Babylon and the Brethren

This book is a history of the Whore of Babylon image found in the book of Revelation, with an emphasis upon the use and influence of the text on the Brethren of the nineteenth century. The Brethren developed a multi-layered exegesis of the text, using Babylon as a form of vituperative rhetoric through which to vilify all other Christians in order to define their own religious identity. Those with divergent doctrinal beliefs belonged to an epistemological Babylon; those polluted by the world belonged to secular Babylon. Babylon was contagious! It is from the pens of these writers that the Secret Rapture of the Church doctrine developed as a biological ""fight or flight"" response, and a psychological ""fear and fantasy"" response. Whilst the Brethren of the nineteenth century are the central focus, the book will have a wider appeal to those interested in the history of exegesis, hermeneutics, and Apocalypse studies, for it also offers an overview of hermeneutical approaches to the reading of Revelation, a survey of Babylon's ""afterlife"" throughout the history of the church, and new insights into the ways in which readers, texts, and contexts interact in the broader context of sectarian biblical exegesis.

""James Harding is an excellent teacher and a fine scholar with an extraordinarily wide range of interests. This book brings together the apocalyptic book of Revelation with its Brethren readers in the modern world to provide an instructive tale of the tensions between purity and unity in the Christian church, and of the ability of the text of Scripture to evoke powerful emotions and new perspectives when applied in different historical and geographical contexts.""
--Graham Tomlin, Bishop of Kensington, President, St. Mellitus College

""The complex relationship between biblical texts, individual readers and 'interpretative communities' is often explored in ways disconnected from the realities of historical and social context. In this book, by contrast, Harding shows by precise and well-documented example how one particular image from the book of Revelation was used by one particular historical community to vilify the other and in the process define the self. The archival work is a particularly strong feature of this study as it roots theory in documented evidence.""
--Kenneth G.C. Newport, Professor, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and Executive Dean of Education, Liverpool Hope University


James Harding is lecturer in missiology at St Mellitus College, London, and an Anglican priest in the Church of England.