Category Archives: Bible Study

Fallen is Babylon the Great

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“A mighty angel lifted up a stone like a great millstone and hurled it into the sea, saying, “Thus will Babylon, the great city, be hurled down with violence, never to be seen again” (Apoc. 18:21). Images of the angel and the millstone from the Val-Dieu Apocalypse (left; from Normandy during the 1320’s and is part of a group of four manuscripts from northern France that were modelled artistically on a now-lost 13th century English manuscript) and the Las Huelgas Apocalypse (right; the Las Huelgas Apocalypse is the largest and latest [1220] of a five-hundred-year series of medieval illuminated commentaries on the Apocalypse by the monk Beatus of Liébana. The series is considered Spain’s most important contribution to medieval manuscript illumination).

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean and loathsome bird. For all the nations of the world have drunk the wine of her fornication…. ” (Apoc. 18:2)

The whore of Babylon is overthrown and the seer of the Apocalypse sings a series of dirges over the fallen city–both Babylon and Rome, capitals of the fallen world’s opposition to the Kingdom of God. The ruins have become the home of vile and loathsome monsters–some natural, some unnatural–as kings and sailors and merchants and those who grew wealthy from the imperial exploitation of the world mourn their losses.

It is easy–perhaps, too easy–to see the fall of Babylon-Rome as the condemnation of all economic systems that depend on the exploitation of the natural world or the labor of others. Certainly the “mark of the beast” and the refusal to let those who will not worship the Beast to participate in the economic life of society reinforces this interpretation. The Apocalypse seer insists–in many ways throughout the text–that Christians must segregate themselves from the larger society; he does not see how the Church and the fallen world can co-exist or cooperate in any way. He only sees persecution and conflict between the two, much as Augustine describes the “two cities” struggling against each other throughout human history in his classic City of God.

Another way to read the fall of Babylon is to see the city’s destruction as the overthrow of all false teaching, which is at the root of all exploitative systems. It is the misunderstanding of God’s relationship with the world, the human race and our misunderstanding of our relationship with each other that gives rise to all subsequent exploitation.

The fall of Babylon the great is the overthrow of Arius, Nestorius, and all the heresies that the Church has struggled against in the past and will continue to struggle against until the End of Days.

The Whore of Babylon

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Two depictions of the whore of Babylon: left, in the Beatus Apocalypse (an 11th century Romanesque illuminated manuscript); right, a 1532 hand-colored woodcut by Hans Burgkmair in Luther’s translation of the New Testament.

I saw a woman mounted on a scarlet beast…. the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls. In her hand she held a gold cup full of all obscenities and the filth of her fornication…. I saw the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s people and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (Apoc. 17:3-4, 6)

This woman, the famous “Scarlet Woman” and the “Whore of Babylon,” is the antithesis of the woman clothed with the sun in Apocalypse 12. The woman clothed with the sun gives birth to Christ in her children; the Scarlet Woman is drunk with the blood of those children, now martyred. The woman clothed with the sun is attacked by the dragon, the Antichrist; now the dragon, the Antichrist, escorts the Scarlet Woman in her apparent hour of triumph. The woman clothed with the sun is a mother who remains forever a virgin; the Scarlet Woman is the mother of all abominations and prostitutions imaginable. If the woman clothed with the sun is Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (Proverbs 8-9, Baruch 3-4, Wisdom 6-8), then the Scarlet Woman is the “loose woman” whose house is the gateway to Hell (Proverbs 7, 9).

The icons of Novgorod used scarlet as the background of divine light, out of which the saints stepped to greet the faithful. It is also the color of the Hellmouth, the great beast who devours the damned in icons of the Last Judgement. Scarlet is the presence of God who can be accepted or rejected but never escaped.

The Scarlet Woman is at the moment of decision, capable of giving herself over completely to the destruction of beauty and light or of turning aside from that path of destruction. She can remain the Whore of Babylon or become the Virgin Mother of the faithful, the “holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband” (Apoc. 21:2).

(For a fuller discussion of the woman clothed with the sun and the whore of Babylon, see my chapter “Clothed in Scarlet, Clothed with the Sun: Thoughts on the Women of Apocalypse 12 and 17” in Earth’s Abominations: Philosophical Studies of Evil available here.)

Armageddon

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The sixth angel emptied his bowl, Angers Apocalypse tapestry, 1377-82, commissioned by
Louis I duke of Anjou, designed by Jean Bondol (Chateau d’Angers, France).

The sixth [angel] poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare a way for the kings…. Then I saw coming from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet three foul spirits like frogs…. “Behold, I come like a thief!” Blessed is he that stays awake and keeps his garments by him, so that he does not walk naked and his shame is seen. And they mustered them at the place which is called in Hebrew, “Armageddon.” (Apoc. 16:12-13, 15-16)

Almost everyone recognizes the place-name, Armageddon. It is imagined to be the location of the last battle–or maybe the nuclear war–that destroys the world. But very few people know anything more than that.

“Armageddon” means “the mountain of Megiddo.” This is a mountain pass in the north of Israel that makes possible passage from the coast to the plain of Jezreel. It is a geographic feature important for military-strategic reasons. Many battles were fought at Armageddon; it was especially associated with disaster after the death of King Josiah there (2 Kings 23:29-30).

Armageddon is also important in the Old Testament book of Judith, which is an extended parable about God’s deliverance of his Chosen People. (We think of parables as only a few sentences–or at most, a paragraph or two–because Jesus’ parables were all short. But there is no composition rule that insists that a parable has to be short.)

It is also interesting that the Old Testament readings generally called “prophecies” by Western Christians on Easter Eve or other significant occasions are called “parables” in Church Slavonic.

Judith lives in an imaginary town near the Armageddon pass. By placing the town there, the people hearing the parable would immediately know that the story of Judith was about the End of Days, the great Last Battle when they hoped that God would deliver his people from all their enemies. The people hearing the story of Judith knew that it was not history as we think of history. It was never meant to be understood as an historical record. It was a parable: a story told to make a point, to illustrate something true that was otherwise difficult to grasp or understand. The story of Judith at Armageddon is like the story of Moses at the Red Sea–God acts in a miraculous way to save his people through the intervention of his chosen servant. Judith is a female figure that represents the faithful of Israel, identified by the prophets as the Bride of God.

Because the enemies of Israel almost always have to come through the northern mountain pass at Armageddon to attack Israel, the direction North became associated with evil and the powers that oppose God or his people. That is why the medieval Western Christians would read the Gospel at High Mass facing north–both to proclaim the Gospel to the pagans living far in the north but also to proclaim God’s triumph over all the powers that oppose him. Reading the Gospel facing north was a kind of exorcism of the neighborhood, telling the devil to “Go away! You have no business here, devil! You have already been defeated by Christ–stop trying to avoid your inevitable imprisonment in Hell!”

When St. John described the battle at Armageddon, he might or might not have thought people would identify the earthly mountain pass as the place of the Last Battle. But they would certainly understand that wherever the Last Battle was to be fought would be “Armageddon” in a much more real and substantial way than the mountain in northern Israel.

See a talk I gave about Judith here. The passcode to view the recording is 2w$Pq&6e