Blood wrote:Is Jerusalem referred to as "the spiritual" Sodom and Egypt anywhere else? And why Sodom and Egypt?
It's fascinating that modern translations take "the Lord of them" to mean THEIR Lord was crucified. The Egyptians' Lord was crucified? Clearly, modern interpreters don't think "the spiritual Sodom and Egypt" can refer to Jerusalem; otherwise, they would have no problem translating it as OUR Lord.
Sodom is applied to Jerusalem in Ezek 16.46 -56. ; Isa 1.10; Jerm 23.14. Sodom is an analogy to the city of violence and fornication. Egypt a place of idolatry or slavery
The New Oxford Annotated Bible
"The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”
18:10
18:16
"and cry out: “ ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls!"
18:18
18:19
They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out: “ ‘Woe! Woe to you, great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In one hour she has been brought to ruin!'
18:21
That great city certainly refers to Rome and not Jerusalem, even if that great city is often identified in some verses (unquoted here) as Babylon.
However, in these days, Babylon was a dying city of little importance, with no power & wealth. It is generally agreed that Babylon became a code name for Rome after 70, because both destroyed Jerusalem to the fullest.
Cordially, Bernard
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
Bernard Muller wrote:
That great city certainly refers to Rome and not Jerusalem, even if that great city is often identified in some verses (unquoted here) as Babylon.
However, in these days, Babylon was a dying city of little importance, with no power & wealth. It is generally agreed that Babylon became a code name for Rome after 70, because both destroyed Jerusalem to the fullest.
Cordially, Bernard
The passage refers DIRECTLY to the great city where our Lord was crucified.
Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem in an out the Canon.
Revelation 11.8
And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified
There is no Christian writer of antiquity that claimed Jesus was crucified in the great city of Rome.
Mark 10:33 KJV
Saying, Behold , we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles
Revelation 11:8 says, "Their corpses will lie in the main street of the great city, which has the symbolic names 'Sodom' and 'Egypt,' where indeed their Lord was crucified."
The Jerome Biblical Commentary, vol. 2, p. 481, states: "the great city: This expression is constantly used in the Apocalypse for Bablyon, i.e., Rome (14:8; 16:19; 17:5,18; 18:2,10,21), and it is difficult, in spite of the following characteristics, to see Jerusalem in this passage."
As the "following chracteristics," the JBC refers solely to "where their Lord was crucified: Some commentators consider this detail a gloss, and although it seems to clinch the argument that the 'great city' is Jerusalem, such an interpretation would contradict the beginning of the verse. The most acceptable of many different interpretations is the one that universalizes the entire passage. Both Rome and Jerusalem furnish details that John applies to the terrestrial city of evil, i.e., the pagan world inimical to God and his people. This city is eager to annihilate the Church; it continues to crucify Christ in his faithful."
Of course, the only necessity for such a universalizing interpretation is the axiom that the Lord was crucified in Jerusalem and not Rome. If this axiom is removed from our system of thought, the conclusion is permitted that Revelation speaks of the Lord being crucified in the 'great city' that is the object of its attacks throughout the document, namely Rome. [This weirdness dovetails with another weirdness, that report in Suetonius of the Jews in Rome acting up under Claudius at the instigation of Chrestus.]
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
2. There is a GREAT city called Jerusalem in Revelation.
3. Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem.
The great city where Jesus was crucified most likely refers to Jerusalem not Rome.
Revelation 21:10 KJV
And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God
Jerusalem is one of several “great cities”
Jeremiah 22
8And many nations will pass by this city, and all of them will say one to another, ‘Why has the LORD dealt in this way with that great city?’ 9And they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD their God, and worshipped other gods and served them.’
Here, then, in the street of "the great city" Jerusalem, these two witnesses will be slain, and Ps79 will receive its fulfilment, for it is to this very time that it refers.
Psalm 79
Plea for Mercy for Jerusalem
A Psalm of Asaph.
1 O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple;
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
2 They have given the bodies of your servants
to the birds of the air for food,
the flesh of your faithful to the wild animals of the earth.
3 They have poured out their blood like water
all around Jerusalem,
and there was no one to bury them.
4 We have become a taunt to our neighbours,
mocked and derided by those around us.
Jerusalem is like Sodom and as oppressive as Egypt.
Jeremiah 5
The Utter Corruption of God’s People
5 .1Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
look around and take note!
Search its squares and see
if you can find one person
who acts justly
and seeks truth—
so that I may pardon Jerusalem
Ezekiel 23
[uote]3they played the whore in Egypt; they played the whore in their youth; their breasts were caressed there, and their virgin bosoms were fondled. 4Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.
I don't have a copy at hand, but I recall Bruce J. Malina's fascinating book "On the Genre and Message of Revelation" arguing that when the author refers to Babylon, he means Babylon, i.e. it was not a secret code for Rome.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
There is no evidence the author of Revelation was inspired by OT scriptures in order to define which is the great city.
Actually in Revelation, the great city is given a name, Babylon (16:19, 18:10, 18:21 & Babylon is "great" in 14:8, 17:5, 18:2). I do not know of any text where Babylon is equated to Jerusalem. Correct me if I am wrong.
Verses 17:18, 18:16 & 18:19 (which I quoted in an earlier posting) describe the great city as very powerful and wealthy & accessible by sea. That does not match either Jerusalem or Babylon (then a decaying city with no power or wealth).
Revelation 21:10, as quoted by Dewitness, is about the heavenly Jerusalem as the great city, not the real earthly city in Israel.
Rome is not named in Revelation, but strongly alluded to in several parts, more so in 17:8 (a woman sitting on seven hills, with a title "Babylon the Great" on her forehead 17:5).
Cordially, Bernard
Last edited by Bernard Muller on Fri Oct 18, 2013 1:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
I believe freedom of expression should not be curtailed
Duvduv wrote:The author of Revelations 11 apparently had in mind the scornful statement found in Isaiah 1 starting around verse 9 and thereafter.
The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament
Second Catholic Edition RSV
Ignatius Press San Francisco 2001
Revelation 11.8
Note 11.8 The Great City. The city of Jerusalem which crucified the Lord Jesus and took the lives of numerous early Christians.
Martin Luther wrote this about Revelation:
Martin Luther's Preface to the Revelation of St. John (1522)
About this Book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.
Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book; and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better books available for us to keep.
The 1522 “Preface to the Revelation of St. John” in Luther’s translation of the New Testament. Pages 398-399 in Luther’s Works Volume 35: Word and Sacrament I (ed. E. Theodore Bachmann; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960). http://gervatoshav.blogspot.co.uk/2009/ ... on-of.html
