Until today, I’ve only ever seen translations of Revelation that count “Mystery” as part of the name of the Whore of Babylon. For example, the KJV has And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. Today I was browsing through a Greek-English bilingual version that capitalized the Greek name except for the word μυστήριον (mysterion). I don’t expect the capitalization was a feature of the earliest manuscripts. Doing a little digging, I found a few English translations that don’t count it as part of the name. For example, the New American Standard Bible has and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” The two foreign bibles I happen to have in dead-tree editions (Segond’s French and The American Bible Society’s Gullah New Testament) seem to agree with the NAS. My gut says this reading makes more sense, but I don’t know nearly enough theology or Biblical Greek to judge.
I don’t think ancient Greek uses definite or indefinite articles (I could be thoroughly and embarassingly wrong on this). If that’s the case, then this presents a translation difficulty.
Imagine the sentence without any punctuation and capitalization, and look at the difference the article makes:
“…on her head was written mystery babylon the great…”
“…on her head was written a mystery babylon the great…”
So in the absence of an article, it’s difficult to know if the word “mystery” is part of the name, or if it’s a way of saying that the name is a mystery.
There’s no indefinite article, but there is a definite article in ὁ / ἡ / τὸ (ho/he/to). Or maybe it’s more like a demonstrative pronoun. It shows up several times in the verse.
A word-for-word translation preserving the original lack of capitalization and punctuation would read something like and on the forehead of-her name written mystery babylon the great the mother of-the prostitutes and of-the abominations of-the earth. The hyphenated forms “of-the” and “of-her” are my attempts to show that each form is a translation of a single word in Greek. This literal translation isn’t my own; I adapted it from Alfred Marshall’s interlinear translation in the Greek-English bilingual version I mentioned above.
I don’t know enough Greek to say if there are clues in noun cases, gender agreement, word order, etc., that I might be missing.
First of all, Greek has a definite article, but no indefinite article. Because Greek lacks the indefinite article, the Greek equivalent of both “mystery” and “a mystery” would generally be the same.
Here is the Greek text of Rev. 17:5, as edited by Neste-Aland 27 – καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ μέτωπον αὐτῆς ὄνομα γεγραμμένον, μυστήριον, Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη, ἡ μήτηρ τῶν πορνῶν καὶ τῶν βδελυγμάτων τῆς γῆς.
I agree with the translation "On her forehead was written a name, a mystery: ‘Babylon the Great, the Mother of prostitutes and of the detestable things of the earth.’ "
This takes mystery (μυστήριον) in apposition to **(ὄνομα), which is natural because the gender of both nouns is neuter, while the gender of Babylon the Great (Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη) is feminine. This individual is depicted as a woman, and a woman would have a feminine name. Mυστήριον is not feminine, and would not be expected to be part of a woman’s name.
The other piece of evidence is discovered when we trace how μυστήριον is used by the author of Revelation. It is never elsewhere used as a name, but it always used of the secret, mysterious things portrayed there, “where in each case μυστήριον may mean allegorical significance” (BDAG). Mυστήριον is used in the immediate context in 17:7, “Let me tell you the riddle of the woman and the Beast she rides, etc.” Here, μυστήριον is clearly not her name.
The first part of my fourth paragraph above should read, “This takes mystery (μυστήριον) in apposition to name (ὄνομα).” Somehow the word “name” got deleted.
It is correct that at the time it was written, there was no distinction between capital and lower-case letters – they were all capitals. The lower-case letters were not developed until well into the Christian era.
Thank you, bibliophage, for your kind compliment. I will try to post more often.
