Heisterbach Bible, Cologne, around 1240, illumination, 36 x 24.5 cm (paper), fol. 336 v.: The destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, Staatsbibliothek Berlin © Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Ruth Schacht
Babylon System
The "Babylon System" stretches back to the time of the Jewish captivity, and thus to the origin of all Babylon myths.
In their Babylonian exile under Nebuchadnezzar II (605-652 B.C.) the Jews by no means suffered a painful martyrdom under foreign dominion. On the contrary, they were treated benevolently, thus allowing them to continue their Jewish traditions and to develop their religious identity. Yet in the Christian tradition the captivity of Israel became a central metaphor for persecution, servitude and repression. The young Jew Judith, for example, who cut off the head of the Babylonian general Holofernes during the siege of her home town Bethulia − an apocryphal account (Judith, 10-13) which, in the Biblical story, was transferred to the period of Nebuchadnezzar − became a figure with whom to identify amid persecution and resistance. A similar mythification was applied to the prophet Daniel, carried off to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar and thrown into the lions' den (Daniel 6, 1-27), and to Jeremiah, the prophet who foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and remained sorrowing amid the ruins of his city (Jeremiah 21, 3-14). These horror scenarios were complemented by the numerous illustrations and musical settings to Psalm 137 on the sorrow of the Jews, robbed of their freedom "by the waters of Babylon", far from their home. In the vision of the Jamaican Rastafarians this myth, starting from the enslavement and transportation of their African forefathers to the colonial Caribbean, has mutated to include the whole of western civilisation and established the phrase "Babylonian system."
