It’s extremely unfortunate that Mr. Hislop is not around to defend himself and his book against the attack of Mr. Woodrow’s. Only Mr. Hislop would know how he came to write what he did, and be able to offer reasons for it. With that though, I’d like to offer how I understand the charge of poor methodology that Mr. Woodrow accuses Mr. Hislop of.

Mr. Woodrow begins by stating Mr. Hislop’s ‘basic premise’, that the Catholic Church has taken over the mantle of paganism from the ancient Babylonian religion. He presents a number of facts of Mr. Hislop’s to supposedly show us the absurdity of his position. One such is Nimrod being, ‘a big, ugly, deformed black man’, and that his wife was ‘a beautiful white woman’, with Mr. Woodrow claiming that they didn’t even live in the same century, so how could they possibly be husband and wife (see The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop, pp. 44, 85, 229, 238). What we have to realize is that secular history, from which Mr. Woodrow draws this information, may not be the definitive source to find out when she actually lived. Also, as she is the prototype, she may be seen ‘to have lived’ in various places and different centuries, some of which Mr. Woodrow’s sources may have picked up on, not realizing that they hadn’t gone back far enough in their research.

One of the central themes of Mr. Hislop is that the gods and goddess’ of one culture mirrored the gods and goddess’ of most every other culture. Many times, the only real difference was the change of their names. For instance, everyone knows that the Greek Zeus of Mt. Olympia ‘became’ the Jupiter of the Romans. And how do we know this? Their identities are identical, except for possibly minor changes given to Jupiter by his new adherents.

Mr. Woodrow says that he couldn’t find anything about Nimrod and Semiramis being husband and wife in the various encyclopedias that he checked. And then he uses the illustration that if one wanted to establish George Washington being married to Martha, it would be good to see if they both lived in the same centuries first, before declaring them man and wife. This is a fine way to go about writing recent history but falls far short in terms of trying to piece together and to understand ancient fables and legends about the gods that were at first only given from one generation to another by word of mouth.

That the encyclopedias that Mr. Woodrow names, do not make a connection between Nimrod and Semiramis, is of very little value for us. Many of them would tell us that Sunday is the Lord’s Day. Encyclopedias are not necessarily the best place to find ancient legends and myths that go back before recorded time and how they intertwined in various pagan cultures. While encyclopedia’s are usually great for information, they may also be ‘one-sided’ or myopic, and may not correctly interpret that information, especially if it’s ancient and pagan.

Mr. Woodrow lists numerous pagan gods and goddess’ and condemns Mr. Hislop as having misunderstood the information he presented. Pointing to former President Gerald Ford, Mr. Woodrow presents the illustration of a ‘careless writer’ in the future, confusing the former President with the car maker, Henry Ford. Obviously, this could very well be true but Mr. Woodrow fails to show us where Mr. Hislop confused Apollo with Adonis, etc.

Mr. Hislop has brought together for us not gods and goddess’ of the same name (‘Ford’), but gods and goddess’ of various ancient and modern nations and shows us that they basically came from the same prototypes; Nimrod and Semiramis, deified. Mr. Hislop does this by revealing the personalities, deeds and what happened to the various pagan gods, and we find that the likes of Adonis, Apollo and Attes, etc., along with their feminine counterparts; Diana, Astarte and Ishtar, etc., all have the exact same, or very similar, characteristics and legends. What is one to think of this? Is this making Abraham Lincoln the manufacturer or designer of the car with his name? Or is this piecing together the very fabric of paganism that has spread out from Babylon to infest the entire world? Can it be coincidence or accident that the Jesuit priests, upon first entering China centuries ago, found the Chinese worshipping an idol of a woman with her baby in her arms? Is this not the exact picture of the Roman Madonna and their so called Christ child? The Jesuit priests thought so. And we find out from Mr. Hislop that it was first portrayed in Babylon this way (pp. 19-29f) before Messiah was born. How did the Jewish teenager Mary, come to be worshipped and called Immaculate (without sin), and the ‘Queen of Heaven’ by a billion Catholics? Mr. Hislop shows us the direct link from paganism to Catholicism (p. 83, 267).

NO CONNECTION BETWEEN BABYLON AND ROME?

It seems that Mr. Woodrow would have us to believe that there is no connection between Babylon and Rome. He tells us that his new book, The Babylon Connection?, ‘is an appeal’ to those who have a need to find, ‘Babylonian origins for present-day customs’. But just on a superficial level, where did the Pope get his huge ‘fish’ hat from? (Hislop, p. 114, 215). And where has Rome, and the Protestant churches, gotten Sunday, Easter and Christmas from? Certainly nothing in the Bible allows for fish hats or those three ‘holy’ times which most Christians recognize as ‘biblical.’ They all come from pagan Babylon and have filtered into Protestantism via Rome (pp. 91-113; 215-216, for all except Sunday, as Mr. Hislop failed to see the pagan connection between Babylon’s Sunday and Rome’s Sunday). Anyone reading Mr. Hislop’s work can plainly see that these festivals have come from Babylon. Rome took them because in its anti-Semitism, it threw out the Law of Moses (Dan. 7:25). A spiritual vacuum was created and Satan entered to pervert the Way of the Church.

Mr. Hislop has displayed the vast horizon and spread of paganism from before the beginning of recorded history by matching the recorded identities of the pantheon of the gods and goddesses. In this we see for ourselves the immense network and link back to Babylon. Mr. Woodrow errs with his illustrations about Washington, Lincoln and Ford.

Mr. Woodrow states that building ‘on similarities while ignoring differences is an unsound practice.’ For his examples, Mr. Woodrow speaks of prayer, water baptism, holy books, etc. as belonging to both the true religion and paganism, and that we shouldn’t give up these things just because the pagans have it. I’m fairly sure that Mr. Hislop would have agreed with that position. But there are critically intrinsic, important differences between the water baptism of the pagans (and by extension, the Catholic Church), and the water baptism of the Bible (p. 129f), just as there are substantial differences between our Bible and pagan holy books, etc.

We must be able to discern between what the pagans have literally ‘taken’ from the God of Israel, which then become pagan counterfeits; and what they have invented, such as the pentagram, which has no biblical basis. In terms of what the pagans have counterfeited, the dove comes to mind. It represents the Queen of Heaven for a number of goddess’, which means that they are supposed to be the ‘Holy Spirit’ incarnate (pp. 51, last note; 78, 82-85, 126, 141-144). Hislop reveals this counterfeit but never once intimates that believers shouldn’t continue to represent the Holy Spirit as a dove. But should Mary be represented as a dove, or the Holy Spirit incarnate, as the Catholic Church does? Mr. Woodrow falls far short in his accusation of ‘ similarities.’

Mr. Woodrow again takes Mr. Hislop to task because he,

‘saw that a more direct and valid argument against errors in the Roman Catholic Church (or any other group) is the Bible itself, not ancient mythology’ (p. 2 of Mr. Woodrow’s Book Review).

Mr. Hislop never once states that one couldn’t or shouldn’t use the Bible to see the error of the Roman Catholic Church. On the contrary, in most, if not all places in his book, Mr. Hislop cites the specific Scriptures that Rome abuses. The theme of his book though, shows us where Rome’s errors and false teachings came from. This cannot be a fault of Mr. Hislop’s alleged poor methodology.

THE CROWN WITH HORNS

In speaking of ‘a pagan parallel’ that proves ‘proof of paganism’ (Book Review, p. 3), Mr. Woodrow assails Mr. Hislop, bringing up things like the pagan Cup of Babylon, and also the Psalms declaring the Lord to have a cup in His hand (Ps. 75:8); pagan worship of the sun, and the Lord being spoken of (once) as the ‘Sun of Righteousness’; wings and crowns, etc. There are many issues here but I only want to take up the one concerning the crown. This will show Mr. Woodrow’s bias and lack of understanding of what Mr. Hislop is saying.

Mr. Hislop never once suggests that the crown itself is wrong, but more accurately, the horns on the crown. For instance, in ancient Greece, the wreath of the Olympics was also considered a crown but obviously, there were no horns on it. Where did the horns on a crown come from? Originally, a crown was just a band of material (Hislop, p. 36). And, there’s no mention of horns on the crown of the Lord, or any other Israeli king. The only biblical description of a crown on Yeshua was when they placed the crown of thorns on His head (Mt. 27:29; Jn. 19:2, 5, etc.).

There are two cites that have Yeshua wearing a crown of gold (Rev. 14:14; 19:12), but no mention of any horns. Figuratively, for us as believers, we find crowns of life, glory, and righteousness (1st Cor. 9:25; 2nd Tim. 4:8; Jam. 1:12; 1st Pet. 5:4; Rev. 2:10, etc.), but no horns spoken of. Of course, these crowns speak of us inheriting and possessing the Glory of Yahveh, not any material crown. (See also the metaphorical use of ‘crown’ in Prov. 12:4; 14:24; 16:31; 17:6, etc.) There seem to be actual crowns on the heads of the Elders in Heaven (Rev. 4:4, 10), but again, no horns are mentioned on these either. And of course, this could be figurative as the scene was a vision which means that the crowns could also represent the Glory of God within, being acknowledged as coming from Yahveh. According to the King James Version, the first biblical crown was the band of gold with the engraving, ‘Holy to Yahveh’ on it (Ex. 28:36-38, etc.). There were no horns on this as the description of it shows us that it was a gold plate that attached to the High Priest’s turban via cords of blue.

It seems that the idea for horns on a crown goes back to Nimrod, or at least, pictures of him fighting wild animals and taking their horns from them, to symbolize his power over them, and therefore, his divine right to rule. Mr. Hislop builds his foundation upon the ancient gods of Apollo, Saturn and Kronos (which means, ‘the Horned one’, p. 32), and shows us that they were basically the ‘same god’, taken from the mold of Nimrod. He shows us that the horns were originally not of the crown, but part of the head or headdress (p. 33), and that also, one of the pagan deities of the Anglo-Saxons was the prototype for the ‘popular idea of the Devil’ ‘equipped with horns and hoofs’ (pp. 33-34).

Mr. Hislop presents an ancient woodcut (picture) of Hercules fighting a bull and obviously killing it (p. 33). He writes that,

‘“the Assyrian Hercules,” that is “Nimrod the giant,” as he is called in the Septuagint version of Genesis, without club, spear, or weapons of any kind,’ is ‘attacking a bull. Having overcome it, he sets the bull’s horns on his head, as a trophy of victory and a symbol of power; and thenceforth the hero is represented, not only with horns and hoofs’ of a bull, ‘but from the middle downwards, with the legs and cloven feet of the bull’ as well as its tail. ‘Thus equipped he is represented as turning next to encounter a lion. This, in all likelihood, is intended to commemorate some event in the life of him who first began to be mighty in the chase and in war, and who, according to all ancient traditions, was remarkable also for bodily power, as being the leader of the Giants that rebelled against heaven’ (p. 34).

Nimrod was the ‘first of’ the ‘deified mortals’ (p. 32). In other words, the first human being to claim that he was God in the flesh, and therefore, worthy of adoration and worship. The horns symbolized his right to rule as king. This is where and why horns came to be placed on crowns that rulers not only wear today, but in ancient times. The horn on the head became the symbol of sovereign power (p. 35), but obviously, it’s linked back to Nimrod, not Messiah’s crown, as Mr. Woodrow would have us to believe. Mr. Hislop gives us other pagan examples of the horns on the crown (pp. 35-37), and thus establishes how they came to be and their link back to Nimrod. Unfortunately, the way that Mr. Woodrow presents it, is that Mr. Hislop was coming against crowns. It seems that Mr. Woodrow failed to understand the difference. The rest of Mr. Woodrow’s parallels seem to fall into this same category. Interestingly enough, and in confirmation of Mr. Hislop, the only place in Scripture where crowns and horns are seen together, are on the great Red Dragon (Rev. 12:3; who is Satan, 12:9), and on the Beast that comes up out of the sea (Rev. 13:1).

THE ROUND WAFER GOD

Mr. Woodrow tells that that when he checked out Mr. Hislop’s footnotes from ‘old editions of Pausaunias, Pliny, Tacitus,’ etc., that Mr. Hislop’s claims could not be supported. For an example of this, Mr. Woodrow cites the round wafer used by Rome, which, according to Mr. Hislop, has its origins in Egypt (a ‘natural’ extension of ancient Babylon). Mr. Woodrow then presents what we are to believe as undeniable proof that Mr. Hislop has erred, stating that not only did the Egyptians have the round wafer, but also ‘oval and triangular cakes; folded cakes; cakes like leaves, animals and a crocodile’s head’. Did Mr. Hislop deceive us when he failed to mention all these additional cakes? Hardly. Was Mr. Hislop presenting a list of all the Egyptian cakes that were offered to their gods, or was he showing us a link where Rome got the idea for their round wafer? Because the sun was the most worshipped of the natural objects, ‘round’ was what symbolized the sun.

Mr. Woodrow relates that Manna was round, but the similarity for us, ends there. The Manna which fell from heaven was not only round, it was also very tasty. And, it’s roundness was described before it was baked and eaten, that is to say, when it was found on the ground:

‘And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground’ (Ex. 16:14, KJV) (Although the NASB translates it as a ‘flake-like thing’; with the NRSV saying it was ‘a fine flaky substance’. The Hebrew for it is mihuspas and means, ‘having the form of scales’ [Benjamin Davidson, The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979), p. 269], from hasaf. Round may not have been the shape of the Manna, as scales are not necessarily round.)

“The House of Israel called it Manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.” (Ex. 16:31)

‘Coriander is the seed of Coriandrum sativum, a plant in the parsley family. The seed is globular and almost round, brown to yellow red, and 1/5 inch in diameter with alternating straight and wavy ridges’ (from http://www.culinarycafe.com/Spices_Herbs/Coriander.html).

“The people went around and gathered it, ground it in mills or beat it in mortars, then baked it in pans and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil.” (Num. 11:8)

That the shape of the flat, styrofoam tasting wafer of Rome was seen in Egypt, along with crocodile wafers, etc., takes nothing away from a connection between the two of them, as they both represent ‘God.’ Egypt and Rome were venerating the sun god and that’s why their wafer had to be round. As for the cakes of animals and geometric designs (triangles, etc.), these too represented Egyptian gods or magical objects. But the round cake specifically pictured the sun god.

Where did Rome’s round wafer originate from? Certainly not from the time of Israel in the Wilderness (the Manna), as everything ‘Jewish’ was an abomination to Rome. And certainly not from the Bible. It wasn’t from the Passover of Yeshua from which it supposedly came, for the matzah of Passover (Ex. 12:8, 15, etc.), is always pierced to prevent the bread from bubbling up (like pizza sometimes does, with a ‘bubble’ in the dough). This piercing of the matzah dough pictures the piercing of Messiah Yeshua (Is. 53:5). But the wafer of Rome bears no resemblance to the pierced matzah of Passover.

Here’s some of what Mr. Hislop says about the reason for the roundness of Rome’s wafer and the glorification of woman over man (just the opposite of what God did in the Garden, making Adam first, and also what we see when He spoke to them after their rebellion against Him; Gen. 3:16):

‘All this is done only to exalt the Mother, as more gracious and more compassionate than her glorious Son. Now, this was the very case in Babylon: and to this character of the goddess queen her favourite offerings exactly corresponded. Therefore, we find the women of Judah represented as simply “burning incense, pouring out drink-offerings, and offering cakes to the queen of heaven” (Jer 44:19).’

‘The cakes were ‘the unbloody sacrifice’ she required. That ‘unbloody sacrifice’ her votaries not only offered, but when admitted to the higher mysteries, they partook of, swearing anew fidelity to her. In the fourth century, when the queen of heaven, under the name of Mary, was beginning to be worshipped in the Christian Church, this ‘unbloody sacrifice’ also was brought in. Epiphanius states that the practice of offering and eating it began among the women of Arabia; and at that time it was well known to have been adopted from the Pagans.’

‘The very shape of the unbloody sacrifice of Rome may indicate whence it came. It is a small thin, round wafer; and on its roundness the Church of Rome lays so much stress, to use the pithy language of John Knox in regard to the wafer-god,’

‘If, in making the roundness the ring be broken, then must another of his fellow-cakes receive that honour to be made a god, and the crazed or cracked miserable cake, that once was in hope to be made a god, must be given to a baby to play withal.’

‘What could have induced the Papacy to insist so much on the ‘roundness’ of its ‘unbloody sacrifice’? Clearly not any reference to the Divine institution of the Supper of our Lord; for in all the accounts that are given of it, no reference whatever is made to the form of the bread which our Lord took, when He blessed and break it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, ‘Take, eat; this is My body: this do in remembrance of Me.’

‘As little can it be taken from any regard to injunctions about the form of the Jewish Paschal bread; for no injunctions on that subject are given in the books of Moses. The importance, however, which Rome attaches to the roundness of the wafer, must have a reason; and that reason will be found, if we look at the altars of Egypt. ‘The thin, round cake,’ says Wilkinson, ‘occurs on all altars.’ Almost every jot or tittle in the Egyptian worship had a symbolical meaning.’

‘The round disk, so frequent in the sacred emblems of Egypt, symbolised the sun. Now, when Osiris, the sun-divinity, became incarnate, and was born, it was not merely that he should give his life as a sacrifice for men, but that he might also be the life and nourishment of the souls of men. It is universally admitted that Isis was the original of the Greek and Roman Ceres. But Ceres, be it observed, was worshipped not simply as the discoverer of corn’ (i.e. grain), ‘she was worshipped as ‘the MOTHER of Corn.’

‘The child she brought forth was He-Siri, ‘the Seed,’ or, as he was most frequently called in Assyria, ‘Bar,’ which signifies at once ‘the Son’ and ‘the Corn.’ The uninitiated might reverence Ceres for the gift of material corn to nourish their bodies, but the initiated adored her for a higher gift--for food to nourish their souls--for giving them that bread of God that cometh down from heaven--for the life of the world, of which, ‘if a man eat, he shall never die.’ Does any one imagine that it is a mere New Testament doctrine, that Christ is the ‘bread of life’?’

Of course, Mr. Hislop has much more to say about sun disks around the heads of the pagan deities and the head of Jesus and other ‘saints’ of Rome, but the point here is that the roundness of Rome’s wafer points to the sun, not the Son. Yes, Israel’s Manna was round, but Israel did not worship it. And John Knox (1513-1572), was not writing for Mr. Hislop. Mr. Knox was used mightily of God to ferret out paganism (i.e. Catholicism), in Scotland. He died more than two centuries before Mr. Hislop was born, so Mr. Knox’s writing about the determined roundness of the wafer-god of Rome was not out of consideration to get his name into Mr. Hislop’s book. In other words, Mr. Hislop was not the first to wonder with astonishment at the round wafer god of Rome.

LENT: FORTY DAYS OF FASTING AND WEEPING FOR JESUS?

Mr. Woodrow then accuses Mr. Hislop of basing his writing about Lent on a sole Egyptian reference (Book Review, p. 4). Mr. Hislop naturally presents Lent in the section on Easter (pp. 103-113), where he states that, ‘a Lent of 40 days was observed in Egypt’, citing Wilkenson (p. 105). Mr. Woodrow slams Mr. Hislop for failing to tell us that the cite also states that the Egyptians had times of abstinence of seven, ten, twelve and forty-two days. Mr. Woodrow tells us that Mr. Hislop only gave us ‘partial information.’ He goes on to say that with partial information one could say that the Bible declares, ‘There is no God’ (Ps. 14:1). But is this what Mr. Hislop is doing? Is he completely reversing the meaning and interpretation of the information, as Mr. Woodrow presents in his biblical example of ‘no God’? Or is Mr. Hislop just giving us what lines up with Rome’s Lent? It would seem it’s the latter, so even though we’re not informed of other durations of Egyptian fasts by Mr. Hislop, the account of Mr. Hislop does stand as accurate for what he has written. Also, as we’ll see, the practice of lesser periods of ‘Lent’ came into the Church before the current practice of forty days, which certainly aligns itself with the other pagan periods of mourning for their dead god.

The Egyptians had a time of abstaining from certain foods, for forty days, in commemoration of lamenting their god who was killed, in hopes that he would arise again. This is very similar to the concept of Messiah’s death, burial and resurrection. Again we find a pagan counterfeit, yet there is no time for mourning the death of Yeshua prescribed in the Word of God. The Roman Catholic Lent is entirely of a pagan origin.

Now, if Mr. Hislop built his case around this particular cite from Mr. Wilkenson’s Egyptian Antiquities (vol. 1, p. 278), we could say that the link between the pagan Lent and Rome’s was on shaky ground. But in fact, Mr. Hislop’s cite of Mr. Wilkenson is actually a peripheral confirmation. Mr. Hislop presents a number of other sources that substantiate his claim that Rome’s Lent did indeed come from paganism. It certainly can’t be traced to Moses or the Apostles.

After establishing that the Passover of Yeshua wasn’t preceded by any kind of commanded abstinence (p. 104), and certainly no time of weeping for Messiah Yeshua, Mr. Hislop shows that times of fasting slowly crept into the Church, by ecclesiastical order. But even these were not the enormous duration of forty days. They began with a week, and built to two, and then to three, and finally around the sixth century, Rome instituted it’s forty day Lenten period. Here Mr. Woodrow would have proven a credible witness if he would have only supplied us with the basis for Mr. Hislop’s linkage from ‘the Babylonian goddess’ to modern pagans observing their time of mourning for their god who was killed. But if he had done that, it would have considerably watered down Mr. Woodrow’s charge against Mr. Hislop. Why did Mr. Woodrow fail to tell us that Mr. Hislop presents devil worshippers of his day (1860), along with the Mexican pagans of Humbolt’s day, as observing a Lent of forty days (p. 104)? These two cites certainly go a long way in establishing a connection between the pagan and Catholic Lents of forty days. So, it wasn’t only on ‘Egypt’ that Mr. Hislop based his claims, as Mr. Woodrow would have us to believe.

Also, immediately after Mr. Hislop speaks of the Egyptian Lent of forty days he also cites Landseer in his Sabean Researches and tells us it was expressly in honor of the god ‘Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god’ (p. 105). It seems that Mr. Hislop was not citing the Egyptian Lent of forty days to establish the forty day period, so much as to point to the pagan idea that the god who was mourned for, also called for abstinence in identifying with his suffering and death for humanity. This again was the pagan reflection of Messiah Yeshua. Babylon and Rome have invented Lent to mirror the role of Yeshua as the Mediator who died for Man (p. 105; Ezk 8:14).

Mr. Hislop then goes on to intertwine other pagan myths (the wailing of Proserpine, Castas and Ceres, etc., p. 105), with Rome’s Lent. Then he shows us that Lent didn’t come into Rome till about 525 AD, having been preceded by other shorter times of mourning for the death of Jesus (p. 106). Mr. Hislop also reveals that ancient Babylon had a six week time of mourning, actually 42 days, which corresponded exactly to one of Egypt’s Lents (pp. 106-107), and of course, very close to Rome’s. Whether seven, fifteen, twenty-one, forty or forty-two, the times of mourning and abstinence were all pagan in substance and practice. Are we to strike out everything that Mr. Hislop wrote because he failed to tell us that the ancient Egyptians had times of abstinence other than forty days? I hope not.

CHRISTMAS AND HARPO

Finally, Mr. Woodrow descends upon Mr. Hislop with his most powerful accusation: the dating of Christmas. Not Christmas itself, but it’s date of 25 December. Mr. Woodrow tells us that Mr. Hislop has no right to link December 25th as the birthday of Tammuz to Rome’s celebration on that day because in Mr. Hislop’s Egyptian example of Horus being born at that time of year (Horus corresponding to Tammuz), it turns out to be Harpocrates (whom I’ll call Harpo), who was born then, and not Horus. And, Harpo’s birthday was celebrated in the spring so, ‘this has nothing to do with a December celebration or with Christmas as it is known today’, accuses Mr. Woodrow.

Mr. Hislop begins by stating that Christmas comes from Babylon (p. 91). He then writes of the absurdity of Messiah being born in the dead of winter, first presenting the shepherds in the field with their flocks as something that would never happen past October (pp. 91-92). Then he speaks of the ‘well known reasonableness’ of Roman law which wouldn’t demand the shifting of entire populations of Jewish men, women and children, to move to their ancestral homes in the cold and rain of winter (p. 92). Of course, he’s speaking of the Roman census that was taken in the days around Messiah’s birth (Lk. 2:1-8).

Christmas first came into the Church around the third century and gained prominence by the fourth century (p. 93). In another reproach on those who celebrate the birth of Messiah on December 25th, Hislop cites Gieseler who writes:

‘Chrysostom (Monitum in Hom. de Natal. Christi), writing in Antioch about A.D. 380, says: “It is not yet ten years since this day was made known to us” (Vol. ii, p. 352). “What follows,” adds Gieseler, “furnishes a remarkable illustration of the ease with which customs of recent date could assume the character of apostolic institutions.” Thus proceeds Chrysostom: “Among those inhabiting the west, it was known before from ancient and primitive times, and to the dwellers from Thrace’ (Greece) ‘to Gadeira (Cadiz) it was previously familiar and well-known,” that is, the birth-day of our Lord, which was unknown at Antioch in the east, on the very borders of the Holy land, where He was born, was perfectly well-known in all the European region of the west, from Thrace even to Spain!”’ (pp. 92-93, last note of p. 92)

Chrysostom declared it very strange that no one in Antioch ever knew the birth date of Messiah Yeshua. But pagans everywhere, ‘from ancient and primitive times’ seemed to know it.

Mr. Hislop writes on p. 93 that, ‘In Egypt, the son of Isis, the Egyptian title for the queen of heaven, was born at this very time, “about the time of the winter solstice.”’ Mr. Hislop does not say that it was 25 December, but obviously it was certainly near it, if not on the exact date. (The winter solstice occurs on Dec. 22nd or the 21st but the ancients, without the aid of a telescope, couldn’t determine it till around the 25th.) But Mr. Woodrow’s charge, that Horus wasn’t born on that date, and that Mr. Hislop uses this to establish 25 December as the day when the Egyptians recognized his birth, is totally false.

Mr. Woodrow condemns Mr. Hislop by saying that Harpo’s December birth, ‘was a premature birth’ and that it was celebrated in the spring, and so has nothing to do with December 25th or Horus. But Mr. Hislop, in a note on p. 93, tells us that,

‘the Egyptian priests pretended that the birth of the divine son of Isis, at the end of December, was premature. But this is evidently just the counterpart of the classic story of Bacchus, who, when his mother Semele was consumed by the fire of Jove, was said to have been rescued in the embryo state from the flames that consumed her. The foundation of the story being entirely taken away in a previous note (see p. 59), the superstructure of course falls to the ground.’

Mr. Hislop dealt with the celebration of the winter birth in the spring, by showing us that it was a ‘slight of hand’ trick of the Egyptian priests, which was also seen in the story of Bacchus. Checking the footnote on page 59, we see it was the willful ‘perversion by the priests, who wished to establish one doctrine for the initiated, and another for the profane vulgar’. What this means is that only the ‘true believers’ would come to understand the ‘deeper mysteries’ of their pagan religion. And what was this? Simply put, the above quote of Bacchus being rescued in his embryo state, from the flames of Jove represents the perversion of the name Zoroaster, the ‘head of the fire-worshippers.’ This Zoroaster, Mr. Hislop links back to Nimrod by showing that his name means not only ‘the seed of the woman’, but also was taken to mean, ‘the seed of fire’, and hence the superficial story of Bacchus being rescued from the fire in the embryo state. It combined both the fire and the seed to form a story of a god being born prematurely (embryo) and rescued from the fire.

Returning to Mr. Woodrow’s charge that 25 December is not appropriate for the pagan version of Christmas, and so, no ‘link’ exists between what the pagans did and what the Roman Catholic Church does, and all who follow her in Christmas, Mr. Hislop tells us that his own ancient people, the Anglo-Saxons, celebrated ‘Yule-Day’ (literally, Infant or little Child Day; a reference to the pagan divine child), on 25 December (pp. 93-94). He also writes that this day in ancient Rome was the ‘birth-day of the unconquered Sun’, ‘Natilis invicti solis’ (p. 98), for it was on this day that the ancient peoples could see the ‘completion of the sun’s yearly course’ and ‘the commencement of a new cycle’ (p. 94; daylight now becoming longer than darkness to the unaided eye). In this way the ‘figurative birth-day of the sun in its course’ and the ‘birth-day of the grand’ pagan ‘Deliverer’ (p. 94), born from the sun, were merged. Mr. Hislop’s linking of Dec. 25th with ancient paganism and the Roman Catholic Church is on solid ground. Again Mr. Woodrow fails to convince.

Then there is the charge that although Harpo was born around the time of the winter solstice (Dec. 22nd), Mr. Woodrow tells us that the festival wasn’t celebrated till the spring (March?), and that it focused on ‘his mother’s delivery’, not his birth-day. Interestingly enough, although not surprising, the Roman Catholic Church ‘honors’ the Virgin Mary with her conception of the Christ Child in her womb, on 25 March (springtime; approximately three days after the vernal equinox). If the Roman Catholic Church’s Christ Child was born on 25 December, then nine months previous to this would be 25 March, and hence their date for honoring their Virgin, in what they call ‘Lady-Day.’ Mr. Hislop brings out that this just happened to be the exact date of the honoring of the pagan’s Madonna for her divine conception of the pagan Christ. Coincidence? Mr. Hislop writes:

‘Now, it is manifest that Lady-day and Christmas-day stand in intimate relation to one another. Between the 25th of March and the 25th of December there are exactly nine months. If, then, the false Messiah was conceived in March and born in December, can any one for a moment believe that the conception and birth of the true Messiah can have so exactly synchronised, not only to the month, but to the day? The thing is incredible. Lady-day and Christmas-day, then, are purely Babylonian.’

And so this begins to close up the ‘serious’ charges leveled at Mr. Hislop concerning the dating of 25 December for Christmas and the pagan’s celebration of their redeemer on the same date. It’s not hard to understand then, that the celebration that ancient Egypt observed for Isis around the time of the vernal equinox, for the birth of Harpo at the time of the winter solstice, was nothing less than honoring her for her conception of him at that time. All of Mr. Woodrow’s charges have proven to be false, including this next and last one that initially stumped me. If not for the Lord, a point would have gone to Mr. Woodrow. A considerable point that would have cast doubt upon Mr. Hislop’s writing.

I had just finished reading Mr. Hislop’s section on Christmas and quite frankly, was at a loss as to how to respond to Mr. Woodrow’s charge that it ‘was not Horus, her older son, but Harpocrates’ that was born in late December. For some unexplainable reason, I began reformatting my edition of The Two Babylons on my computer. I was in the midst of this when my eyes just happened to fall upon this footnote on p. 188 (in Mr. Hislop’s book, it’s the last note on the page):

‘The name Harpocrates, as shown by Bunsen, signifies “Horus the child.”’

And so disintegrated Mr. Woodrow’s most powerful charge against Mr. Hislop, caused by an extremely poor methodology on Mr. Woodrow’s part. Mr. Woodrow actually stands accused of the very charge that he brings against Mr. Hislop: poor methodology. My reformatting of The Two Babylons, coming ‘out of the blue,’ not only torpedoes Mr. Woodrow’s accusation and ‘critique’, but confirms and reinforces my initial estimation of Mr. Hislop’s, The Two Babylons. It’s a book that should be read by every believer, for it, more than any other, reveals the pervasive work of the Mystery of Iniquity (2nd Thess. 2:7, KJV) through the centuries and down to our present day. It’s one of the most important books ever written. Of course, I believe that it was the Holy Spirit who led me to reformat my edition of The Two Babylons at that crucial time, and to direct my eyes to a special footnote.

CONCLUSION

After examining Mr. Woodrow’s allegations and accusations against Mr. Hislop’s methodology I find inherent within Mr. Woodrow’s critique, many inept analogies and faulty illustrations ‘to prove’ his points. The accusations leveled at Mr. Hislop are not relevant. The only two that might have caused concern evaporated upon examination. That the Egyptian Lent could be more or less than 40 days proved unsubstantial, as Mr. Hislop didn’t base his claims to Rome’s Lent on just his Egyptian reference but on other, more solid sources that Mr. Woodrow failed to present to us. And when we found out that Harpo was indeed Horus, Mr. Woodrow’s chief accusation not only backfired on him but showed us the level of Mr. Woodrow’s ‘critique.’

On the other hand, Mr. Hislop has given us an enormous amount of information and understanding as to not only the parallel between ancient Babylon’s paganism and the Roman Catholic Church but the direct linkage of the two.

We are left then, with the question as to why Mr. Woodrow, a fairly prominent figure in some Christian circles, having sold more than 500,000 copies of his book, Babylon Mystery Religion, would do an about-face, pull his work off the press and come against Mr. Hislop. Perhaps Mr. Woodrow doesn’t want to be associated any longer with Mr. Hislop’s linkage of the ancient Babylonian religion with that of modern Rome? Perhaps Mr. Woodrow has fallen in line with far too many popular religious leaders of our day in embracing the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church as a legitimate Christian religion, and doesn’t want to rock the ecumenical boat?

I can’t help but thinking this because of Mr. Woodrow’s attack on Mr. Hislop and how he states that his new book is for those who have ‘a need’ to see Babylon in Rome, and that we needn’t take the Roman Catholic Church to task for its paganism by pointing to Babylon; all we need to do is point out their errors from Scripture. Also I’ve seen that for the past thirty years, many Charismatic and evangelical Christians have been persuaded and are enthusiastically endorsing Roman Catholicism as a viable form of Christian worship. Many Christian leaders, who should know better but obviously don’t, have embraced the Pope and endorsed the Catholic way of doing things, not realizing how perverse that institution and its teachings are. Perhaps Mr. Woodrow has been persuaded too, as Billy Graham, Paul Crouch, Benny Hinn and many others have been (see http://www.wayoflife.org/otimothy/otim000d.htm).

I, on the other hand, am not persuaded or impressed in the least by Mr. Woodrow’s ‘confession and exposure’ of The Two Babylons. I see that Mr. Hislop’s work stands firmly on its own merits. It’s extremely relevant for us today, especially for those of us who know Torah, which only magnifies Rome’s apostasy and the paganism within it and Protestantism.

I believe that Mr. Woodrow is being used as a tool in the hands of Lucifer. I see that many thousands of believers who have never read Mr. Hislop’s work, will not give him a second thought, after reading Mr. Woodrow’s ‘critique.’ And many who have only read Mr. Woodrow’s easier to read Babylon Mystery Religion, will also fail ‘to go on’ and read Mr. Hislop’s book. This, along with the fact that Mr. Woodrow has taken his book off the market, shows us that Satan has struck again, to deceive the Body of Messiah; the very theme of The Two Babylons.