Revelation 17: A Mystery, Babylon the Great

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Then one of the seven angels pouring out the seven ceremonial bowls came out and was talking with me, saying, “Here, I will reveal to you the judgment of the great idolator/prostitute sitting upon the many waters.”

In association with [the great idolater/prostitute], the rulers of the earth have practiced idolatry/indulged in unlawful sexual acts, and the ones dwelling on the earth have become intoxicated with the wine of her idolatry/unlawful sexual acts.

Then he carried me away into solitude in Spirit, and I saw a woman sitting upon a dangerous, crimson-colored creature, which was full of names of blasphemies, having seven heads and ten horns.

And the woman had wrapped herself all around with purple and crimson, and had been gilded with gold and precious stone, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand which was filled with abominations and the moral foulness of her idolatry/pornographic acts.

And upon her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “Babylon the Great, the Mother of the Idolaters/Prostitutes and the Abominations of the Earth.”

Then I saw the woman being intoxicated from the blood of the holy ones, from the blood of the martyred witnesses of Jesus. And I was extraordinarily disturbed beholding her, a grand spectacle.

Revelation 17:1-6

Idolatry

For women readers today, the millennia of layered contempt and misogyny make this text particularly hard to read.

It is therefore important to keep in mind, when reading this text that, to the first-century reader, πόρνη | pornē carried a double meaning: equally idolater and prostitute. Sex work, in the Greco-Roman world, was both legal and widespread, and was often associated with certain cult practices or yearly rites. The cult of Dionysius adherents, for example, included sex with their festivals. It was not uncommon for enslaved men and women to be put to work as well, catering to the tastes and demands of the pater familias—head of household—and to the slaveholder’s associates.

Many Christians were themselves enslaved, and though there is no biblical record of what they were forced to do, there is also little question at least some had been pressed into sex work.

To my mind, the best reading of this passage is to understand the word pornē and its derivatives as allusions to spiritual prostitution, which is to say, idolatry. It is doubtful the writer intended a screed against physical prostitution, as no enslaved Christian could choose to abstain from such without inviting serious physical punitive action, if not execution. It seems likely that for enslaved Christians who were still engaged in sex work, as well as for Christians who had managed to extricate themselves from that lifestyle, John’s imagery could make sense from a spiritual perspective without them feeling personal condemnation or humiliation.

Furthermore, as an apocalypse, the larger theme is always in view: egregious injustice against the righteous and God’s promise to right all wrongs, vindication of the faithful and eradication of evil.

The Woman

Judging from the many scriptural references laden throughout the book of Revelation, it is safe to say the audience was well familiar with the Hebrew Bible. There are several of key references in the Hebrew prophets and wisdom literature which employ female figures to connote spiritual pornē.

Genesis 39

Joseph, the fourth patriarch, was relentlessly stalked when he was enslaved and sexually harassed by the wife of his captor. Time after time he resisted, saying,

“How then could I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

Genesis 39:9 (italics added)

The sexual component was far less important than the spiritual one.

Numbers 25

Early in Israelite history, local Canaanite rulers literally trafficked a good many of their women by sending them into the Israelite encampment near the border of their region. The women were to entice the men into joining with them in a festival dedicated to their deity Ba’al by sexually seducing them. The physical sex was a mere ploy to manipulate spiritual betrayal. By abandoning YHWH, it was hoped, the strength of the Israelite army would be gutted.

2 Peter 2: Balaam’s Revenge

The plan worked, and God’s wrath cleansed the tribes of many defectors to Ba’al. But the point is, physical sexual entanglement was not the point. Idolatry was the point.

Proverbs

At the beginning of this book of collected maxims, in Chapters 1–9 in the Septuagint, the writer presents the female embodiment of “wisdom,” σοφία | sofia, and presents a counterfoil, the female embodiment of a “stranger,” onewho is φαυλη | faulē, morally a stranger to all that is good, one who is worthless and bad, even evil, one who is involved in spiritual porn (pornē). Because the word for “wisdom” is feminine already, the literary device makes sense to cast the opposite of wisdom as also female.

The same holds true for the Hebrew scriptures. חׇכְמָה  | chokmâh, the word for “wisdom,” is already feminine, so the opposite of wisdom is cast as a female זוּר | zûwr, “estranged,” who is also an adulteress and prostitute.

We consciously remember the original audience took these metaphors in stride. A Jewish audience would know and understand the Hebrew connotations and having grown up with gendered language, would be more prone to separate such a literary device from thoughts of actual people.

Zechariah

In a series of visions, Zechariah observed what God was doing and would do. What Zechariah saw was highly allegorical, and sometimes he had to ask what each image meant.

Then the angel who talked with me came forward and said to me, “Look up and see what this is that is coming out.” 

I said, “What is it?”

He said, “This is a basket coming out.”

And he said, “This is their iniquity in all the land.” 

Then a leaden cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting in the basket!  And he said, “This is Wickedness.”

So he thrust her back into the basket, and pressed the leaden weight down on its mouth. Then I looked up and saw two women coming forward. The wind was in their wings; they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and sky. Then I said to the angel who talked with me, “Where are they taking the basket?” 

He said to me, “To the land of Shinar, to build a house for it; and when this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base.”

Zechariah5:5-11 (NRSV, emphases added)

Minor Prophets: Zechariah, Vision Seven

Misreading the Text

One example that I have not turned to, but which perhaps has come to mind, is the story of the first man and the first woman found in Genesis 3. A great deal of bad theology, eisegesis, and completely fallacious, if not felonious, conclusions have all been drawn from the poor reading of the Genesis 1-3.

Understanding the metaphor of Revelation 17 against the above examples makes sense.

But backreading the metaphor into Genesis 3 is anti-scriptural.

The truth is, the serpent was the tempter, the woman was deceived, and the man was not deceived but rather convinced.

The serpent tempted, and seduced, and enticed, both the man and the woman as they remained there, the three of them. The serpent spoke to both human beings. The woman responded by offering what information she had, but the man remained silent. The man did not offer to inform the serpent nor to bolster the woman’s arguments. The man was simply listening to and weighing the serpent’s disingenuous insinuations.

When the woman ate, and when she passed the fruit to the man, she was in the state of being deceived.

When the man took the fruit, and when the man ate, he was not deceived. He knew what he was doing, and he did what he did on purpose.

When God appeared, the man sought to deflect God’s attention from the serpent, and focus God’s attention, instead, on the woman.

That is the true theme of Genesis 3, and we see that black thread of misogyny woven through the stories of men and women in Scripture, as well as God’s golden thread of honoring women.

The book featured below gives a deeper analysis of Genesis 2-3.

Now at the end of Scripture, this female imagery is used to explain the corruption of the rulers of earth, and the inhabitants of earth, not as a specific condemnation of women, or even of sex workers.

Let us see it for what it is.

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