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The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
Babylon as a name for Rome
Babylon burned Jerusalem's first temple and carried Judah into exile. By the first century Jews were calling Rome by its name, and Christians did the same for the city that ruled and scattered them.
Calling a new enemy by the name of an old one says what you think of it without a speech. Babylon was the empire that burned Jerusalem's first temple and took Judah into exile. By the first century the old city was a ruin, but its name had become a byword for the power that oppresses God's people. Jewish writers used it for Rome, and when 1 Peter sends greetings from she who is in Babylon, the sources read here take the city to be Rome.
Jews of this period saw Rome as the fourth of the four kingdoms of Daniel 7, the successor of Babylon. "Babylon" thus became "a fairly common cryptogram for Rome", even more so after the temple fell in AD 70 (the cultural backgrounds notes). Rome, like Babylon, destroyed the temple and enslaved God's people, though Rome does not exhaust what Babylon means. The old city was still inhabited but had sunk further under the Parthians. The name carried a long memory. Podany dates Nebuchadnezzar II's capture of Jerusalem to March 597 BC and the burning of the temple to 587 BC. She judges his Babylon, so far as the evidence goes, the biggest city on earth in its day. Some Jews had transferred the prophecies of Babylon's fall to the new empire, though later rabbis preferred the name Edom. In the Old Testament Babylon stands for earthly power opposed to God (Isaiah 13-14; Jeremiah 50-51). The CSB Study Bible says the name was used for a place of exile, specifically Rome. The Sibylline Oracles, in Charles's edition, foretell that "Then shall flee from Babylon a king fearful and shameless", meaning Nero. Charles notes, "Babylon probably means Rome"; later lines burn Babylon and Italy, for whose sake many faithful Hebrews perished. Wright and Bird list 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, the Sibylline Oracles and Revelation as using the name. They note that the Qumran writers could already call Rome the Kittim of Asshur, Assyria, before AD 70. Revelation draws Babylon as a woman. Gentiles pictured their cities as women, and coins showed the goddess Roma seated on Rome's seven hills. The prophets called Tyre and Nineveh harlots for their trade and their sorcery.
An analogy: a family that calls a ruthless new landlord by the name of the one who evicted their grandparents. Everyone at the table knows what the name means, and the landlord does not need to.
Because Babylon had become a name for the city that ruled and scattered God's people, greetings from she who is in Babylon, in 1 Peter 5:13, place the church in the capital of its exile. Revelation 17:5 names the great city Babylon the great, and Revelation 18:2 announces its fall in words the prophets had spoken against the old Babylon.
Not a private family code. The family's nickname works because the landlord never hears it. Babylon for Rome was widely understood, and Wright and Bird, following Doering, read it as an open verdict on Rome, the power behind the persecution and scattering of God's people. Nor is it the ruined city on the Euphrates, which the Jews had left well before Peter's day.
Whether the name points to a date after AD 70. The cultural backgrounds notes say Babylon became a common name for Rome, even more so after the temple's destruction, and Wright and Bird report that some scholars take the usage to require a date after 70. Wright and Bird answer that Qumran writers already equated Rome with the Kittim of Asshur before 70, so the name need not mean Rome as destroyer of the temple. Beale notes that the only early metaphorical uses, in 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and the Sibylline Oracles, come after 70, and reports J. Christian Wilson's argument that before 70 the name meant exile rather than destruction, which Beale calls plausible but partly an argument from silence. Wright, in his commentary on 1 Peter, questions the identification itself: we cannot be absolutely sure that Babylon there is code for Rome.
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- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on 1 Peter 5:13
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 1 Peter (Provenance and Audience), and on 1 Peter 5:13
- ESV Study Bible, Introduction to 1 Peter (Date), and study note on 1 Peter 5:13
- CSB Study Bible, Introduction to 1 Peter (Background)
- R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2, Sibylline Oracles, book 5, lines 143 and 158-161, with Charles's note on line 143
- Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking and Pieter W. van der Horst, entry Roma
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 32, The Argument of 1 Peter, section 5, and note 107
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Revelation 14:8 and 17:1-5
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 14:8, introduction to 17:1-5, and on 17:1 and 17:3
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, Introduction, Babylon
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 19, Peter, Provenance
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Babylon and Rome
- Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entry Babylon
- N. T. Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, comment on 1 Peter 5:8-14
- Amanda H. Podany, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East, ch. 19, Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon: The King and His Capital City, and Jehoiakin of Judah: Exiles in Babylon
