Whore Babylon

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The whore Babylon rides the seven-headed beast

The whore of Babylon is one of the biblical allegories for the opponents of the believers in general and the Roman Empire in particular. Its most effective description is found in the New Testament in the Revelation of John in chapters 17 and 18.

Revelation of John

The whore of Babylon in the Ottheinrich Bible (around 1530–1532)
The whore Babylon from the Apocalypse cycle by Albrecht Dürer (1498).

In the Revelation of John , the whore of Babylon is always referred to as "the great one" (Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη in Rev 14.8  ELB ; 16.19 ELB ; 17.5 ELB ; 18.2 ELB ; 18.18 ELB ; 18.10 ELB ; 18.21 ELB ). Its characteristics are fornication and abomination (i.e. idolatry), yes it is even the origin, the "mother" of these sins ( Rev 17,5  NA : ἡ μήτηρ τῶν πορνῶν καὶ τῶν βδελυγμάτων τῆς γῆς). Revelation describes the harlot in such a way that an interpretation of the city of Rome and therefore of the Roman Empire is probable (cf. especially Rev 17: 9, 18). The riches and splendor of the whore Babylon are perishable; from one day to the next, even in an hour (Rev 18:17, 19) she will be plunged into bitter poverty, nakedness and loneliness. In addition to the suffering under the rule of whore are pleased especially the Christians, and loud cheering ( Rev 19.1-3  EFA ).

More ancient writings

In the first letter of Peter ( 1 Petr 5,13  LUT ) the addressees are greeted by the church from Babylon (ἐν Βαβυλῶνι). For the interpretation of the name Babylon as a cipher for ancient Rome or the Roman Empire and not as a real name of Mesopotamian Babylon , the fact that a) most interpreters of the ancient church already offer this interpretation, b) it for a stay or an activity of the author Peter in Babylonia does not give any testimony, c) that there are, on the other hand, extensive testimony for Peter's stay in Rome. The interpretations of a military camp of the same name in the Nile delta, as well as - based on Rev 11,8  LUT - on Jerusalem are also to be rejected. One should consider the interpretation of the name Babylon as a symbol for the existence of Christians abroad and for diversion.

Similar to the New Testament, in the Oracula Sibyllina and in the Syrian Baruchapocalypse (syrBar / 3Bar) 67.7 Babylon is used as a symbolic name for Rome.

Later reception

"The Whore of Babylon," representation from the Hortus Deliciarum the Herrad of Landsberg , 1180
Lucas Cranach the Elder : “The Babylonian Whore”, 1534. Colored section of a woodcut from the Luther Bible . The Babylonian whore is depicted in this picture with a papal tiara .

The interpretation of Rev 17 on Rome ( Irenaeus of Lyon and Hippolytus of Rome ) is found early in the old church . Cassiodorus (* around 485, † around 580) is part of this tradition of interpretation . Andreas von Caesarea (around 600), in his important commentary on the Apocalypse, indicates the whore to all worldly power.

During the Reformation , Martin Luther and John Knox called the Roman Catholic Church the whore of Babylon, as Girolamo Savonarola and Friedrich II did before them on the occasion of his extensive dispute with Pope Gregory IX.

Even Dante uses this in the 19th canto of the Inferno and the 32nd canto of Purgatorio for his criticism of the official leadership of Pope Boniface VIII. This is said to have brought the Church through lies and deception of what an allusion to the controversial resignation Celestine V. is.

Modern reception

In Alfred Döblin's urban novel Berlin Alexanderplatz , the protagonist Franz Biberkopf is under the power of the whore Babylon. She accompanied his life through the Berlin underworld of the 1920s and was only replaced when the godfather took power , who had competed with her for Biberkopf for some time.

In addition to taking up the winged word in literature, the idiom was also taken up in film, for example in the embodiment of the machine man as the whore Babylon in the film Metropolis , published in 1927 .

In modern pop music , the image of the whore Babylon is occasionally taken, for example as the Babylon system . Bob Marley established this term, taken from Rastafarian beliefs, in 1978 with his album Babylon by Bus . The singer is concerned with the development of the “black identity”, justice and self-determination through liberation from the clutches of “western Babylon”. The Sons of Mannheim sing of the end of the "Babylon System", for the artists the current state and social order, characterized by tax burdens and claims to absoluteness. If Yahweh changes everything, the whore of Babylon will fall.

The German Gothic music project Stillste Stund also used the motif of the Whore Babylon against the backdrop of the Tower of Babel in the song Die Hure Babylon . The heavy metal band Iced Earth also wrote the song Seven Headed Whore , which is thematically about the whore Babylon. The American metal band Avenged Sevenfold took up the picture in their song The Beast and the Harlot , here the symbolic corruption and depravity is transferred to modern Hollywood .

literature

  • Karl Georg Kuhn : Art. Βαβυλών, in: Theological Dictionary of the New Testament I, Stuttgart 1933, pp. 512-514.
  • Ulrike Sals: The biography of the "Whore Babylon". Studies on the intertextuality of the Babylonian texts in the Bible . Research on the Old Testament 2/6. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2004. (567 pages), ISBN 3-16-148431-2 .
  • Moritz Wullen (Ed.): Babylon. Myth and Truth. Volume 2: Myth . Munich, 2008. ISBN 978-3-7774-5005-6 .
  • Giancarlo Biguzzi: Is the Babylon of Revelation Rome or Jerusalem? , in: Biblica 87, 2006, pp. 372–386 ( PDF ).
  • Mathias Rissi: The Whore Babylon and the seduction of the saints. A Study of the Apocalypse of John (Contributions to the Science of the Old and New Testament 136) . Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1995.

Web links

Commons : Whore Babylon.  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. Cf. the conclusion of Biguzzi, Babylon S 386. The fact that Rome is not “ because of many waters” ( Rev 17.1  ELB ) is not an argument against the interpretation of Rome, since the author of Revelation in his description of the whore Babylon stands in the tradition of Jer 51,13  ELB , where the historical Babylon is described as "dwelling on great waters" (cf. Bousset, The Revelation John p. 403 ).
  2. Cf. Euseb Church History II 15.2, as well as some New Testament minuscules that offer the reading Rome instead of Babylon .
  3. See Kuhn, Βαβυλὼν 514.
  4. Cf. on the place Strabon XVII 30, p. 807; Josephus , Antiqitates II, 315; XV, 14 and C. Detlef G. Müller, Art. Egypt IV, TRE 1 (1977) 514, 36-40.
  5. See Hans Windisch, The Catholic Letters, HNT 15, Tübingen ² 1930, 82.
  6. See Reinhard Feldmeier, Der first Brief des Petrus, Leipzig 2005 27f.
  7. Use of “Babylon” as a symbolic name for “Rome” in the Oracula Sibyllina : V, 143 and V, 159
  8. See Wilhelm Bousset, Die Revelation Johannis, Göttingen 1906, p. 66 .
  9. See Wilhelm Bousset, The Revelation Johannis, Göttingen 1906, p. 64 .
  10. Hanna Strzoda, in: Babylon. Myth, p. 42.
  11. on the album Noiz , 2004. Text ( memento of the original from September 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. More on this from Hanna Strzoda, Berlin-Babylon, in: Babylon. Myth, p. 189. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / soehnemannheims.homepage24.de
  12. So in the song Jah is changing all on the album Zion, 2000. Text  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Also the songs on the same album Volle Kraft Vorah and Armageddon act u. a. from the fall of the "Nutt Babylon".@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.magistrix.de