HAS WT EVER QUOTED FROM ALEXANDER HISLOPP?

If memory serves, "The Two Babylons" was an important book in the late 1950s, and I thik it may have been sold by the Society in Kingdom Halls. Seems EVERYONE in the KH had a copy back in the day. Online here: http://philologos.org/__eb-ttb/default.htm According to the official Watchtower CDROM, it is quoted from in the Watchtower from 1978, 1972, 1970, 1968, 1966, 1965, 1964, 1962, 1961, 1957, 1956, 1955, 1954, 1953, 1952, 1951, 1950; the AWAKE! of 1986, 1985, 1976, 1975, 1973; the Kingdom Ministry of 1987, which said,

Out of Stock in U.S.A.:
The Two Babylons—English
Is There a God Who Cares?—Japanese

the Kingdom Ministry of 1985, which said,

• The following price changes will become effective September 1, 1985.
Cong. and
Item
Pio. Public
All 32-page booklets $ .05 $ .10
All 64-page booklets .10 .15
Aid
to Bible Understanding 5.00 7.00
Comprehensive
Concordance 5.00 6.00
The
Two Babylons 8.00 10.00...

the KM of 1983, which said:

• New Publications Available:
1905
Crampon Bible (congregation, public and pioneers: $10.00)—French
The
Bible (congregation, public and pioneers: $6.50)—Cambodian
The
Two Babylons (congregation, public
and pioneers: $5.20)—French

"The Two Babylons" is also quoted in Reasoning From The Scriptures and one or two other WTS publications.

Narkissos

They quoted it a lot until the 70s. Apparently the last quotes are in Reasoning from the Scriptures (1989), entries "Apostolic Succession" and "Holidays".

badboy

THIS PERSON SEEMS TO HAVE MADE A LOT OF IT UP.

Nathan Natas

You mean Hislop made it up?

Not possible - surely Jehovah's Holy Spirit would not have allowed the FDS to make such a stupid blunder, would it?

badboy

Example,Easter is from ISHTAR,actually Easter is from word meaning`dawn'

blondie

2 Babylons online

http://philologos.org/__eb-ttb/

Why doesn't the WTS quote from this any more? Has it been discredited in the secular world? If so what points? Is there a website?

What does the WTS use a source now?

Blondie

Alpheta

How interesting that Hislop should show up as a topic here! I don't recall exactly how long it was I'd been studying, but sometime during that 3-year journey I got into a conversation with the husband of one of my bible teachers and he and I, sharing a love of history, were discussing ancient history. I believe the topic of Mary worship came up in the context of the Roman Catholic Church (I was born into that religion). Hislop came up in the conversation - as supporting the view that modern-day Mary worship is just worship of the goddess covered over in new clothes. I'd never heard of Hislop or his book, and it ended up my teacher's husband gave me an extra copy of Hislop's book he had in his library. I read it from cover to cover and was fascinated.

I'm no classical scholar, and I do not read ancient (or modern) Latin and/or Greek, so I cannot pass any judgment on the veracity of Hislop's citations to classical scholars. I thought his basic premise, though, made a lot of sense, since, as a member of the RCC when I was a youngster and teenager, I was familiar with the old (and newer, post Vatican II) rituals and practices of the church. I've done a lot of reading of history and about ancient civilizations, and with my now adult reasoning faculties it made sense to me that Hislop was right about the Roman Catholic Church borrowing many (if not all) of the trappings of ancient "paganism" into their rights and rituals; I believe this was about the time that Emperor Constantine decided to be politically expedient and adopted "christianity" as the official religion of his kingdom. Hislop is not the only author who has explored the hypothesis that the RCC wholesale-adopted "pagan" practices into its rites and rituals.

I don't know that Hislop has been discredited, per se, but with the advent of the internet and, as Blondie gave a link to, the full text of Hislop including the interesting footnotes and appendices now being online, I think that most readers might possibly judge him to be particularly virulent in his hatred of the RCC and, therefore, tend to discount his scholarship on account of this. For myself, I have found him to be an accurate source of information for my own studies in ancient history. Perhaps the WTBTS decided that Hislop's text was too outdated to be relied upon as an authority and they now use more "updated" sources.

Leolaia

Hislop would today be categorized as pseudohistory, no more reliable than Zecharia Sitchen's attempt to identify Babylonian and Sumerian gods as ancient alien astronauts. Both treat their sources in an equally slipshod manner, construct fanciful and totally erroneous etymologies, conflate unrelated deities, religious concepts, and symbols, and make other miscellaneous errors of fact. Hislop's Nimrod-Semiramis-Tammuz theory is based on a collage of historical and legendary figures and myths that originally had nothing to do with each other. He also wrote in the 1850s, before the great archives of ANE texts were discovered which show exactly what real Babylonian and Canaanite religion was like. Hislop rather relies on late classical sources which were already confused about matters, and Hislop's interpretation of them confused things further.

cathyk

A man by the name of Ralph Woodrow wrote an "updated" version called Bablyon Mystery Religion, leaning heavily on the information in Hislop's book. After further study, Woodrow realized that Hislop's scholarship was lacking and ceased publishing that book. An evaluation of his former views is in the book described at http://www.ralphwoodrow.org/books/pages/babylon-connection.html.

HAS WT EVER QUOTED FROM ALEXANDER HISLOPP?

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