The TWO BABYLONS to the NGO fiasco: looking at how they got there

by Terry 19 Replies latest jw experiences

  • Terry
    Terry

    Here I have reverse engineered what the Proclaimer's book does. They disconnect all the connections and place the pieces of their history out of order and context. This defuses causes and effects. It makes the relevent irrelevent.

    Putting the pieces back in order shines a bright light on the origins of the causes and the responsibility of the effects.

    Watchtower leaders are geniuses at removing themselves from CAUSE while manipulating the EFFECT they wanted.

    We can begin by looking at a fellow named Alexander Hislop. Hislop authored THE TWO BABYLONS.

    Alexander Hislop was rabidly anti-Catholic . He made Martin Luther pale by comparison. Taking his cue from Luther's own references to the Catholic Church as "Babylon the Great", Hislop set about writing a scathing pamphlet comparing ancient Babylon, pagan worship and devilish influences with the practices and core beliefs of the Church.

    Hislop used four combined processes to accomplish his screed and make it compelling "proof" which might convince those predisposed toward his theories.

    1.Hislop cherry picked minutia. He strained seeming connections where there weren't any and drew conclusions through false analogies. He drew on similarities and ignored differences.

    2.Hislop partially quoted historical sources, misquoted and often misrepresented his connections by simply distorting the facts. He drew parallels of practices into a false conclusion of cause and effect influences.

    3.Hislop invented out of whole cloth significances which weren't called for and used them to build even greater strained arguments. He used partial information and not entire contexts.

    4.Hislop painted with a broad brush while amassing a mountain of irrelevancies. He employed a scholarly tone of academic neutrality while employing ad hominems to poison the reader's conclusions. He failed to emphasize when his speculations were passed off as fact based.

    While seeking to condemn the paganism of Roman Catholicism, Hislop produced his own myths.

    Because Hislop wrote in the mid-1800s, the books he refers to or quotes are now quite old...books such as Layards Nineveh and Its Remains, Kittos Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, Wilkinsons Ancient Egyptians, as well as old editions of Pausanias, Pliny, Tacitus, Herodotus, and many more.

    If you CHECK his footnote references, in numerous cases you shall discover they do not support his claims.

    Hislop taught that Tammuz (whom he says was Nimrod) was born on December 25, and this is the origin of the date on which Christmas is observed. Yet his supposed proof for this is taken out of context. Having taught that Isis and her infant son Horus were the Egyptian version of Semiramis and her son Tammuz, he cites a reference that the son of Isis was born about the time of the winter solstice. When we actually look up the reference he gives for this (Wilkinsons Ancient Egyptians, vol. 4, 405), the son of Isis who was born "about the time of the winter solstice" was not Horus, her older son, but Harpocrates. The reference also explains this was a premature birth, causing him to be lame, and that the Egyptians celebrated the feast of his mothers delivery in spring. Taken in context, this has nothing to do with a December celebration or with Christmas as it is known today.

    In another appeal to Wilkinson, Hislop says that a Lent of 40 days was observed in Egypt. But when we look up the reference, Wilkinson says Egyptian fasts "lasted from seven to forty-two days, and sometimes even a longer period: during which time they abstained entirely from animal food, from herbs and vegetables, and above all from the indulgence of the passions" (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. 1, 278). With as much credibility, we could say they fasted 7 days, 10 days, 12 days, or 42 days. Hislops claim appears to have validity only because he used partial information.

    Who would Hislop influence the most with his cherry-picking opinions-as-scholarship approach?

    None other than C.T.Russel and Joseph Franklin Rutherford, that's who.

    Both Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford employed these self-same methods regularly and without much conscience not only promoting opinion as "god's words, not ours" but blending wild speculations with historical citations to "prove" the unprovable.

    Pastor Russell and his wife promoted Pyramidology and a Divine Plan of the Ages chart to weld a theology of End Times "logic" which was nothing more or less than sillyness and flim-flam passed off as Truth.

    Rutherford promoted quack beliefs on health with the same disregard for Truth as he shovelled manure into a heap predicting the return of "ancient worthies" while planning a mansion in California for them (i.e. himself) to live in.

    Fred Franz regularly employed Hislop's reasoning style in defending against Christendom's views on Romans 13:1 for the purpose of making Jehovah's Witnesses the only true Christians in not obeying Governments as Superior Authorities appointed by God. Later, the Society reversed this "Truth" by aligning themselves with Christendom after all!

    Scriptures, historians, experts, authorities and bible scholars could be made to say only what the Watchtower wanted them to say and nothing more!

    Defending the New World Translation's idiosyncratic interpretation of the anarthrous Greek in John 1:1, the Society (mis) quoted authorites and scholars as saying the very opposite of these scholar's correct views!

    Hislop set the tone and the Watchtower has ever followed as pseudo-historians, chronologists of elastic dates and circular reasoners who can make wrong right and day night to suit their own purposes.

    The Watchtower Society taught nothing about the fall of Babylon the Great in1919. Yet, they claimed to do so!

    They pinned their own identity as "watchmen" and "anointed" on this non-announcement!

    When was this obvious misrepresentation revealed as a lie?

    In 1963, when the book Babylon the Great Has Fallen! God's Kingdom Rules! was published.

    1963, not 1919,

    For the first time the Society (Fred Franz) began teaching that "Babylon the Great" fell in a spiritual sense in 1919. Therefore if one can say anything about this so-called "watchman class" and 1919 and "Babylon the Great", it would have to be that in 1963 the "watchman" announced that Babylon the Great fell in 1919. But since the above-quoted Watchtower gives the nearly certain impression that the "watchman" announced this in 1919, we can see that the WTS writer has told a baldfaced lie.

    Clearly the same methodology as Alexander Hislop might use proving something non-historical actually happened.

    January 1, 2000 Watchtower:

    Paragraph 10 states:

    In the latter part of the 19th century, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., a group of sincere Bible students was organized and became the nucleus of God's modern-day witness class. These Christians drew attention to the Scriptural evidence that the conclusion of the present world system was at hand. True to Bible prophecy, this world's "conclusion" began in 1914 and was marked by the outbreak of the first world war.

    Paragraphs 11-13 state:

    In June 1918, Satan frantically tried to wipe out those Bible students ... He also sought to destroy their legal corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Responsible officers of the Society were imprisoned ... But in 1919, these officers were released, enabling them to continue their ministry. Later, they were fully exonerated. What did this watchman see? Again, Jehovah's watchman, his witness class, announced: "She has fallen! Babylon has fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he [Jehovah] has broken to the earth!" ... This time, following World War I, it is Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, that is toppled from its perch of authority... In 1919, Babylon the Great could not prevent the Bible Students, as Jehovah's Witnesses were then known, from escaping from their inactive state and embarking on a worldwide witnessing campaign that still continues... That signaled a fall for Babylon the Great, just as the release of Israel in the sixth century B.C.E. signaled a fall for ancient Babylon.

    "The very League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, represent an international conspiracy against God's kingdom, which was born in the heavens in 1914 at the end of the Gentile Times. This international organization for peace and security by human means is a deceptive counterfeit for God's kingdom by his Lamb, which Jehovah's witnesses have been preaching to all the nations since the end World War I. Thus the whole scarlet-colored "wild beast" is against the heavenly Messianic kingdom."(Babylon the Great Has Fallen-God's Kingdom Rules p. 596)

    The Watchtower Society revealed itself as hypocritical by JOINING the United Nations as an NGO.

    "Jehovah's Christian witnesses immediately recognized that the scarlet-colored wild beast had now ascended out of the abyss. But they did not worship it any more than they had joined Babylon the Great and the worldly nations in idolizing the League of nations, the "beast" in its original form."(ibid p.585)

    "Now that it has ascended out of the abyss and been out since 1945, the Bible shows that what next it will do is to go off into destruction"(ibid p. 594)

    "Lovers of eternal life in God's new order of things will not join in this modern idolatry "(ibid p. 590)

    Their affilation as an NGO (Non Government Agency) meant they were committed to the UN and it's charter. One of the criteria for membership is: "Have the commitment and means to conduct effective information programmes about UN activities by publishing newsletters, bulletins, and pamphlets; organizing conferences, seminars and round tables; and enlisting the cooperation of the media.

    Hislop was compulsively obsessive in his finding "clues" everywhere which supported his thesis that the Catholic Church was infested with pagan encroachments. Yet, Jehovah's Witnesses made his excess seem like forebearance by comparison.

    Jehovah's Witnesses find the stench of Satan, paganism, demonism and evil influence in almost every human activity under the general heading of WORLDLINESS.

    By painting the world black and discrediting those who oppose them they've painted themselves into a tight little corner kingdom in a matchstick castle above the clouds.

    Crack open a Governing Body member and you'll find a tapeworm of conspiracy theory chomping away at sanity.

    Proof isn't proof at the Watchtower. It is a reconstruction like Frankenstein's monster kept alive by flashes of "new light" made up as needed to revitalize their quivering monstrosity.

    At first glimpse it looks like science. But, when the smoke clears it is madness and obsession riven with fierce contrarian nincompoopery.

    The Watchtower Society taught nothing about the fall of Babylon the Great in1919. Yet, they claimed to do so!

    They pinned their own identity as "watchmen" and "anointed" on this non-announcement!

    When was this obvious misrepresentation revealed as a lie?

    In 1963, when the book Babylon the Great Has Fallen! God's Kingdom Rules! was published.

    1963, not 1919,

    For the first time the Society (Fred Franz) began teaching that "Babylon the Great" fell in a spiritual sense in 1919. Therefore if one can say anything about this so-called "watchman class" and 1919 and "Babylon the Great", it would have to be that in 1963 the "watchman" announced that Babylon the Great fell in 1919. But since the above-quoted Watchtower gives the nearly certain impression that the "watchman" announced this in 1919, we can see that the WTS writer has told a baldfaced lie.

    Clearly the same methodology as Alexander Hislop might use proving something non-historical actually happened.

    January 1, 2000 Watchtower:

    Paragraph 10 states:

    In the latter part of the 19th century, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., a group of sincere Bible students was organized and became the nucleus of God's modern-day witness class. These Christians drew attention to the Scriptural evidence that the conclusion of the present world system was at hand. True to Bible prophecy, this world's "conclusion" began in 1914 and was marked by the outbreak of the first world war.

    Paragraphs 11-13 state:

    In June 1918, Satan frantically tried to wipe out those Bible students ... He also sought to destroy their legal corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Responsible officers of the Society were imprisoned ... But in 1919, these officers were released, enabling them to continue their ministry. Later, they were fully exonerated. What did this watchman see? Again, Jehovah's watchman, his witness class, announced: "She has fallen! Babylon has fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he [Jehovah] has broken to the earth!" ... This time, following World War I, it is Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, that is toppled from its perch of authority... In 1919, Babylon the Great could not prevent the Bible Students, as Jehovah's Witnesses were then known, from escaping from their inactive state and embarking on a worldwide witnessing campaign that still continues... That signaled a fall for Babylon the Great, just as the release of Israel in the sixth century B.C.E. signaled a fall for ancient Babylon.

    "The very League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, represent an international conspiracy against God's kingdom, which was born in the heavens in 1914 at the end of the Gentile Times. This international organization for peace and security by human means is a deceptive counterfeit for God's kingdom by his Lamb, which Jehovah's witnesses have been preaching to all the nations since the end World War I. Thus the whole scarlet-colored "wild beast" is against the heavenly Messianic kingdom."(Babylon the Great Has Fallen-God's Kingdom Rules p. 596)

    The Watchtower Society revealed itself as hypocritical by JOINING the United Nations as an NGO.

    "Jehovah's Christian witnesses immediately recognized that the scarlet-colored wild beast had now ascended out of the abyss. But they did not worship it any more than they had joined Babylon the Great and the worldly nations in idolizing the League of nations, the "beast" in its original form."(ibid p.585)

    "Now that it has ascended out of the abyss and been out since 1945, the Bible shows that what next it will do is to go off into destruction"(ibid p. 594)

    "Lovers of eternal life in God's new order of things will not join in this modern idolatry "(ibid p. 590)

    Their affilation as an NGO (Non Government Agency) meant they were committed to the UN and it's charter. One of the criteria for membership is: "Have the commitment and means to conduct effective information programmes about UN activities by publishing newsletters, bulletins, and pamphlets; organizing conferences, seminars and round tables; and enlisting the cooperation of the media.

    Hislop was compulsively obsessive in his finding "clues" everywhere which supported his thesis that the Catholic Church was infested with pagan encroachments. Yet, Jehovah's Witnesses made his excess seem like forebearance by comparison.

    Jehovah's Witnesses find the stench of Satan, paganism, demonism and evil influence in almost every human activity under the general heading of WORLDLINESS.

    By painting the world black and discrediting those who oppose them they've painted themselves into a tight little corner kingdom in a matchstick castle above the clouds.

    Crack open a Governing Body member and you'll find a tapeworm of conspiracy theory chomping away at sanity.

    Proof isn't proof at the Watchtower. It is a reconstruction like Frankenstein's monster kept alive by flashes of "new light" made up as needed to revitalize their quivering monstrosity.

    At first glimpse it looks like science. But, when the smoke clears it is madness and obsession riven with fierce contrarian nincompoopery.

  • Bungi Bill
    Bungi Bill

    Terry,

    Thanks for that.

    When I first began reading the WTS propaganda, I do recall much reference being made to Hislop's The two Babylons. The way in which it was referred to , you got the impression that this work was the final authority on just about anything and everything. All opinions offered were actually indisputable facts - to be contested by idiots only!

    In fact, as you have demonstrated here, Alexander Hislop belongs to the lunatic fringe every bit as much as C.T. Russell, J.F. Rutherford and F.W. Franz. What a remarkable achievement!

    Bill.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Hislop is utter rubbish. Good summary of his methods. I would also add to the list Hislop's specious etymologies which he then used as "evidence".

    His characterization of Babylonian religion is particularly laughable in light of the direct evidence of Akkadian and Sumerian mythology we now have (see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumuzid_the_Shepherd on the Sumerian antecedent of Tammuz), as well as history (e.g. the legendary Semiramis of classical writers was a confused recollection of an Assyrian queen mixed together with reminiscences of Nebuchadnezzar). But even at the time they were ridiculous on account of Hislop's creative methods. The Society has many times repeated Hislop's claims (like the cross being the emblem of Tammuz) uncritically.

  • Aussie Oz
    Aussie Oz

    my recolection is that they loved hisslop second only to freddy.

    i enjoyed that breakdown Terry

    and loved the expression ''nincompoopery'!

    oz

  • AnnOMaly
    AnnOMaly

    Yes, Terry, a very good overview of Hislop's approach. He certainly is a lesson in how an obsession or agenda can lead to gross distortions of truth, and in Hislop's case his misinformation has had long-lasting effects on those with similar agendas. I've c&p-ed this 19th century review before, but in case some haven't seen it:

    In the first place, his whole superstructure is raised upon nothing. Our earliest authority for the history of Semiramis wrote about the commencement of the Christian era, and the historian from whom he drew his information lived from fifteen hundred to two thousand years after the date which Mr. Hislop assigns to the great Assyrian Queen. The most lying legend which the Vatican has ever endorsed stands on better authority than the history which is now made the ground of a charge against it.

    Secondly, the whole argument proceeds upon the assumption that all heathenism has a common origin. Accidental resemblances in mythological details are taken as evidence of this, and nothing is allowed for the natural working of the human mind.

    Thirdly, Mr. Hislop's method of reasoning would make anything of anything. By the aid of obscure passages in third-rate historians, groundless assumptions of identity, and etymological torturing of roots, all that we know, and all that we believe, may be converted ... into something totally different.

    Fourthly, Mr. Hislop's argument proves too much. He finds not only the corruption of Popery, but the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, in his hypothetical Babylonian system ...

    We take leave of Mr. Hislop and his work with the remark that we never before quite knew the folly of which ignorant or half-learned bigotry is capable.


    - "The Saturday Review", September 17, 1859, p.340

    (By the way, I'd love to have a scan of this but it isn't archived anywhere on the net.)

  • Terry
    Terry

    I hesitated to post such a BIG GULP of writing. Who has the time to bite such a chunk; much less to chew on it properly?

    But, those who care about such things as methods and practices will certainly find something worth nibbling at.

    I remember distinctly in the fifties and sixties how many of us carried THE TWO BABYLONS along with us in our book bags out in service

    like a doctor making a house call. This dubious book was so dense with important words, names, historical figures it was like a giant vitamin pill

    crammed with nutritious supplements. We couldn't wait to cram it down the householder's throat if they raised any historical issues.

    I'm not sure about the following, but, maybe somebody with a better recollection can remember---didn't the society actually offer THE TWO BABYLONS "for sale" --I mean, for contribution? Couldn't you order it directly from headquarters?

    How many of you remember reading/using this book regularly?

  • AnnOMaly
    AnnOMaly

    I'm not sure about the following, but, maybe somebody with a better recollection can remember---didn't the society actually offer THE TWO BABYLONS "for sale" --I mean, for contribution? Couldn't you order it directly from headquarters?

    km 8/83 p. 4 Announcements

    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

    You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth-Portuguese

    Enjoy Life on Earth Forever!-Arabic, Bislama, Cebuano, Herero, Hungarian, Iloko, Kwanyama, Luganda, Marshallese, Moore, Ndonga, Romanian, Sinhalese, Zulu

    km 11/87 p. 3 Announcements

    Out of Stock in U.S.A.:

    The Two Babylons-English

    Is There a God Who Cares?-Japanese

  • wobble
    wobble

    I never used it in FS Terry, boy, we had enough crap to carry anyway, but you could order it via the KH Literature Dept. for a number of years, I doubt it was ever encouraged that we place it in the hands of the public, but I could be wrong.

    I read it many years ago, whilst still an active JW, and have a copy in my library, I came to much the same conclusions as you outline in the O.P. thanks for the post, it is great as usual !

    What Hislop did for me though was make me question Rutherford's and Russell's writings, and see them as of the same ilk entirely.

    It also aroused in me an interest in studying the parallels between the Jesus myth and other mythologies. It did not, sadly , contribute to my eyes being thoroughly opened at the time, but it helped me on my way, so laughable rubbish it may be, but thank you Reverend Hislop !

    You draw attention to the baldface lie in the 2000WT that they proclaimed BtheG as fallen in 1919, that lie is cleverly written so they could wriggle out of it, but another one in the same article that they have repeated a number of times is that Rutherford and Co were "completely exonerated".

    It is my understanding that they were not, the trial was declared invalid because of procedural errors, and as the War was over it was decided the expense of a retrial was not worth it. That is far from any exoneration. They could have been re-tried, and if found guilty faced some pretty awful sentences.

    It is also very far from B the G and Satan being defeated, it was simply luck they did not go down.

  • AnnOMaly
    AnnOMaly

    This dubious book was so dense with important words, names, historical figures it was like a giant vitamin pill crammed with nutritious supplements.

    Another lesson I learned in the past few years - books that are technical and complex, with reams of footnotes and references to even reputable sources, are no guarantee that their contents are factual. The trick in seducing the unaware, I think, is mixing just enough fact with convoluted fiction/fancy so that the reader is sufficiently dazzled or overwhelmed to be swept along by the author's 'depth of research' and to trust everything he says.

  • AnnOMaly
    AnnOMaly

    ... but another one in the same article that they have repeated a number of times is that Rutherford and Co were "completely exonerated".

    It is my understanding that they were not

    It's interesting that one of the changes to the Rev. Climax book was amending the wording from 'exonerated' to 'the charges were dropped.' They said the same (charges were dropped) in the 2001 Isaiah-2 book. I think the last time they claimed that Rutherford and Co. were exonerated was 2000.

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