a seminar held today on Babylon

Over 170 people attended this Chinese Biblical Seminar at TCA College. A colleague spoke on the ANE mythology that could have thrown light on the Babylon figure in Isaiah 14 while I talked about Graeco-Roman queens and goddesses in the Harlot Babylon figure of Rev 17-18. Reading the Bible is contextual--foremost to the context at the point of composition, to get what a passage might have meant. It is also contextual in terms of applying a passage to the contemporary context to the reader. A layman reading would normally forego the former and jump directly to the latter.