The City-Women Babylon and New Jerusalem in Revelation (2024)

Southwest of Laodicea, one of the seven cities addressed in the book of Revelation, is the city of Aphrodisias, named for its patron, Aphrodite. The city was known for its fine buildings, including the sebasteion (imperial cult temple), dedicated to Aphrodite and the Julio-Claudian emperors. Likely finished during the reign of Nero (54–68 ce), the sebasteion was an impressive structure that included a temple and a highly decorated three-storey portico that lined the processional way. The portico included reliefs depicting imperial triumphs within a framework of Greek myth, as well as the breadth of Roman conquest. The latter was communicated through personifications of the ethnē (nations or “foreign peoples”) that lay at the edges of the Empire, including Dacia, Egypt, and Judea (R. R. R. Smith 1988). Many of the scenes of imperial triumph similarly included personified nations, such as Britannia and Armenia. These personifications, which draw upon a long tradition of representing nations and cities as women, present an elite Aphrodisian perspective on Roman power. Drawing upon this tradition, John, Revelation’s self-named author, deploys his own city-woman images as part of his call for his community to resist Roman power and build a communal identity in relation to God and the Lamb.

Reading Revelation’s City-Women with Scholars

Scholarly conversation about Revelation’s city-women began in earnest with the emergence of feminist critical approaches to the text, since the imagery raises questions about John’s understanding of gender and sex and about how gendered imagery is interpreted and appropriated by scholars and communities in conversation with Revelation (Stenström 2009).1 For most of these scholars, Revelation’s depictions of the whor* and the bride are central to understanding the text’s rhetorical strategy.2

Some of the earliest discussions of Revelation’s city-women explore the relationship between these images and their cultural contexts. Adela Yarbro Collins draws from history-of-religions scholarship as she explores the mythological foremothers of Revelation’s women. She highlights the bride’s roots in Isaiah’s depiction of Jerusalem as God’s wife, which, like Revelation, includes a description of the city bejeweled (Isa 54:12). Babylon the whor* similarly “hails from” the prophetic tradition in which Nineveh and Tyre are depicted as prostitutes because of their unscrupulous “quest for wealth” (Yarbro Collins 1993, 26; Nah 3:4; Isa 23). The prophets even depict Jerusalem, Israel, and Judah as a prostitute or unfaithful wife, as a way of symbolizing the people’s supposed turn to “idolatry” (Isa 1:21; Hos 1–4; Jer 3:6–10; Ezek 16; 23:5–21).

Barbara Rossing emphasizes the rhetorical function of the two city-women in Revelation by examining the “two-choice” topos in Greek and Roman moralist writings and Jewish wisdom traditions. Like these, Revelation’s use of whor* and bride imagery, which John combines with the prophetic critique of cities, depicts an either/or option. Revelation’s audience can either associate with the whor*, which is an indictment of the Roman Empire, or accept the invitation of the bridal new Jerusalem, which is “an invitation to citizenship in God’s alternative realm” (Rossing 1999, 15). Rossing emphasizes that this gendered imagery is mainly a way of contrasting the two options and not a statement about gender per se (1999, 162).

Two of the most influential interpreters of Revelation’s city-woman imagery have been Tina Pippin and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Although both scholars understand their readings as feminist, they disagree over whether one should highlight the gendered (Pippin) or the political (Schüssler Fiorenza) aspects of the imagery. Exploring how Revelation’s assumption of a male-identified audience encourages readers to celebrate the whor*’s gruesome demise and to valorize the passive and virginal bride, Pippin challenges the assumption that modern interpreters can look past the text’s misogyny (1992a).3 Critical of Pippin’s perspective, Schüssler Fiorenza argues that the whor* and bride should not be read as revealing John’s perspectives on actual women, but as John’s appropriation of prophetic traditions in which women symbolize cities and political institutions. Reading the book in historical context and in subsequent parallel contexts, Schüssler Fiorenza argues that these two images present the audience with a choice, either associate oneself with “the powers of oppression . . . [or] those of liberation and well-being” (1991, 130). As such, they are part of Revelation's liberatory vision.

Shanell T. Smith pushes past the binary options presented by Pippin and Schüssler Fiorenza by employing a hermeneutic of “ambiveilence.”4 Reading Babylon through the lenses of postcolonial theory and womanist interpretation, Smith maintains that the city-woman is “simultaneously a brothel slavewoman and empress/ imperial city” (2014, 176). This is an image of one who both experiences and participates in oppression and victimization, and, as such, it is one with which Smith identifies as an African American woman living in the United States. Smith highlights the intersecting identities incorporated into this imagery noting that feminist Conversations overemphasize the gendered aspect of the city-women, and give little or no attention to the fact that audiences, whether living in ancient Asia Minor or the contemporary United States, cannot envision the city-women without making assumptions about their racial, ethnic, and class identities.

While many scholars have focused on Revelation’s depiction of the great whor*, my own work has explored how the bride serves as an image of the idealized community to which John calls his audience (Huber 2007). I have demonstrated that the image of the bride has been productive for thinking about communal and individual identity among interpreters of Revelation, including medieval and modern women visionaries (Huber 2013). Similarly, Jacqueline M. Hidalgo explores how Revelation’s evocation of a new Jerusalem bridges the past, present, and future and parallels and intersects with Latinx visions of Aztlán, the mythical past, present, and future home of the Chicanx community (Hidalgo 2016).

More recently, Revelation scholars have brought the insights of queer theory into conversation with the text’s city-women imagery. I approach the image of the woman Babylon as a queer lesbian reader, and identify with John as he wonders at the elaborately clad female figure before him (17:6–7), thereby pushing against the text’s heteronormative assumption that readers who desire the whor* are male-identified (see Pippin 1992a, 83–86). In so doing, I interpret queer desire for the whor* figure in terms of the appeal of assimilation to the dominant culture (Huber 2011). More recently, Luis Menéndez-Antuña reminds interpreters of queer theory’s emphasis on the multidirectionality of desire, arguing that the desire of Revelation’s audience cannot easily be realigned from one object, the whor*, to another, the bride (2018, 96–98). We can imagine that, despite John’s assumption that his audience embodies male desire for women, Revelation’s audience members have complex experiences of both attraction and repulsion to the two city-women presented to them. Queer readings of Revelation remind us that texts do not control the responses of their readers.

Scholarly engagement with Revelation’s city-women reveals the tendency to reduce these rich images to a single facet—either the city or woman—and to overlook other aspects within the imagery. Moreover, we see a tension among scholars between those who look at what the images have said (as rhetorical historical constructions) and those who look at what the images might say as resources for contemporary interpretative communities. Here I will focus upon the former, on how Revelation’s city-women relate to their ancient rhetorical context, including other female personifications.

The Ancient Personification of Cities and Nations as Women

The personification of cities and nations as women appears throughout the ancient Mediterranean world in texts, on coins, in monumental art, and more. Although in some cases these entities were depicted as men,5 the association between cities and women stems partly from the grammatical gender of the Greek and Latin terms for “city,” polis and urb respectively (A. C. Smith 2011, 105). Another aspect is that both cities and women could be metaphorically envisioned as containers. The connection is built on the assumption that cities were walled spaces with gates that could be closed and opened. That idea aligned with the views of ancient physicians who understood the female body as defined by possessing a uterus. The uterus, as described by Galen near the end of the first century ce, was understood to be akin to the male “part,” simply turned “inward” (On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body 14.6). According to this view, women were naturally inwardly oriented, designed to contain a man’s penis, sperm, and, eventually, a fetus. Woman were by design “living containers” (Bonnard 2013). Given these metaphorical associations between cities and containers and women and containers, a metaphorical connection between cities and women was easily drawn.

The metaphorical logic that equates women and cities with containers includes the idea that both can be penetrated. This leads to a common association between sexual assault and invasion, between rape and war. When the Greeks invade Priam’s palace in Troy, they penetrate the structure’s “stubborn gateway” behind which “trembling matrons moan, clinging to the doors and imprinting kisses on them” (Virgil, Aen. 2.480–90). The physical penetration of a building, conceptually similar to a city, evokes a sexual response in the matrons who live within the palace. The boundary between physical place and human women is blurred (Whittaker 2009). A similar blurring of the boundary between conquered place and assaulted women occurs in at least two of the extant reliefs from Aphrodisias. In one, the emperor Nero carries a seemingly unconscious and nude personification of Armenia by her armpits, and in another, a nude Claudius stands behind a partially unclothed and fallen Britannia (Fig. 19.1). Both reliefs use the imagery of sexual violence as a way of indicating the defeat of nations. Although the images ostensibly depict political conquest, they also remind the viewer that militaries, ancient and modern, regularly deploy sexual assault and rape as a means of demonstrating and maintaining power over the other (Gaca 2003). Moreover, using images of sexual violence to depict political dominance reflects the cultural equation of the free male with power and dominance and the female and feminized, a category that included enslaved males, with weakness and passivity, a gender logic that imbued the Roman social world writ large (Walters 1997).

The personification of cities as women did not always signify dominance and conquest. One of the most widespread and flexible personifications was the depiction of various cities as the goddess Tyche, a deity associated with fate and fortune. Popular in Greek and Hellenistic contexts, visual representations of different cities as Tyche (e.g., Alexandria, Tarsus, Laodicea) underscore the metaphorical association between cities and women as containers (Broucke 1994, 37–38). One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the goddess is the mural crown on her head. The crown resembles city walls and at times even includes representations of city gates. For instance, the Anatolian city of Tarsus is depicted as Tyche on a coin minted during Domitian’s reign (Fig. 19.2). Like other versions of Tyche, she wears a mural crown that evokes the walls of Tarsus, which contained and ostensibly protected its inhabitants and institutions. The image of Tyche here points to the way the personifications map the characteristics of cities and women onto one another. Based on a famous fourth-century bce bronze statue of Tyche of Antioch by Eutychides, the Tyche of Tarsus sits with her foot on a male figure who represents the river Cydnus, just as the city itself “sat” along the river. While the initial connection made between cities and women might be on account of their metaphorical status as containers, the blending of these concepts easily lends itself to being extended in a variety of ways.

The city of Rome was also depicted in the form of a goddess, called Roma, who was occasionally shown wearing a mural crown, like Tyche (Joyce 2014, 10). Evoking imagery associated with the Amazons, Roma could appear helmeted, holding a spear, and with one breast bared. The parts of a personification require interpretation in relation to the whole. Even though the bared breast of a figure like Britannia indicates her vulnerability and the shame of her defeat, in relation to other Amazonian signifiers on Roma, the breast signals the goddess’s valor, a willingness to take risk in battle (Joyce 2014, 6). Additionally, the breast may signal Roma’s maternal nature as a goddess who provides for those under her care.

Roma was especially popular in the Greek-speaking eastern portion of the Empire and the cities of Asia Minor were some of the earliest to build temples in her honor. Smyrna was the first, building a temple to the personified city during the Republican period (Tacitus, Ann. 4.56). Subsequent temples dedicated to Roma and Augustus were built in Ephesus and Pergamum. A first-century coin from Pergamum represents the temple on its reverse side, labeled roma et aug. Perhaps the cornucopia bearing goddess, who bestows power by placing a crown upon an emperor’s head (likely Augustus, though it is sometimes associated with Nerva (Friesen 2001, 32) is Roma herself, who was often depicted holding the “horn of plenty” (Fig. 19.3).6 The prevalence of Roma in Asia Minor suggests that Revelation’s audiences would have been familiar with this personification. In a context in which the imperial cults were an important aspect of civic and provincial culture, the expectation would be that Roma was worthy of respect and honor, a far cry from the treatment Revelation offers her.

The City-Women of Revelation

The city-women of Revelation—Babylon the great whor* and the bride named new Jerusalem—appear primarily in chapters 17–18 and 19–21 respectively. They emerge after John’s depiction of earthly political powers as beasts who have been empowered by the “great dragon,” who is identified as Satan (12:9). While the inhabitants of the earth are inclined to follow and worship the beast (13:4), throughout the narrative John calls his audience to resist this and to be faithful to God and the Lamb, even if that leads to death (e.g., 6:9; 7:14; 20:4). The dualism, which positions the beast and the Lamb as cosmic foes, reflects John’s perspective on the state of things for Jesus-followers in the urban centers of first-century ce Asia Minor. He understands them as combatants in a battle that will ultimately be won by Christ and his armies (19:11–21). Whether the members of John’s audience saw things in the same way is another issue.

Revelation’s world was one in which the urban elites were invested in gaining the favor of imperial Rome. The city of Pergamum requested and received the privilege of honoring Augustus and Roma with a provincial temple (Dio Cassius, Rom. Hist. 51.20), depicted on the coin in Fig. 19.3. The sebasteion building project in Aphrodisias began during the reign of Augustus’s successor, Tiberius, to honor the Julio-Claudian family for granting the city “free and allied status,” which made it independent of the province of Asia. At least one of the individuals who sponsored the project received Roman citizenship as a result (R. R. R. Smith 1987, 90). These types of patron-client relationships would have been important throughout the cities of Asia Minor. Even though only the wealthy could undertake a massive building project, there were myriad ways individuals and associations could demonstrate their gratefulness and loyalty to the dominant powers, such as attending festivals and games related to the imperial cults.7 Moreover, there would have been significant social pressure to support and participate in the imperial cults, for, as Steven M. Friesen underscores, these traditions were not imposed by Rome but reflected “local values” (1993, 75).

Honoring and even worshipping imperial figures, including Roma, were part of being a good neighbor or citizen in the cities to which Revelation is addressed; however, for John, these activities pandered to the beast who bears blasphemous names (Rev 13:1–4). According to John, even eating the meat that was left over from sacrifices, which would have been sold in the local markets, was participating in the empire’s evils (2:14, 20). This toleration of the imperial cults among Revelation’s audience members was a failure to recognize both the true reign of God and the Lamb and that the imperial system threatens, physically and spiritually, those who follow the Lamb. Revelation responds by drawing on the tradition of personifying cities and nations as women, and then deploying these city-woman images to simultaneously critique Rome, construct a communal identity for those who follow the Lamb, and present the two options that are available to audience members.

Babylon, the Great whor* and City

Immediately after he witnesses angels in heaven pouring out bowls of plague upon the earth, John is whisked away into the wilderness by one of the angels, who has something to show the seer. The language of seeing and showing plays an important role throughout Revelation, which uses the rhetorical technique of ekphrasis to place images before the audience members’ eyes (Huber 2013, 11–15; Whitaker 2015, 6). John characterizes the narrative as a whole as something intended to be shown to God’s “slaves” (1:1).8 The aim, as noted by Robyn J. Whitaker, was to use vivid description to persuade one’s audience members to see things in a particular way, so that their perspectives, opinions, and actions would be impacted (2015, 17–18). The focus of this visionary event, according to the angel, is the judgment of the great whor* (17:1). As we will see, This vision is not simply descriptive; it is a call to action.

The object of judgment, tēs p*rnēs tēs megalēs in Greek, is a paradoxical image that plays with the category of class. While we opt to translate this phrase the “great whor*,” since John clearly wants to vilify this character, the variety of English translations reflects the difficulty scholars have in capturing the social significance of this character. Is the term best rendered “harlot” (ASV), “whor*” (KJV, NRSV), or “prostitute” (NIV)? At first glance, one might see this woman as a hetaira, a wealthy and high-class courtesan, often associated with classical Greece (e.g., Roose 2005). Her clients are the “kings of the earth,” suggesting that she trades in power and prestige, and her extravagant appearance makes her success clear: she is “adorned with gold and jewels and pearls” (17:4). Contributing to the sense that this woman comes from the upper class, she wears garments made of scarlet and purple, colors associated with the clothing of the imperial family. The costume points to this being an imperial woman; however, the label p*rnē belies this. The term suggests not a woman with rank and class but a typical Roman prostitute, who worked or was forced to work—since many were enslaved—in the bars and brothels found throughout the Empire’s cities (Glancy and Moore 2011, 554–55).9 John’s depiction draws on the imagery of enslavement when he says that her name is visible upon her forehead (17,5), as the enslaved could be tattooed with the name that linked them to their enslaver (Glancy and Moore 2011, 559–60; Jones 1987).10

Prostitution was part of the Roman social system, providing free males opportunities for sex apart from marriage, and without the risk of infringing on another man’s property (i.e., wife, daughter, slave). Despite this, sex workers of all genders, many of whom were enslaved, were infames, lacking in reputation or honor. As Catharine Edwards notes, “Prostitution, for many Roman writers, represented the most degrading form of female existence imaginable” (1997, 82), an assessment John clearly shares. Roman authors associated brothels and prostitutes with unpleasant smells and dirtiness (Juvenal, Sat. 6.121; 11.173). Similarly, John depicts the whor* of Rev 17 holding a golden cup full of bdelygmatōn, which is often translated as “abominations” (NRSV), a term that has a moral or euphemistic valance in English but is linguistically related to words associated with nausea and filth.11 The whor*’s cup also holds akatharta, or “unclean things,” explicitly related to her “fornication” or “prostitution” (p*rneia). On top of this, the great whor* is drunk on the blood of the saints (17:6), pointing to her lack of self-control, a flaw from the Roman perspective, and her taste for violence. These characteristics create a sense of antipathy toward the woman adorned in imperial garb.

Revelation’s great whor* is an image of one who has access to everything and to all power, but who has debased herself and even become enslaved. Glancy and Moore compare this text to Juvenal’s depiction of Messalina, the third wife of Emperor Claudius, as a “whor*-empress” (meretrix augusta). Juvenal describes Messalina trading her palace bed at night for a brothel doorway, where she stands “naked and for sale” with “nipples gilded” (Sat. 6.120–125). The historian Tacitus similarly depicts Messalina as excessive and whor*-like (Ann. 11.25–38). In both cases, as Glancy and Moore note, the depiction of the “whor*-empress” serves as a way of critiquing the decline of the social order and, especially, the imperial family’s role in that decline (2011, 565).12 For John, however, the great whor* is not just an elite woman who has traded status for enslavement; she is aligned with evil itself. The great whor* rides on a scarlet beast “full of blasphemous names” and with multiple horns and heads (17:3), a clear allusion to the beasts that appear earlier in the narrative and who are aligned with Satan (12:9). The beast the great whor* rides is clearly an inversion of the divine, as the angel explains that “the beast that you saw was and is not” (17:7), a play on the description of God as the one “who is and who was and who is to come” (1:8). As the great whor*’s mount, the beast is the thing that moves and motivates her. She, in other words, colludes with evil.

It quickly becomes clear that it is a personification when John reveals the great whor*’s name: “Babylon the Great, Mother of whor*s and of the Earth’s Abominations” (17:5). The allusion to the quintessential evil city of Jewish tradition makes sense given that Babylon and Rome share the distinction of having destroyed Jerusalem and the city’s Jewish temple on the same day, albeit centuries apart. Other ancient Jewish authors make the same connection (e.g., 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch). The allusion portrays Rome, like Babylon, as the heart of an oppressive imperial power that brings destruction on the people of God.

The city and woman imagery within this personification merges almost seamlessly as John describes the whor* in a way that evokes representations of the goddess Roma. As in popular representations of the goddess, John views the great whor* Babylon “sitting” upon both “seven mountains” (17:9) and “many waters” (17:1, 15). The seven mountains, which John simultaneously identifies as seven kings, is an apparent reference to the seven hills with which Rome was commonly identified (e.g. Pliny, Nat. 3.66; Martial, Epigr. 4.64.11–12). The depiction of Rome sitting on waters and mountains conjures up images of the goddess sitting like Tyche (Joyce 2014, 13). Often, Roma sits upon shields, indicating the peace she brings through military domination (pax Romana), although on at least one first-century coin minted in Asia Minor, Roma sits upon seven hills with her feet resting upon a personification of the Tiber (Koester 2014, 685). In an allusion to this traditional imagery, John equates the water upon which Rome sits with “peoples and multitudes and nations and languages” (17:15). The metaphorical equation evokes all those who have been subdued by Rome because of the city’s strategic location; one need only look at the reliefs of the sebasteion to get a sense of their identities.

The description of the personified Rome concludes with a graphic representation of the judgment promised in 17:1. The kings that make up the horns and heads of the beast will, under authority from God, turn against the “great city” (hē polis hē megalē). The Greek here recalls the initial description of the “great whor*” (tēs p*rnēs tēs megalēs), who will be judged. The vivid account of the judgment again makes no distinction between city and woman, even though interpreters often favor one image over the other. The angel explains that the beast and the kings “will make her desolate and naked; they will devour her flesh and burn her with fire” (17:16). Many interpreters have emphasized that this violent scene should be understood as the destruction of an oppressive city and not an actual woman (e.g., Huber 2013, 69; Rossing 1999, 90). However, the metaphorical blending of woman and city erases any line that may exist between these concepts, and Revelation’s audience members are subjected to viewing the rape and utter annihilation of a city-woman. The image, which parallels traditions from Revelation’s prophetic past (e.g., Ezek 16:41; 23:25), is horrific, because the metaphorical blending of the concept woman and city suggest the razing of a city in a way that conjures visions of sexual violence against women. The reference to the kings’ cannibalizing the great whor* clearly evokes the body of a person, although the boundary between woman and city collapses as the city-woman burns. Some interpreters characterize this scene as one of “self-destruction,” since the great whor* is the one who associated with the kings who destroy her (e.g., Blount 2009, 322). Rome, from this perspective gets what she deserves. Mitzi J. Smith wryly notes the problematic logic behind this, characterizing it as victim blaming: “[W]hores can be subjected to violence because they are whor*s” (2015, 174).

The horror of this imagery potentially obscures the irony at the heart of the personification. As Craig R. Koester notes in reference to the reliefs in Aphrodisias, the city that contributed to the subjugation of others, including Britannia and Armenia, will be “stripped and devastated” (2014, 694). We might imagine some in John’s audience being uncomfortable with the vision unfolding before them. Whether they hear Rev 17 as referring to a city, a goddess, or as a thorough blending of both, they are prompted to envision the destruction and complete debasem*nt of something that has been and is held in honor by some within their ranks and by those around them.

The violence enacted upon the city-woman named Babylon continues in Rev 18, although the narrative highlights the concept of city more strongly in this chapter, including the metaphorical connection between cities, women, and containers. Echoing the oracles of Isaiah, an angel announces the destruction and desolation of the great city Babylon (18:2; see Isa 21:9; 34:11–15). The city has become a “prison” (phylakē), a word that is repeated three times in 18:2, connoting a place that contains individuals or foul spirits, birds, and beasts.13 The image of Babylon as a place that contains and even traps its inhabitants leads another voice from heaven to command, “Come out of her, my people” (18:4). This command, which Revelation’s audience members hear directed at them when the text is read aloud (1:3), signals one of the primary functions of Revelation’s city-woman imagery: to persuade Jesus-followers in urban Asia Minor to distance themselves from Rome. These Jesus-followers are to remove themselves from the city lest they become contaminated by its sins and plagues (18:4). In fact, John even calls his audience to participate in the punishment of the city-woman (18:6). Unlike those around or even among them who participate in the adulation of the Empire, John’s audience members are called to withdraw from and even oppose the city-woman that John depicts as depraved, disgusting, and entangled with evil.

New Jerusalem, the Wife and Bride

Audience members, as those who desire to be faithful to God and the Lamb, are also presented with a city-woman with which they can identify (Pattemore 2004).

As the smoke from the destruction of the great whor* rises, the multitudes of heaven joyfully announce that the “marriage of the Lamb” has come: “’Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure” (19:7–8a).

Given the hymnic wedding announcement of the great multitude, it is surprising that the personification begins with a reference to the Lamb’s gynē, “woman” or “wife,” and not nymphē or “bride.” Some ancient manuscripts even change gynē to nymphē. While the exact reason behind John’s choice of terms remains unknown, gynē reflects the ancient assumption that, with few exceptions, all free women with social status were expected to marry. Likewise, Revelation refrains from identifying the Lamb’s partner as “virgin,” even though the ancient wedding involved a virgin becoming a bride becoming a wife. The wedding, including the donning of bridal garments and the procession to the groom’s home, was the moment in which a young female transitioned from one social role to another (Hersch 2010, 295; Huber 2007, 127–28). The wedding is all about the virgin’s transition into her new identity as wife, and in 19:7, the end of that transition is anticipated as the Lamb’s wife is introduced.

Although the virgin is not mentioned in the hymn announcing the wedding, multiple virgins, one hundred forty-four thousand to be exact, are introduced earlier. In 14:4, parthenos is used to characterize those who follow the Lamb, understood as male (i.e., they have not “defiled” themselves with women, suggesting that they are chaste heterosexual males). “Virgin” is a term that refers primarily to an unmarried girl, as well as conveying a sense of sexual inexperience.14 Describing men in this way challenges the ancient valuation of male power being evidenced through sexual conquest and fathering heirs (Huber 2008, 9–10; Stenström 2011; Walters 1997). By encouraging audience members, who presumably want to be faithful Jesus-followers, to see themselves in this role, John prepares them for eventually identifying with the bridal imagery of Rev 19 and 21: the faithful, envisioned in terms of male identity, are virgins who follow the Lamb “wherever he goes,” even to the point of becoming his bride and wife.

Revelation’s description of the Lamb revolves primarily around her appearance. Although this plays on the ancient assumption that women were overly concerned with appearances (Olson 1992, 2009), it also reflects the ideals communicated through the ancient bridal costume and the ways in which costumes were assumed to communicate identity. In the traditional Roman bride’s costume, for instance, chastity was signaled by the “Herculean knot” that fastened her belt; and fertility, through the reddish-yellow color of the veil (flammeum; Olson 2008, 21–24). Revelation’s description of the garment as “bright and pure” (19:8) similarly suggests ideal traits of the bride, including her closeness to the divine, who is associated with light, and her purity, suggesting an exclusive connection to the Lamb, despite the appeal of the beast.

More importantly, the bridal garment represented the virgin’s ability to provide for her future family by spinning and weaving, since the bride ideally wove the tunica recta she wore (Olson 2008, 21). Even if the bride did not actually weave the particular tunic she wore on the wedding day, the donning of the tunica recta, made of a single piece of fabric woven on a upright loom, was a signal of her readiness to take on the responsibility for clothing her family, something that even the female family members of Augustus supposedly managed (Suetonius, Aug. 73). Revelation’s language describing the bride preparing herself for the wedding suggests her active role in the construction of this garment. Similarly, the description of the garment’s fine linen being made from the “righteous deeds of the saints” (Rev 19:8) hints at the communal identity of the bride. If a bride traditionally makes her own wedding garment and this bride’s garment is made up, metaphorically, of the actions of those who are faithful to God and the Lamb, then the imagery suggests that the faithful ones must be collectively the Lamb’s bride. In other words, those who were envisioned as virgins in 14:4 eventually transition into the role of bride and wife.

The description of the bride’s garment as “fine linen” (19:8) evokes the description of the personified Jerusalem in Ezekiel, since she, too, is clothed, by God, in “fine linen” when he becomes betrothed to and weds her (Ezek 16:10, 13, LXX). Although the bride’s identity as new Jerusalem will not be revealed until chapter 21, through this personification John prompts his audience to see themselves as a renewed or rebuilt Jerusalem, since the old city has been “given over to the Gentiles,” a likely reference to the Roman capture and destruction of the holy city (Rev 11:2). While the bride’s faithfulness is emphasized through her costume, the wedding also points to God’s faithfulness to Jerusalem; although the city is in ruins, it will be reconstituted in the future and reunited with the divine.

Though brief, the wedding imagery draws a clear contrast between the bride and the great whor*. The reference to purity reflects a metaphorical connection between physical cleanliness and moral behavior. However, the imagery also implies a kind of class distinction. The great whor*, an imperial figure, debases herself with filth by becoming a prostitute, and even a slave. She is bought by the kings of the earth and eventually dies at their hands. Interestingly, while many prostitutes in the ancient world would actually have been enslaved, throughout Revelation John encourages his audience to envision themselves as both bride of the Lamb and enslaved to God and the Lamb (e.g., 1:1; Koester 2008), wearing the names of these two “lords” upon their foreheads like marked slaves (14:1). John views this metaphorical enslavement in positive terms and in ways that belie the harsh realities of ancient slavery, including the sexual exploitation of the enslaved (Marchal 2011). The difference is that the whor* sells herself to the beast, while the bride is faithful, as slave and wife, to the Lamb. Although those who make up the bride are “slaves,” as bride they prepare to take on a role associated with honor and status. This is somewhat paradoxical since in the first-century Roman Empire, legal marriage was a privilege of those who were free (Evans-Grubbs 1993, 127). Revelation’s use of both slave and bridal imagery as a way of characterizing those faithful to God and the Lamb would sound dissonant to some audience members, especially those Jesus-followers who were enslaved and not allowed to legally marry.

While the hymn proclaimed by the multitudes alludes to the Lamb’s wife, “she” does not appear in John’s vision until the beginning of Rev 21, after the last judgment has concluded (Rev 20). John then witnesses the emergence of a new heaven and earth, followed by “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, like a bride adorned for her husband” (21:2). The moment John and his audience see the new Jerusalem, they also hear “her” likened to a bride. The personification of the new Jerusalem as bride is unveiled. The unveiling (anakalypsis) of the bride, the revelation of her to the groom and wedding witnesses, was a key part of the ancient wedding, according to Greek visual sources (Sutton 1997, 28). That Revelation as an “apocalypse” is in itself an “unveiling” does not seem coincidental, since the personification of new Jerusalem as bride is one of the narrative’s culminating visions (Huber 2013, 1–2),

When the identity of the Lamb’s woman, the bride, is revealed, the focus is clearly on the city that is being compared to a bride. Revelation elaborates the metaphorical blending of city and woman when a loud voice from God’s throne announces that the new Jerusalem is the place where the divine “dwells” with people: “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them” (21:3). While the NRSV uses “home” and “dwell,” the Greek terms are related to the noun skēnē, which recalls the tent used as God’s dwelling place during the Exodus (Exod 29:43–46). This is a place of meeting and encounter, where God will wipe away the tears of the faithful, easing their mourning and pain (Rev 21:4). Although the skēnē suggests a temporary space, especially since the term is also used to describe a theatrical backdrop, a vision of a more solidly constructed new Jerusalem appears when an angel comes to show John “the bride, the wife (gynē) of the Lamb” (21:9). The bride is fully unveiled as John describes a four-square city with high walls and bejeweled foundations. John’s angel guide even measures the city walls with a rod of gold, highlighting the city’s geometric perfection. The gemstones that adorn the city recall the breastplate of the temple priests, but also evoke images of elite Roman women dressed in precious materials. Even though the opulence of the great whor* serves as a sign of her baseness, the jewels that adorn the bride are a sign of her connection to the divine, who was also associated with jewels and precious stones (Royalty 1998). One might imagine that these walls would look quite nice imaged as a mural crown worn by Tyche.

The container metaphor at work in the personification of new Jerusalem continues to be at the fore when John describes the city’s gates and what comes into the city, and what cannot enter the city. There seems to be a kind of irony in the fact that new Jerusalem is built much like a fortress, yet its twelve gates are never closed, since there is no night (21:25). The city contains, and yet it is ostensibly permeable. While the city’s gates remain open and people bring honor and glory into it, there are still those who remain outside the city: “But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination (bdelygma) or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (21:27). The city remains off limits for those who have not been faithful to the Lamb and therefore do not have their names written in the book of life (20:12, 15). Again, a clear distinction from the great whor* is made by noting that those who practice bdelygma (17:5) will not enter the city.

In Revelation’s personification of the great whor*, the boundaries between city and woman overlap to the point of being nonexistent at times. English translations of these chapters highlight this by using feminine pronouns to describe the city-woman, even when the city imagery seemingly dominates. Even when a translation uses the neuter “it” to describe Babylon as a “a dwelling place of demons” (18:2, NIV), the text renders the command to leave Babylon in feminine terms, underscoring that Babylon is also a woman: “Come out of her, my people!” (18:4, my emphasis). The command reads, quite bluntly, as a command to discontinue intercourse. However, when it comes to the bridal new Jerusalem, whose garments are pure, English translations tend to opt for the neuter when describing those who are allowed in and those who are not. With few exceptions (e.g. Pippin 1992b, 70), the possible gender and sexual connotations of the new Jerusalem are erased or avoided in modern translations. Perhaps the elision of sexual connotations emphasizes that the new Jerusalem is not simply a place to visit or a container of sorts to enter. Instead, the audience is to embrace the role of bride and to become part of the new Jerusalem, or, as Robert H. Gundry has aptly put it, this image is one of “People as Place, Not Place for People” (1987).

While depictions of conquered nations dominate the sebasteion reliefs in terms of numbers, the elaborate sculptural program includes some representations of Rome as the goddess Roma. In one, Roma wears a turreted crown, like Tyche, and stands over a personification of an abundant arth, the goddess Gē. In another, a victorious Roma stands in armor with a male captive at her feet. There may even have been a depiction of Roma crowning a personification of the Polis, Aphrodisias (R. R. R, Smith 1987, 97). These images present Roma as the elite citizens of Aphrodisias probably wanted others to see the “great city,” a very different picture of Rome than the one John constructs in Rev 17–18. Revelation deploys the rhetorical resources of the ancient world, but as tools for resisting and constructing alternative identities. The visions of Roma from the sebasteion remind us, too, that the goddess and the conquered nations are all part of the same narrative, part of the vision being presented to the people of Aphrodisias. Taking one set of images without the others presents only a partial vision of how one should understand the story of Rome. So, too, Revelation’s great whor* Babylon and bridal new Jerusalem are both integral to John’s vision of idea Christian identity.

Notes

References