Hi,
I know that I’m going to come across as a ‘Clearskies stalker’, but as much as Clearskies is a proponent of Hislop, I am a detractor. If you are
interested in Hislop and his work please look at both proponents of his work and criticisms of his work.
As you may have guessed, I’m happy to provide some examples of the criticisms. Here are some sites that offer a bit of insight. Four of the five
sites listed are NOT Catholic sites. One may be.
Below the urls is the text from a book review of The Two Babylons (not very scholarly, but readable).
www.ukapologetics.net...
www.geocities.com...
homepages.paradise.net.nz...
www.thechristadelphians.org...
www.tektonics.org...
Throughout this book, Hislop makes an attempt to show that the Roman Catholic Church is nothing more than a re-constitution of ancient Babylon. One
way that Hislop attempts to demonstrate this is by documenting numerous references to the similarity of words between the ancient Chaldee and Hebrew
languages due to their close phonetical relatedness (see I.H.S. example below). Other similarities and generalizations were used to basically debunk
the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. These similarities were used by Hislop to show how pagan Babylonian beliefs infiltrated the
ancient Hebrew culture and that these pagan beliefs were adopted into the sacraments, doctrines, and general practices of the Roman Catholic Church.
There are other portions of the book where this same basic logic is used, but it does not seem to be consistent with the argument that is posited and
unsubstantiated generalizations are made. For example, on page 164, in relation to the letters that are found on the Catholic eucharist wafer, Hislop
argues that the letters I.H.S. do not signify 'Jesus the Savior of all men' (in Latin) but instead these letters signify "'Isis, Horus, Seb,'
that is, 'The Mother, the Child, and the Father of the gods," - in other words, 'The Egyptian Trinity.'" Hislop provides no footnoted
documentation for this assertion and it seems to be a logically inconsistent and broadly generalized statement without any historical or literary
evidence to support it. Another problem is that the actual letters that are used on the wafer would only be meaningful to a person that is familiar
with the English or Latin alphabet. The ancient worshippers of Egypt were not familiar with this alphabet, because it was yet to be invented. Thus, it
is a chronological impossibility that the ancient Egyptians would have been able to come to the conclusions that the letters on the wafer represent
their false trinity.
Note: In reality, it is a faulty Latin transliteration of the Greek contraction "Jesus", and was later rationalized to Iesus Hominum Salvator =
Jesus Saviour of Men (mankind). This would also fit with Catholic transubstantiation doctrine that regards the wafer as becoming the body of Christ.
-- JPH, with thanks to a reader)
Another example of this type of inconsistency can be found in chapter three, page 99, where Hislop is discussing the eighty-fifth psalm. Hislop states
that the eighty-fifth Psalm was written soon after the Babylonian captivity and because of the captivity, they were inspired to write the eighty-fifth
psalm. Conservative Christian scholars hold that the majority of the Psalms, including psalm eighty-five, were written about the tenth century B.C.
So, if psalm eighty-five was written at least 400 years before Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah, how is it possible that this tenth century B.C. Psalm was
written after the Hebrews came out of Babylon? Unless Hislop held to a later date for the writing of the Psalms or a much earlier invasion and
subsequent deportation of the Jews to Babylon, this seems to be an irreconcilable inconsistency in Hislop's scholarship. (truncated due to lack of
space)
Eric
It's clear to me who made us 
