Rivergang:
However, that idea has long since been discarded - almost to the point of being considered pseudoscience.
Correct, apart from the ‘almost’.
The Tower of Babel
is simply a borrowed myth.
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
Rivergang:
However, that idea has long since been discarded - almost to the point of being considered pseudoscience.
Correct, apart from the ‘almost’.
The Tower of Babel
is simply a borrowed myth.
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
Sea Breeze;
My bet is on Rome as Babylon the Great
Revelation indeed was referring to Rome, But it has nothing to do with Rome (or the Vatican) now. Revelation was referring to empirical Rome at the time of writing and a hypothetical near-future at the time.
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
I have actually been part of this discussion from the earliest part.
Actually, I correctly identified Babylon the Great as Rome very early in the thread, before you elaborated on extraneous church traditions (some of which necessarily sought to make the identity more consistent for later contemporary Christianity), which were of some historical interest but tend to muddy the waters about the original actual meaning.
Babylon the Great was Rome—a city on seven hills, and a city with a kingdom over other kings (basileus, βασιλεύς, Strong’s G935), the specific term used when referring to kings of Rome’s clients kingdoms (e.g, Herod at Matthew 2:3 and Mark 6:14). Jerusalem held no such position, and other proposed identities just get more and more fanciful.
i've been crapping on the wt a lot lately, which sometimes seems a bit unfair to me, especially since i was never in, therefore i don't really have a dog in the fight.
to provide a bit of balance, i'll reminisce about the rampant prophecy speculation going on in mainstream christianity (i refuse to use the wt's pejorative term: "christendom", especially since by definition, they're part of that classification 🙄) in the 70s and 80s.
to be fair, the churches themselves had been around long enough to realise that end times interpretations are like arseholes, everybody has one.
I suppose hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia can be fun if not taken seriously. But the ‘beast’ in question was Nero, and despite the superstition at the time that he would return, he’s quite dead and everyone can rest easy without fear of the number 666 (or 616 if you prefer the Greek rendering of his name).
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
even making a list of how since from the very beginning, starting from the Church Fathers, Christians have used various ways of interpreting Revelation, including the:This is the kind of stuff that might sound impressive and is of interest from a historical point of view, particularly in seeing how the church adapted over time, often in response to successive failed expectations. But the mutually exclusive concepts, most of which rely on magical thinking and superstition (especially Futurism and Historicism but also Preterism with its erroneous position of pushing application of Daniel into the first century) or relegate too much to symbolism (forms of Idealism), are not particularly useful in any practical way, nor do they represent the original intent of the various biblical apocalypses.
- Preterist View
- Critical View
- Idealist View
- Historist View and
- Futurist View.
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
🤷♂️
You’ve offered no critique of my actual content in this thread or elsewhere (other than condescension and a straw man about appeal to authority), so despite the potential, you’re not really of any value to me.
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
But I didn’t say you hadn’t been otherwise involved in the thread, and I don’t need condescending comments about bibliographies. Nor do I need you to continue the straw man about me supposedly claiming my views are supported by scholars, which is not a claim I made anywhere in this thread, and my views are instead based on analysis of the primary texts. But since you haven’t indicated disagreement with any content I’ve offered, I can only assume assent (that’s sarcasm, though apparently you’re the expert at judging such things, so you presumably know that anyway). Which is still better than you just incorrectly assuming I’m angry. Instead you only prattled on about methodology that I already know, pretending you’re some superior arbiter but really just contributing further to an irrelevant tangent. Entirely unhelpful.
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
It would be nice if they actually provide an opinion on the content rather than getting hung up on irrelevant tangential nonsense.
If someone says 1+1=2, and later happens to say that other sources also agree, it is just asinine to say the person is ‘wrong’.
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
🤦♂️ I don’t really care about your assessment of my statement about consistency with (neither dependence on nor appeal to) mainstream scholarship. Whether my actual views are correct is not in any way dependant on how you assess my presentation of ancillary information. This isn’t a formal debate, and I broke no ‘rules’, and you’ve offered nothing at all regarding my actual views on the subject, so at this point you’re just a troll.
Perhaps that is the way you usually speak,
It’s not clear how your own use of an informal phrase is supposed to be some reflection on ‘how I speak’. 🤣
(revelation 17:5) “babylon the great, the mother of the prostitutes (plural!
) and of the disgusting things of the earth.”.
btg is spotlighted as being the principal "disgusting thing" which affects christians & christianity, with other lesser "prostitutes" in the background... (revelation 18:4) “get out of her, my people, (christians) if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.".
PioneerSchmioneer:
You can just skip what I said and offer a list of those scholars to the other guy and prove your original point.
🤦♂️. I thought there ‘weren’t any real experts’ and ‘appealing to scholarship is fallacious’. 🙄 But since I’ve done my own analysis of the primary sources, it hardly matters.
It seems that your irrelevant tangential rant about methodology is a reflection of some disagreement with one or more aspects of my views, but your reluctance to deal with actual content may belie some outlandish personal view of your own. Happy to be proved wrong.
Your posts generally seem quite cogent, so it may just be entrenchment in a particular style of academia that got you on your irrelevant tangent. In any case, quit the ad hominem nonsense and address content if you care to.