Mother of Gods, Mother of Harlots
The Image of the Mother Goddess Behind the Depiction of the “Whore of Babylon” in Revelation 17
In: Novum TestamentumSearch for other papers by Justin Jeffcoat Schedtler in
Current site
Google Scholar
One of the primary interpretive challenges in the study of Revelation 17 has been to ascertain the identity of an historical personage or entity evoked by the description “Whore of Babylon.” This paper explores a previously neglected figure, Cybele the “Great Mother” Goddess. Through an examination of the artistic, archaeological, and literary evidence relating to the Mother Goddess during the time of her greatest flourishing in the Roman periods, several elements of the description of the Harlot in Rev 17 can be understood to evoke Cybele. Insofar as the Mother Goddess was closely associated with Roman socio-political-religious systems, this scene constitutes an attack on the Roman Imperial apparatus.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
2
G.B. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine (New York: Harper and Row, 1966) 213; J.E. Bruns, “The Contrasted Women of Apocalypse 12 and 17,” cbq 26 (1964) 459-463.
-
4
E.g., Eugene Boring, Revelation (Louisville: John Knox, 1989) 178-80; G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, mi.: Eerdmans, 1999) 847-890; Jacques Ellul, Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation (New York: Seabury, 1977) 187-97; G.A. Krodel, Revelation (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989) 291-301; Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, mi.: Eerdmans, 1998) 308-312; Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids, mi.: Baker, 2002) 608-614; J. Roloff, The Revelation of John: A Critical Commentary (trans. John E. Alsup; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) 175, 197; A.Y. Collins, “Revelation 18: Taunt-Song or Dirge?” in L’Apocalypse johannique et l’apocalyptique dans le Nouveau Testament (ed. J. Lambrecht; Leuven: 1980) 185-204.
-
6
Richard Bauckham, “The Economic Critique of Rome in Revelation 18,” in Images of Empire (ed. Loveday Alexander; Sheffield: jsot, 1991) 47-90.
-
7
D.E. Aune, Revelation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998) 3:920-938; R. Beauvery, “L’Apocalypse au risqué de la numismatique,” rb 90 (1983) 243-260; John M. Court, Myth and History in the Book of Revelation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1979) 148-153; Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids, mi.: Baker, 2002) 608-614; A.Y. Collins, “Feminine Symbolism in the Book of Revelation,” BibInt 1:1 (1993) 20-33.
-
8
Aune, Revelation, 3.920-928. Cf. F. Castagnoli, “Note numismatiche,” Archeologica Classica 5 (1953) 110-111.
-
9
Norman Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom: Symbol and Metaphor in New Testament Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976) 21-32; Ian Paul, “The Book of Revelation: Image, Symbol and Metaphor,” in Studies in the Book of Revelation, 131-147; Boring, Revelation, 51-59.
-
10
See, e.g., Caroline Vander Stichele, “Re-membering the Whore: The Fate of Babylon According to Revelation 17.16,” in A Feminist Companion to the Apocalypse of John (ed. Amy-Jill Levine with Maria Mayo Robbins; New York: T & T Clark, 2009) 106-130; G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, mi.: Eerdmans, 1999) 50-69; Boring, Revelation, 53-59.
-
11
P. Touilleux, L’Apocalypse et les cultes de Domitien et de Cybéle (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1935) 86.
-
14
See Lynn Roller, In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele, (Berkeley: University of California, 1999) 41-115; R. Turcan, “The Great Mother and Her Eunuchs,” in The Cults of the Roman Empire (trans. Antonia Nevill; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996) 28-29; Philippe Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods: From Cybele to the Virgin Mary (trans. Lysa Hochroth; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2004) 1-10.
-
17
Naumann, Die Ikonographie, 110-135; F. Schwenn, “Kybele,” in Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (ed. A. Pauly et al.; Stuttgart: 1924) 23.2250-2298.
-
18
Roller, In Search of God, 119-234; Turcan, “The Great Mother,” 29-35; Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and Attis (Leiden: Brill, 1985) 9-25; Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods, 11-30.
-
22
See, e.g., Euripides, Bacch. 77-78. For a list of such sources, see Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology, 9-12.
-
23
See Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology, 20-25, 64-68; Roller, In Search of God, 221-227.
-
24
E.g., house shrines: Pindar, Pyth. 3.77-79. Cf. Pausanias 9.25.3; Plutarch, Them. 30. One very common type of shrine appears on naturally occurring rock cliffs, consisting of dozens (if not hundreds) of niches cut into the rock.
-
25
Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods, 27-28; Roller, In Search of God, 157-161, 189-227; John G. Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford: 1992) 165, no. 74; Christiane Dunant, “Sus aux voleurs!” mh 35 (1978) 241-244. Cf. the index, s.v. “Mētēr,” in Georg Petzl, Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens (Bonn: 1994).
-
26
Livy 29.10.4-6. Cf. Cicero, Har. resp. 13.27; Livy 29.10.4-6; Appian, Hannibal, 7.9.56. See E.S. Gruen, “The Advent of the Magna Mater,” in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden: Brill, 1990) 5-33; Roller, In Search of God, 266-271.
-
27
See P. Pensabene, “Scavi nell’area del tempio della Vittoria e del santuario della Magna Mater sul Palatino,” Archeologia Laziale 9 (1988) 54-67.
-
28
F. Coarelli, “I monumenti dei culti orientali in Roma,” in La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell’impero Romano (ed. U. Bianchi and M.J. Vermaseren; Leiden: 1982) 37; Roller, In Search of God, 271-274.
-
30
Livy 34.54.3; Cicero, Har. resp. 13.27; Cassius Dio 37.8.1; Ovid, Fast. 4.389-391; Am. 3.2.43-57.
-
33
Roller, In Search of God, 327; H. Graillot, Le culte de Cybèle, mère des dieux, à Rome et dans l’Empire romain (Paris: 1912) 412-533.
-
35
Roller, In Search of God, 327-343. I do not wish to minimize the extent to which local cults of Magna Mater (in Asia Minor or elsewhere) may have manifested unique variations of worship of the Goddess, but I conclude with most scholars that there are sufficient similarities between cults in Rome and in Asia Minor to make general suppositions about the character of her worship across the Empire.
-
36
E.g., Pausanias, Descr. 2.3, 4; 7.17.9-12; Lucian, Syr. d. 15, 29; Strabo, Geogr. 10.3, 7, 12; Nicander, Alex. 217-221; Plutarch, [De flux.] 10.5; 11.1.89; 13.1.90; 13.3.90; 13.4. See Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology, 68-83.
-
38
Jaime Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras (trans. Richard Gordon; Leiden: Brill, 2008) 282-293. Cf. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis, 124-125; Roller, In Search of God, 287-289.
-
41
E.g., Virgil, Aen. 2.693-7. See T.P. Wiseman, “Cybele, Virgil and Augustus,” in Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus (ed. T. Woodman and D. West; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 117-128. Cf. Roller, In Search of God, 299-301.
-
44
P. Lambrechts, “Livie-Cybèle,” La Nouvelle Clio 4 (1952) 251-260.
-
47
Ovid, Fast. 4.183; Juvenal, Sat. 6.513; Valerius Maximus 7.7.6; Diodoros 36.13; Dionysios of Halicarnassus 2.19; Martial 3.81; G.M. Sanders, “Gallos,” in rac 8 (1972) 984-1034; Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis, 96-101; Alvar, Oriental Gods, 246-261; Lynn Roller, “The Ideology of the Eunuch Priest,” Gender and History 9 (1997) 542-559.
-
54
London, British Museum, Inv. No. 1170.
-
56
See Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis, 52-53; E. Remy, “La statue équestre de Cybèle dans les cirques romains,” Musée Belgexi (1907) 245-265.
-
59
E.g., Roller, In Search of God, 146-148; E. Simon, Opfernde Götter (Berlin: 1953) 7.
-
65
Ellul, Apocalypse, 187-192; Mounce, Book of Revelation, 308-312; Ian Boxall, The Revelation of St. John (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2006) 240-244. Alternatively, some scholars consider this to be a metaphor for participating in Roman political and economic spheres. See, e.g., J. Nelson Kraybill, Imperial Cult and Commerce in John’s Apocalypse (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996) 57-101.
-
66
Boring, Revelation, 51-59; Beale, Revelation, 50-69; Craig R. Koester, Revelation and the End of All Things (Grand Rapids, mi.: Eerdmans, 2001) 42-44.
-
67
See, e.g., Greg Carey, “The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script,” in In the Shadow of Empire (ed. Richard Horsely; London: Westminster, 2008) 157-176; Steve Friesen, “Myth and Symbolic Resistance in Revelation 13,” jbl 123/2 (2004) 281-313; Richard Bauckham, Climax of Prophecy: Studies in the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: Clark, 1993) 384-452; A. Yarbro Collins, “The Political Perspective of the Revelation to John,” jbl 96 (1977) 241-256; Steven Friesen, “The Beast from the Land: Rev 13:11-18 and Social Setting,” in Reading the Book of Revelation (ed. David L. Barr; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 49-64.
-
68
Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California, 1991) 79.
-
69
See especially Jas Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Simon Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (trans. Alan Shapiro; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1988).
-
70
Christopher A. Frilingos, Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2004) 46-53.
-
72
See, e.g., Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 145-151.
-
73
See, e.g., Warren Carter, “Accommodating ‘Jezebel’ and Withdrawing John: Negotiating Empire in Revelation Then and Now,” Int 63.1 (2009) 32-47.
-
74
See, e.g., Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984) 121-127; Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998) 181-203.
-
75
David A. deSilva, “The Revelation to John: A Case Study in Apocalyptic Propaganda and the Maintenance of Sectarian Identity,” Sociological Analysis 53 (1992) 375-95; Thompson, Revelation, 174-197.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1606 | 72 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 375 | 4 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 248 | 11 | 1 |
Mother of Gods, Mother of Harlots
The Image of the Mother Goddess Behind the Depiction of the “Whore of Babylon” in Revelation 17
In: Novum TestamentumSearch for other papers by Justin Jeffcoat Schedtler in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
One of the primary interpretive challenges in the study of Revelation 17 has been to ascertain the identity of an historical personage or entity evoked by the description “Whore of Babylon.” This paper explores a previously neglected figure, Cybele the “Great Mother” Goddess. Through an examination of the artistic, archaeological, and literary evidence relating to the Mother Goddess during the time of her greatest flourishing in the Roman periods, several elements of the description of the Harlot in Rev 17 can be understood to evoke Cybele. Insofar as the Mother Goddess was closely associated with Roman socio-political-religious systems, this scene constitutes an attack on the Roman Imperial apparatus.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1606 | 72 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 375 | 4 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 248 | 11 | 1 |