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whore of Babylon
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whore of Babylon, in Christianity, a portentous figure described in the apocalyptic Revelation to John. She is seen as analogous to the pagan nations and governments considered in direct opposition to the Christian faith, particularly the imperial city of Rome.
The whore of Babylon is disclosed to Revelation’s narrator, John of Patmos, in a vision from an angel:
I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her prostitution, and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.” And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus (Revelation 17:3–6).
Given the forced detention suffered by the Jewish people during the Babylonian Exile (ending in 538 bce), Babylon has long served as an exemplar of evil in the Hebrew Bible and the subsequent Judeo-Christian tradition. The prophet Jeremiah recounted heavenly messages that Babylon had “fallen and…shattered” (Book of Jeremiah 51:8) and “become a horror among the nations” (50:23); later, he instructed Israel’s armies to castrate Babylonian soldiers while attacking the city. In the Book of Isaiah, Babylon is called a “faithful city” that had “become a whore” (1:21). These descriptions are echoed by those of the whore of Babylon in Revelation, which was written about 96 ce. Like the ancient city of Babylon, the whore is an enemy of God’s chosen people; also like the city, she is described as sexually deviant. The seat of idolatry, she is said to have “committed fornication” with the “kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:2) and thus influenced the kings toward evil. Her downfall…