The Two Babylons

Cover of the 7th edition of The Two Babylons (1871), which claims that Catholic doctrines and ceremonies are a veiled continuation of Babylonian paganism.

The Two Babylons, subtitled The Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife is a religious pamphlet published in 1853 by the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland theologian Alexander Hislop (1807–65).

Its central theme is its allegation that the Catholic Church is a veiled continuation of the pagan religion of ancient Babylon, the product of a millennia-old secret conspiracy founded by the Biblical king Nimrod and the Assyrian queen Semiramis, who Hislop claimed was Nimrod's wife.[1] It claims that modern Catholic holidays, including Christmas and Easter are actually pagan festivals established by Semiramis and that the customs associated with them are pagan rituals. Modern scholars have unanimously rejected the book's arguments as erroneous and based on a flawed understanding of Babylonian religion,[1][2] but variations of them are accepted among some groups of evangelical Protestants.[1][2]

Publication history

It was expanded in 1858, going through many editions. A 3rd edition was published in 1862,[3] a 7th in 1871,[4] a popular edition in 1903.[5] It has been claimed on many websites that The Two Babylons was only finally published as a book in 1919, even though the third edition had already reached 500 pages in length.

The book has been published by various Protestant publishing houses over the years, one being Chick Publications, which is still publishing the book as of 2018.[6]

Description

Hislop builds on the Panbabylonian school of Hyperdiffusionism, which was common in the 19th century, to argue that Classical and Ancient Near Eastern civilization took its inspiration from Babylon. From this, he derives the argument that the mystery religions of Late Antiquity were actually offshoots of one ancient religion founded at the Tower of Babel. Panbabylonism has since been relegated to pseudohistory by some 20th-century scholars.[7]

Much of Hislop's work centers on his association of the legendary Ninus and his semi-historical wife Semiramis with the Biblical Nimrod as her husband and her son, with their incestuous male offering being Tammuz. Hellenistic histories of the Ancient Near East tended to conflate their faint recollections of the deeds of ancient kings into legendary figures who exerted far more power than any ancient king ever did. In Assyria, they invented an eponymous founder of Nineveh named Ninus, who supposedly ruled 52 years over an empire comparable to the Persian Empire at its greatest extent. Ninus's wife Semiramis was in turn a corruption of the historical figure Shammuramat, regent of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 811 BC.[8] Hislop takes Ninus as a historical figure, and associates him with the Biblical figure Nimrod, though he was not the first to do so. The Clementine literature made the association in the 4th Century AD. An influential belief throughout the Middle Ages was that Ninus was the inventor of Idolatry,[9] a concept that Hislop clearly drew upon. However, Hislop wrote before the historical records of the ancient near east had been thoroughly decoded and studied, that cast doubt in the decades after he wrote whether there was any such figure as Ninus, and the Greek authors whom he quoted lacked credibility on the subject.[10]

Relief of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, whose name Hislop claimed to be the root behind the English word Easter

The Two Babylons heavily relies on Austen Henry Layard's publications of his excavations at Nineveh, which had only been just discovered in 1851. This gave his work an appearance of being well-researched at the time of its publication. For example, Hislop linked the name of Easter with Astarte, the Phoenician fertility goddess by citing Layard's recent discovery of Astarte's Assyrian name, Ishtar, which Hislop took to be "identical" to Easter.

What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar.

— Hislop, The Two Babylons, Chapter 3, Section 2, Easter

The claim that Easter is derived from Ishtar has been questioned.[11] Modern etymologists derive the word Easter from the Proto-Indo-European root *aus-, meaning "dawn,"[12] potentially by way of *h₂ewsṓs.[13] Ishtar is a Semitic name of uncertain etymology, possibly taken from the same root as Assyria, or from a semitic word meaning "to irrigate."[14]

Hislop ultimately traced papist doctrines back to the worship of Nimrod, asserting that the Roman Catholic Church represented Whore of Babylon of the Book of Revelation and that "the Pope himself is truly and properly the lineal representative of Belshazzar". He claimed that the Christogram IHS, the first three Greek letters in the name of Jesus, represented Latin characters standing for Isis, Horus and Seth.

Analysis

In the note by the editor of the 7th edition, which was published in 1871, it was claimed, "that no one, so far as we are aware, has ventured to challenge the accuracy of the historical proofs adduced in support of the startling announcement on the title page." Since then however there have been many who have challenged the accuracy of Hislop's claims. For example, Lester L. Grabbe has highlighted the fact that Hislop's entire argument, particularly his association of Ninus with Nimrod, is based on a misunderstanding of historical Babylon and its religion.[1] Grabbe also criticizes Hislop for portraying the mythological queen Semiramis as Nimrod's consort,[1] despite the fact that she is never even mentioned in a single text associated with him,[1] and for portraying her as the "mother of harlots",[1] even though this is not how she is depicted in any of the texts where she is mentioned.[1]

In 2011, a critical edition was published.[15] Although Hislop's work is extensively footnoted, some commentators (in particular Ralph Woodrow) have stated that the document contains numerous misconceptions, fabrications, logical fallacies, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and grave factual errors.[16]

Influence

Some fundamentalist Protestants still regard Hislop's book as proof that the Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, the continuation of ancient Babylonian religion.[1][2] Jehovah's Witnesses periodical The Watchtower frequently published excerpts from it until the 1980s.[17] The book's thesis has also featured prominently in the conspiracy theories of racist groups such as The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord[18] and other fringe groups.[19] Author and conspiracy theorist David Icke incorporates Hislop's claims about Semiramis into his book The Biggest Secret, claiming that Semiramis played a key role in the establishment of a global conspiracy run by Reptilian aliens, whom he asserts is secretly controlling humanity.[20]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Grabbe, Lester L. (1997). Mein, Andrew; Camp, Claudia V., eds. Can a 'History of Israel' Be Written?. London, England: Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 27–28. ISBN 978-0567043207.
  2. 1 2 3 Mcllhenny, Albert M. (2011). This Is the Sun?: Zeitgeist and Religion (Volume I: Comparative Religion). p. 60. ISBN 978-1-105-33967-7. Retrieved 1 June 2017.
  3. ↑ "The Two Babylons Third Edition".
  4. ↑ "The Two Babylons Seventh Edition".
  5. ↑ "The Two Babylons Popular Edition".
  6. ↑ The Two Babylons, Chick Publications, retrieved 2018-08-09
  7. ↑ Brown, Peter Lancaster. Megaliths, Myths and Men: An Introduction to Astro-Archaeology p. 268. Dover Publications, New York, 1976.
  8. ↑ Georges Roux - Ancient Iraq
  9. ↑ Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, Cambridge,1991: 50-51.
  10. ↑ Johnson, Sarah Raup (2004). Historical Fictions and Hellenistic Jewish Identity: Third Maccabbees in its Cultural Context. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp. 112–113. ISBN 0-520-23307-7. Retrieved 2 June 2017.
  11. ↑ D'Costa, Krystal. "Beyond Ishtar: The Tradition of Eggs at Easter: Don't believe every meme you encounter". Scientific American. Nature America, Inc. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
  12. ↑ Watkins, Calvert (2006 [2000]). The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. p. 2021. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-618-08250-6
  13. ↑ Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1-884964-98-2. p. 148-149.
  14. ↑ Barton, George A. On the Etymology of Ishtar. Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol. 31, No. 4 (1911), pp. 355-358
  15. ↑ which also contains the English book by Ralph Woodrow Von Babylon nach Rom? – The Two Babylons?, 2011; ISBN 978-3-9811529-5-1, as well as the papers by Ralph Woodrow and Dr. Eddy Lanz
  16. ↑ Woodrow, Ralph BOOK REVIEW - The Two Babylons: A Case Study in Poor Methodology Christian Research Institute, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2000
  17. ↑ "Lent and Ash Wednesday are NOT pagan relics".
  18. ↑ Michael Barkun Religion and the Racist Right, pp. 192-193, UNC Press 1997
  19. ↑ Michael Barkun A Culture of Conspiracy, p. 210, Univ. of California Press 1997
  20. ↑ David Icke, The Biggest Secret, 52-54

Bibliography

  • Hislop, Alexander (1903). The two Babylons, or, The papal worship proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife : with sixty-one woodcut illustrations from Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, Pompeii, &c. London: S.W. Partridge.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.