Babylon, bab-ilu, Babel, “Gate of the gods” was the Big Apple of its day. Yet we get “the whore of Babylon” and the “Tower of Babel,” Bob Marley’s Babylon site of oppression and reputation for excess. 
The biblical view of Babylon is no less real in its critique than the grandeur that we know Babylon exhibited, 2500 years ago — different perspectives informed in no small way by theology. As I follow the king of Persia who built an empire surpassing any the world had seen before him and attempt to carve out his story, I’m finding Babylon developing as a character almost as compelling as the man himself.
