She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her greetings, and so does my son Mark. – 1 Peter 5:13

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 15, 2015): 1 Peter 4 & 5

Alan Turing was instrumental in, in fact he led, the activities at Bletchley Park during the early years of the Second World War. Bletchley Park was the place where teams of mathematicians work hard in an effort to decrypt the German codes and reveal the war secrets that the Germans were trying to keep from the rest of the world. Without the successful operations of those who broke the codes during the war, World War 2 would have probably lasted much longer, and have involved even more death and pain than it already contained.

The breaking of the codes are a real life activity, but they are also a staple of many spy novels. It is the moment when the hero has to get an important message to someone, but he knows that the enemy is likely to be listening. So he has to speaks in code, or writes in symbols or letters that can’t be easily interpreted, or transfers the message electronically in such a way that it can’t be understood by the eavesdropper, and yet still be perfectly understood by the intended recipient. But as long as we have been trying to speak in code, people have been trying to break the code so that the secrets could be known. (Probably the most common use of code is when parents decides that they will spell certain words so that their young children don’t understand what mom and dad are talking about – but, eventually, our children learn to spell and they break our code.)

There is little doubt here that Peter is speaking in code. Babylon had been abandoned for over a century before Peter was even born. And there is no reason to believe that Peter had visited Babylon, and the words make no sense when it is applied to the Babylon that Peter knew. Babylon was empty, so how could “she” be there? But if Peter was not talking about Babylon, the city or the empire, then what exactly did his words mean?

And that has been the question that a number of experts have puzzled over. And there are a few different solutions to the problem, but probably the one that makes the most sense is that Peter was talking about the Church that was in Rome. The logic for this solution to the code is that Rome was a place where Christians oppressed in much the same way that the Jews had been oppressed in Babylon. In fact, it is accepted that both Peter and Paul, among many others, found their end in Rome – and most of the people that were carried into captivity by Babylon never returned home. Peter may have also been trying to remind the Christian Church in diaspora (the scattered church of 1 Peter 1:1) that they were exiled just as the Jews were exiled in Babylon. And Peter may have also been speaking a prophecy – that just as Babylonian Empire was destroyed, so would the Roman Empire find an end to its power. And just as the Israel outlived Babylon, so the Christians would out live Rome.

But what Peter wasn’t willing to do was to throw that prophecy in Rome’s face. The church in Rome was struggling already, he didn’t need to increase the pressure. And so he chose to speak of Babylon, and allow his readers to make the connection.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hebrews 1