Few books in Protestant history have enjoyed the strange durability of Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons.
Written in the mid-19th century and still circulated today—often online, often uncritically—it is frequently treated as a kind of “secret decoder ring” for Christianity.
According to its admirers, it unmasks Roman Catholicism as nothing more than ancient Babylonian paganism baptized in Christian language.
That reputation is undeserved.
This article will demonstrate that The Two Babylons is not serious historical scholarship but rather an example of anti-Roman Catholic propaganda constructed through speculative associations, logical fallacies, invented connections, and unreliable sourcing.
It fails as history, fails as theology, and—ironically—fails the very Protestant commitment to truth and careful reasoning it claims to serve.
Before examining the book itself, however, we must begin with the man who wrote it.
Alexander Hislop: The Man Behind the Book
Hislop’s Background and Clerical Status
Alexander Hislop (1807–1865) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister associated with the Free Church of Scotland, a denomination formed during the Disruption of 1843 when many ministers left the Church of Scotland over state interference in church affairs.
In that sense, Hislop was indeed a Christian minister and a Protestant clergyman.
He was educated at the University of Edinburgh and was ordained to pastoral ministry. By the standards of his day, he was not uneducated, nor was he a fringe figure operating outside the church altogether.
However—and this distinction matters greatly—Hislop was not a trained historian, linguist, Assyriologist, classicist, or archaeologist.
He wrote The Two Babylons before the explosion of modern Near Eastern archaeology, before cuneiform texts were widely translated, and before serious comparative religion developed as an academic discipline.
In other words, he was operating with limited data and no formal training in the fields his thesis depended upon.
Alexander Hislop’s Faith Commitments and Orthodoxy
From a broad Protestant standpoint, Hislop would have identified as a Christian and affirmed core doctrines such as the authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and justification by faith. However, his work reflects a hyper-polemical strain of Protestantism that went well beyond the Reformers.
The Reformers argued that Rome erred doctrinally.
Hislop argued that Rome was not Christian at all, but pagan to its core.
That distinction is crucial.
Luther, Calvin, and the Reformed confessions criticized Rome based on Scripture and theology.
Hislop attempted to annihilate Rome by portraying it as a disguised Babylonian mystery cult.
That move required historical claims far stronger—and far less defensible—than Protestant orthodoxy demands.
The Core Thesis of The Two Babylons
Hislop’s thesis can be stated plainly:
Roman Catholicism is the continuation of ancient Babylonian paganism, particularly the worship of Nimrod, Semiramis, and Tammuz, preserved through mystery religions and rebranded with Christian terminology.
Everything in the book serves this claim. Once the reader accepts it, nearly any similarity between ancient paganism and later Christianity becomes “proof.”
But the thesis is not built on careful historical causation. It is built on association.
Nimrod, Semiramis, and Tammuz: A Fabricated Pagan Trinity
One of the most influential—and destructive—ideas in The Two Babylons is the notion that pagan religions universally revolved around a trinity composed of:
- Nimrod (the deified father)
- Semiramis (the queen mother)
- Tammuz (the divine child)
Hislop presents this triad as a proto-Trinity and then argues that Roman Catholicism inherited it through Marian devotion and Christological symbolism.
Hislop did not deny the Trinity, but he claimed that Satan inspired triads of gods that were, in effect, pseudo-Trinities. The Trinity of Roman Catholicism was tainted due to its pagan roots.
This argument fails on multiple levels.
Nimrod Is Not a Pagan Savior Figure
Scripture tells us very little about Nimrod. Genesis describes him as a mighty hunter and a founder of cities. That is all.
Hislop transforms Nimrod into a cosmic rebel-god, a martyr, a resurrected savior, and the template for nearly every male pagan deity in history. This is not interpretation—it is invention.
There is no ancient text identifying Nimrod as Osiris, Bacchus, Apollo, or any other pagan god. Hislop relies on thematic overlap and speculative etymology rather than evidence.
Semiramis Is Mythologized Beyond Recognition
Semiramis may refer to a historical Assyrian queen (Shammuramat), but ancient sources portray her as a political regent—not a goddess, not a universal mother figure, and not the object of global worship.
Hislop turns her into the “Queen of Heaven” archetype and then draws a line directly to Marian devotion. This ignores:
- Jewish rejection of goddess worship
- Early Christian hostility to pagan cults
- The long doctrinal development of Mariology (which Protestants rightly critique—but not this way)
Tammuz Is Not a Christ Prototype
Tammuz appears briefly in Ezekiel as part of a condemned pagan ritual. Hislop inflates this reference into a dying-and-rising savior myth that allegedly inspired Christianity.
This ignores the historical reality that Christian resurrection theology arose from Jewish eschatology, not pagan fertility cycles.
Logical Fallacies: Similarity Is Not Identity
Hislop’s method repeatedly commits a basic reasoning error:
If two religions share a feature, one must be derived from the other.
This is intellectually indefensible.
To use an illustration:
Bob wears a blue shirt.
Bruce wears a blue shirt.
Therefore, Bob is Bruce.
This is precisely the logic Hislop applies.
Candles, priests, rituals, special clothing, sacred days—these are common features of religious expression worldwide. Their existence proves nothing about direct borrowing, much less a Babylonian conspiracy.
Sexualized Architecture: Phallic and Vaginal Claims
Hislop explicitly claimed that Christian architecture preserved pagan sexual symbolism of fertility cults.
He argued that:
- Church steeples and towers represent the male phallus or penis
- Bells represent testicles
- Domes, arches, and certain sanctuaries represent the vagina or womb
These claims are not grounded in architectural history. They arise from symbolic over-reading, where any vertical structure becomes male and any enclosing structure becomes female.
This approach suffers from several fatal problems:
- Universality – Vertical and enclosed structures exist in all architecture because they are functional.
- Intentionality – There is no evidence medieval church builders intended sexual symbolism.
- Reductionism – Complex theological symbolism is flattened into crude Freudian categories.
This kind of argument says more about the interpreter than the builders.
Christmas and Easter as Pagan Festivals
Hislop also argued that Christmas and Easter are pagan holidays, derived from solar worship and fertility rites.
Christmas
He claimed December 25 originated in Babylonian sun worship and was adopted wholesale by Christianity.
What he ignores:
- Early Christians did debate Christ’s birth date
- December 25 likely developed from theological reasoning about the Incarnation, not sun worship
- Even if a date overlapped with pagan festivals, Christian reinterpretation does not equal pagan derivation
Easter
Hislop linked Easter to the goddess Ishtar, largely on the basis of a superficial phonetic resemblance in English—a language that did not exist in the ancient world.
This is linguistically indefensible. Most languages do not even use the word “Easter,” and Christian Pascha derives from Passover, not pagan fertility rites.
Citation Problems and Invented Sources
One of the most serious criticisms of The Two Babylons concerns Hislop’s sources.
Scholars have noted that:
- Some references are untraceable
- Others are quoted inaccurately
- Some claims rely on secondary sources that themselves were speculative
- Context is frequently omitted
Even Protestant historians critical of Rome have rejected Hislop’s citations as unreliable.
Broader Scholarly Criticism
Hislop’s work has been criticized by:
- Reformed historians
- Evangelical theologians
- Secular historians
- Specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies
The consensus is striking: The Two Babylons does not meet basic scholarly standards.
Why the Book Persists
The book survives because it offers:
- A simple villain narrative
- A sense of insider knowledge
- Confirmation of anti-Catholic sentiment
- An emotionally satisfying explanation of complexity
But truth is not measured by emotional satisfaction.
A Warning to Protestants
Alexander Hislop was a Christian minister, but The Two Babylons is not a Christian defense of truth. It is a cautionary tale about what happens when polemics replace evidence.
Protestants do not need fabricated histories to critique Rome. The Reformation succeeded through Scripture, theology, and careful reasoning—not conspiracy theories.
I was given this book as a young Christian by a well-meaning elder as a member of a heterodox church long ago. The church believed Roman Catholicism was a pagan organization from its genesis, and considered the first “pope” to be Simon Magus of Acts 8.
The reality is that the Roman Catholic church has historical ties to the apostolic church as one of several bishoprics which included Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria.
It was one bishopric amongst several.
Rome has historical continuity but not no longer has biblical continuity. Its doctrinal foundation does not reflect God’s word.
And, it was not originally a parallel organization with its origin in pagan religion with Simon Magus at the helm as the first pope.
I believed the underlying thesis of Hislop’s book for many years.
While Roman Catholicism deserves to be criticized for several reasons, Hislop’s book holds the same level of credibility as the National Enquirer gossip tabloid of yesteryear.
Falsehood, even when leveled at severely compromised belief systems, remains falsehood.
Christians are called to something better….objective truth.
S.D.G.,
Robert Sparkman
MMXXV
rob@basedchristianity.org
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