The scarlet beast in ch. 17, and the accompanying prostitute of Babylon in chs. 17 & 18, are in one respect more important than all other evil characters in Revelation: their advent heralds the Lord's advent, the first result of which is the demise of the beast (17:14). As a result, misidentification of these characters makes it impossible to recognize the Parousia.
The four major schools of Revelation's interpretation agree that the scarlet beast has something to do with the ancient Roman Empire. Preterists believe that John wrote about no evil institution other than that of the Caesars. Idealists make ancient Rome prototypical of all organized evil since, but predictive of none in particular. Futurists await a restored Roman Empire derivative of the current European Union. Church historicism views the Roman Catholic church as the specific successor of ancient Rome.
Since Rome is well-known as a city of seven hills, seeming proof for its association with the scarlet beast is found in 17:9, which defines the beast's heads as seven mountains on which the prostitute sits. Church historicism employs this image to distinguish Rome's secular government (the beast) from the Roman Catholic church headquartered there (the prostitute). It is however not at all evident that John intended the seven mountains to refer to Rome. Many famous cities are said to have been founded on seven hills, including Constantinople (modern Istanbul), Lisbon, and San Francisco; only the preterist view would make it impossible for John to be referring to one of these. More importantly, the Greek word oros, "mountain," is not the obvious choice to describe the "hills" of Rome. Elsewhere in Scripture, oros can designate a distant mountain range (Ps. 10:1 [11:1 MT]) or a more modest slope near a city (the Mount of Olives, Matt. 24:3), but in no case a permanently inhabited one. The Greek word bounos, by contrast, can indicate a mound of human construction (Gen. 31:46) or a hill where a dwelling is located (1 Kgdms. 7:1), and occurs in extrabiblical literature in the names of cities (e.g. Bounoi Kleopatras, "Cleopatra's Hills"). John's choice of oros virtually eliminates the possibility that he is referring to Rome or any other ancient or modern city.
The four schools of interpretation also agree in finding little if any difference between the scarlet beast of ch. 17 and the beasts of ch. 13; the former's lack of diadems, for example, is generally ignored. To be sure, the differences between the scarlet beast and the beast from the sea do not prove that they are unrelated. This study has previously demonstrated that imagery suggestive of Rome in John's Revelation points to a modern derivation of the ancient empire through the Holy Roman Empire and its Prussian successors, as well as through the Byzantine Roman Empire and its Russian successors. The scarlet beast could thus be a partner of or successor to the Soviet Empire, even as the latter is a principal successor to ancient Rome. Similarly, based on church historicism's correlation of Revelation's evils with the Roman Catholic church, some derivative of the medieval papacy could be the true target of Revelation's final scenes.
Since the seven heads of the scarlet beast refer to seven kings as well as seven mountains, it is possible that the kings and the mountains are in fact the same things viewed from different perspectives. The seven kings, in addition to being leaders of the beast's empire, are the foundations (note the use of oros in Ps. 86:1 [87:1 MT]) for the prostitute, the instigators or enablers of her distinctive evils. John's imagery thus serves to describe the relationship of the beast to the prostitute, rather than to identify the physical location of either.
Far more is said by John about the prostitute than the beast in this section, thus suggesting that her identification is prerequisite to that of the beast. Her characteristics are most obviously those of a prominent nation; an exclusively ecclesiastical correlation is unlikely, since this would require a highly speculative allegorical reading of the commercial scenes (esp. 18:11-13, 17, and 22-23). At the same time, the prostitute lacks the distinctive motifs which John regularly associates with evil governments, namely the terms beast, head, horn, and diadem. It thus may be that the prostitute denotes a society or culture rather than a governmental apparatus. The desolation of the prostitute by the scarlet beast (17:16) would then involve a people's destruction at the hands of its own government.
The following specific characteristics of the prostitute are stressed by John:
Assuming that the events of chs. 17 & 18 are imminent, the most obvious candidate to fulfill the imagery of the prostitute is the United States, or more broadly, the Western culture of which the United States is the epitome. The linkage of the prostitute to Babylon, the ancient nation of Israel's exile, corresponds with the status of the United States and Europe as the centers of virtually all Christian media, scholarship, and denominational bureaucracies.
Understanding the specific description of the scarlet beast's seven heads and ten horns in 17:10-12 is crucial to the correct identification of the beast, and thus to the correct identification of the little lamb which defeats the beast's allies (17:14). The translation of all major versions (NKJV, NRSV, NASB, NIV, and ESV) is similar to the following:
The five have fallen, the one is, the other has not yet come, and whenever he comes, he must remain a little. The beast, which was and is not, is also itself an eighth, and is out of the seven, and it is going to destruction. The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but receive authority as kings for one hour with the beast.
It should be noted that oligon, "a little," can be translated as an adjective ("whenever he comes, he must remain little"), and can be associated with the first verb in this clause ("whenever he comes a little, he must remain").
Several basic principles for determining the scarlet beast's identity may be inferred at this point, but until additional events occur, it is not currently possible to posit any definitive correlations.
