Empire.
- Some 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 Roman Catholic Church personified in the institution of the papacy.
- Some have believed, as a variation of the mentioned possibility, Babylon to be all false religion.
- San Francisco is sometimes called (in varying degrees of seriousness) as "Babylon by the Bay".
- A modern intepretation 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.
In the Rastafari movement, Babylon refers to the oppressive power structure that adherents believe has been responsible for keeping their people poor and oppressed for generations. Use of the term carries the connotation of white people being the oppressor, though this is not necessarily the meaning in any specific instance.