1 Peter 5:13

She that is in Babylon, elect together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Mark my son.

She that is in Babylon ... Although questioned by some who would see in this a reference to Peter's wife, the best view is almost certainly that the church in Babylon is meant. But where was Babylon? If these words are a mystical reference to Rome, as there seems every reason to believe, then the reference is to the great capital of the Caesars which was the center of the persecutions. See introduction for discussion of this. The figurative language throughout 1Peter; the fact that ancient Babylon was destroyed never to be rebuilt; the total absence in the New Testament, as well as in history, of any reference to Peter's ever having been in Babylon, literally; and the very early traditions that Peter did indeed preach in Rome and that he was martyred there (the same tradition having arisen much too early to be accredited to later claims of the apostate church); the pressing need, at the very time Peter wrote, to have spoken very guardedly concerning Nero and his city; the current usage of that very expression "Babylon" to mean Rome, as in Hebrew poetry; and the similar usage of it in Revelation - all these considerations taken together have great weight in indicating that the meaning here is Rome on the Tiber.

What are some of the spiritual implications of such a designation? (1) Just as ancient Babylon was a center of enmity and oppression of God's people, so Rome had become in the times of the apostles. (2) As Babylon was destroyed, so shall Rome also be destroyed. (3) Peter reminds his readers afresh that they, as the Israel of God, are "exiles in a foreign land,"[37] as were the ancient Jews in Babylon. (4) "The point of the allegory is that Rome was becoming the oppressor of the new Israel, not that it was the center of the world."[38]

And so doth Mark my son ... Peter was Mark's mentor, not his actual father; and he is called "my son" in the sense that Paul thus referred to Timothy. It is almost universally agreed that this is the John Mark of Acts, who is the author of the second Gospel. See the introduction to Mark in my Commentary on Mark for a full discussion.

[37] G. J. Polkinghorne, A New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1969), p. 598.

[38] J. H. A. Hart, op. cit., p. 80.