The Babylon of the Apocalypse Is Rome

The [Church] Fathers held that the Babylon of the Apocalypse means Rome. On this point they were all agreed and their unanimity is an important seal on the correctness of this interpretation.

Tertullian, for example, in his answer to the Jews, says: “Babylon, in our own John, is a figure of the city Rome, as being equally great and proud of her sway, and triumphant over the saints” (chapter 9). Victorinus, who wrote the earliest commentary on the Apocalypse extant, says, on Revelation 17: “The seven heads are the seven hills on which the woman sitteth - that is, the city of Rome.”

Hippolytus says: “Tell me, blessed John, apostle and disciple of the Lord, what didst thou see and hear concerning Babylon? Arise and speak, for it sent thee also into banishment." You notice here the view that Rome which banished the Apostle John is the Babylon of the Apocalypse.

Augustine says, “Rome, the second Babylon, and the daughter of the first, to which it pleased God to subject the whole world, and bring it all under one sovereignty, was now founded.” In chapter 28, he calls Rome “the western Babylon.” In chapter 41 he says: “It has not been in vain that this city has received the mysterious name of Babylon; for Babylon is interpreted confusion, as we have said elsewhere.”

H. Grattan Guinness (“Interpretation and use of the prophecies in pre-Reformation times”)

[TBC: Although the opinions of "Church Fathers" such as Augustine and Tertullian must bow to the authority of Scripture (with which their teachings sometimes conflicted), it is instructive to consider how early Christians clearly recognized that Mystery Babylon is Rome.]