Babylon: A tower of strength

11-16-08
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article5140213.ece

Apart from Sodom or Gomorrah, is there a city in human history with a worse reputation than Babylon?I can’t think of one. So deeply embedded in our assumptions is the squalor of Nebuchadnezzar’s capital, we can call a shoddy TV drama with lots of rumpy-pumpy in it Hotel Babylon, and everyone will know what to expect. It’s quite an achievement. The idea that Babylon was a sink of iniquity has penetrated to the deepest corners of the satellite schedules.

Babylon’s appalling reputation can be traced back to a single book.

I mean the Bible. That it happens to be the most extensively read book in the world is what gives the Babylon fantasy its remarkable reach. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians; the taking into captivity of the Jews; those sad psalmist laments about sitting by the rivers of Babylon, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and remembering Zion, have entered our global consciousness on a primary, Boney M level. Which is why the Babylonian hatred has survived more or less intact into our own times.