Revelation Chapter 17
Originally posted Thursday January 1, 2009
Revelation, Chapter 17 The Great Whore and the Beast
Chapters 17 and 18
serve as a unit describing the fall of Babylon (Rome) and the lamentations of
those who have served, profited from and accepted as normative her
religious and cultural values and practices. John (and others) uses
Babylon as a descriptive name that inculcates destructive Empire, exile and
oppression as well as world power. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70
CE by the Roman Army Jewish apocalyptic writers adopted Babylon not as a
code word but as an apt identification of Rome with all things evil in the
history of the Jews. Christian writers were quick to do the same as they
reflected on the periodic persecutions and sense of being aliens within the
pagan culture as the writer of 1st Peter called them. Chapter 17 is filled
with visionary images and it is easy to get lost in the interplay among
the several symbols John enlists to portray Rome as the object of Christian
scorn. Rome is variously represented as Babylon, the scarlet beast
and the great whore. Each image is symbolic of some aspect of Roman
culture and the Christian certainty that all of it is coming to an
end.
In 16:17 God announced the end:
"It is done." The great city was shattered. The nations that lived by
the dictates of Roman culture fell. The visions begin with an angel inviting
John to see the judgment of Rome. The use of the feminine reference for a
city was common in the Old Testament prophetic writings. Jerusalem was called
virgin, a faithful and an unfaithful wife and a mother. The Assyrian
Nineveh and Syrian Tyre were harlots. One particularly important
female image is the goddess Roma, the avatar and embodiment of all that is
Roman. She was the Roman version of the great mother goddess of the ancient
Near East. There were major temples of Roma in at least three of the cities to
which John writes letters early in chapters 2 and 3 - Ephesus, Pergamum and
Smyrna. Roma, being a divine figure, that which she embodies - Rome, is
also divine as the city of the deified Emperor. For John this goddess
is nothing more than a prostitute. No matter how well dressed she was or how
fine her jewelry, the:great whore that sits on many waters" was
an alluring temptress by whom the kings and inhabitants of the earth
became intoxicated on Roman culture, religion and profitable commercialism
(John's definition of spiritual fornication).
The angel carries
John into the wilderness - the place of the discernment of mysteries. There
he sees the woman sitting on a "scarlet beast." The
blasphemous names, seven heads and ten horns all refer to Rome (built on 7
hills with 7 deified emperors, symbolic of the full and complete
complement). Written on the woman's forehead was a name the angel calls a
mystery. The mystery is defined by her subtitles, each descriptive of her
guilt in Rome's killing of the saints and the witnesses of chapter 11.
John was
"greatly amazed" by what he saw. His amazement appears to have placed
him in the same position as those the woman has seduced to become part of
"Babylon the Great." Indeed, the temptation to be seduced in the
real world was potent. Being an ally of Rome meant great wealth for the upper
classes and political aristocracy. It meant the opening of vast markets for raw
materials and agricultural products to feed a hungry Rome and supply her army. So
what if it came with a price tag of adopting and supporting Roman culture
including worshipping a divine Emperor? If that's what it takes to get up
in the world, so what? There were plenty of slaves and dispossessed land owners
to do the work. Sometimes you just have to go along to get along, right? This
was, of course, what John saw as the greatest threat to his churches It
was the temptation to fit in, to get along by doing minimally what would make
them invisible to the watchful eyes of their neighbors and government
officials. It would be easy to slip into behavior that seemed innocent
enough. Going to markets and banks in the precincts of the temples
seemed harmless enough. And who would really mind if a bit of incense was
burned on the altar at the next union meeting of the guild? John wanted
the churches to see Rome as he did - "holding in her hand a golden cup
full of abominations and the impurities of her [ungodly rejection of the
true God]."
The angel is quick
to define the meaning of what John's vision has presented. It is not as amazing
as John thinks. The scarlet beast is now the folk tale of Nero who "was
and is not" (he committed suicide) and is about to return from
the bottomless pit and be destroyed. There is also a warning to the churches in
this somewhat cryptic reference. When the beast/Nero "was,"
there was significant persecution and martyrdom within the Christian
communities. While he "is not" (in the abyss?) persecution has
been limited and the churches could become complacent in the rigor of their
faith practices. When the pressure eases, the attention to discipline
declines. John responds to this possibility by reminding the churches of the
coming time when persecution could increase. Thus John's vision becomes an
exhortation to purity and faithfulness at all times as Jesus' story of the
thief that comes at night should remind them. Unlike those who are followers of
the beast and bear his mark, the churches should not be amazed when the beast
returns and persecution returns with a vengeance. Even so, the beast who
brings it will be destroyed in the end.
Vss. 9-14 present a
review of what we have already read - albeit, more confusing. The first
part is simple: the seven heads are the Seven Hills of Rome on which the
woman sits. They also are the seven kings - with seven meaning a complete but
not literal number. Although many valiant attempts have been made and many
trees used to record the speculations, It is impossible to sort out the
cryptic comments of those who have fallen, who are living, and are yet to come,
and just how the eighth belongs to the seven? It is doubtful the search for an
answer will ever cease, particularly as long as interpreters make the
fundamental error of taking John's presentation of numbers literally. The base number
seven does not mean seven (e.g. the seven churches of chapters 2 and 3 are a
symbol for all churches of the world). It is a symbolic number for
completeness. It represents the complete, full line of Roman Emperors that have
been, are now and will be. John's visionary experience tells him that
this line is about to come to an end. His visions are based on the events of
his own time and not ours. He is not making predictions for some distant
future. The Church is being persecuted by a certain set of evil forces. God's
justice will bring about an end to these forces and God's kingdom will appear.
This is what John wants the churches of the first century to know and to be
ready for.
Taking all the
forces together, John sees a final battle on the horizon. It will be a battle
between all that is evil and the Lamb "and the Lamb will conquer
them." The chapter closes with more irony than John could possibly
imagine. Those "kings" of the nations who have been seduced by the
woman seated on the scarlet beast join forces with the beast to destroy the
"great whore of Babylon." The greater irony is that, as John sees it,
evil has become an instrument by which God's purpose can be fulfilled. Perhaps
John has glimpsed a significant truth: evil ultimately destroys itself. The
Roman Empire did fall with external forces made more powerful by the inner
corruption of the Roman ethos.
No comments:
Post a Comment