| Alexander Hislop |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT ALEXANDER HISLOP | |
| 1807 births | |
| hislop, alexander | |
| 1862 deaths | |
| anti-catholicism | |
| scottish clergy | |
| ministers of the free church of scotland | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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Alexander was for a time parish schoolmaster of Wick, Caithness . In 1831 he married Jane Pearson. He was for a time editor of the ''Scottish Guardian'' newspaper. As a Probationer he joined the Free Church Of Scotland at the Disruption Of 1843 . He was ordained in 1844 at the East Free Church, Arbroath , where he became senior minister in 1864 . He died of a paralytic stroke the next year after being ill for about two years. He wrote several books, his most famous being ''''. THE TWO BABYLONS This book was initially published in 1853 as a Pamphlet , then greatly revised and expanded and released as a book in 1858 . He claimed the Roman Catholic Church was a Babylonian Mystery Cult , and pagan, whereas Protestants worshipped the true Jesus and the true God . He contended that Roman Catholic religious practices are actually pagan practices grafted onto true Christianity during the reign of Constantine . At this point, he alleged, the merger between the Roman state religion and its adoration of the mother and child was transferred to Christianity, merging Christian characters with pagan mythology. The Goddess was renamed '' Mary '', and Jesus was the renamed '' Jupiter-Puer '', or "Jupiter the Boy". Hislop's theory was that the goddess, in Rome called Venus or Fortuna , was the Roman name of the more ancient Babylonian cult of Ishtar , whose origins begun with a blonde-haired and blue-eyed woman named Semiramis . According to Hislop, Semiramis was an exceedingly beautiful white woman, who gave birth to a son named Nimrod , a large, ugly black man, and later married him, thus founding Babylon , and its religion, complete with a pseudo- Virgin Birth . This he called a foreshadowing of the birth of Christ, prompted by Satan. Later, Nimrod was killed, and Semiramis, pregnant with his child, claimed the child was Nimrod reborn. Hislop claimed that the cult and worship of Semiramis spread globally, her name changing with the culture. In Egypt she was Isis , in Greece and Rome she was called Venus, Diana , Athena , and a host of other names, but was always prayed to and central to the faith which was based on Babylonian mystery religion. Then, according to Hislop, Constantine, though claiming to convert to Christianity, remained pagan but renamed the gods and goddesses with Christian names to merge the two faiths for his political advantage, under Satan's guidance. The book has been severely criticized for its lack of evidence, and in many cases its contradiction of the existing evidence: for instance, the Roman state religion before Christianity did not worship a central Mother Goddess, and Jupiter was never called "Jupiter-Puer." Likewise, Semiramis lived centuries after Nimrod, and could neither have been his mother, nor married him. Hislop also makes unacceptable linguistic connections and fanciful word plays, e.g. the letters IHS on Hosts in Catholic Holy Communion are alleged to stand for Egyptian deities Isis , Horus and Seth , but in reality they are an Abbreviation for Ihsous, the Latin spelling of Jesus's name in Greek (Ιησους), although popularly, they stand for the Latin ''Iesus Hominum Salvator'' meaning Jesus , Savior of Mankind (which also fits the teaching of Transubstantiation , where the bread and wine are said to become the body and blood of Christ). Despite this, and the fact that his book, if proven true, would discredit Christendom as a whole, since the concepts that it attacks in Catholicism are shared by some Protestants, this book was, and still remains in some circles, a staple of Anti-Catholic polemic. Hislop is a favorite source of Jack Chick , who published reprints of his book, and Dave Hunt , who on occasion alludes to his work. While strong criticisms of this book have been published, it is still considered by many as a definitive work of Protestant Christian Apologetics . EXTERNAL LINKS
BOOKS BY ALEXANDER HISLOP
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