Daniel Marsh said:
2 Timothy 4
1In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
Whenever, I see, hear or read Bad History the above text comes to mind.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when people pull out nonsense like hyslop’s two babylons, besides laughter that is.
Good question 
Not laughter - interest. Interest in the fact that people find it intellectually satisfying, and curiosity as to whether they are open to discussion about it.
Some aren’t. I remember discussing it on another message-board ages ago, and one response made the point that “Catholics would say that, wouldn’t they ?” (Those are my words, not a quotation.)
I think it’s a remarkable book - it’s no small achievement for a Scottish Presbyterian minister writing in the 1860s to be read in the USA by JWs, Bahais, Pentecostals, Messianic Jews, & Baptists, as well as by Presbyterians in 2000.
Which is rather alarming, too - why don’t people read those who are better acquainted with all things Babylonian than Hislop was ? I don’t know. Do you ?
I think it is very sad (to put it mildly) that TTB helps to persuade Catholics to cease to be Catholic.
As to why it is still popular, despite its errors in giving the meaning of words, its many lapses in logic, & its inaccurate picture of Babylonian religion, I think that is explained by its ability to explain for Protestants (of a certain kind only) how the CC of 1860 came to be as it did. IOW - it helps people make sense of certain facts about the world they live in. And that may be why it so hard to persuade people that it is intellectually lacking - take away that explanation, and the world makes less sense than it did. So ISTM that people who hang on to it aren’t being bigoted - they are fighting for an essential element in their understanding of the world. It works as a Grand Unifying Theory - as long as the flaws aren’t recognised.
BTW, in fairness to Hislop, some of his errors are not his fault: for instance, he talks on p. 72-3 about a god he calls “Bar”. Wrongly, as it turns out; but in 1860, that was how the name was read. Sometimes ideas cease to be plausible simply because they are overtaken by events: so 1860’s intelligent guess, can become 1960’s absurd suggestion.
As to the general POV of the book, there was nothing unusual in the attitude to Catholicism he expresses. Given a certain reading of the Bible and Church history, that particular attitude is a perfectly sensible one. That does not make it valid - but the validity of attitudes to the Church depends on faith: one cannot
prove the CC is what Catholicism insists it is; there is always room for the facts to be differently understood. This is because faith is a free act - the facts can be read in a Catholic sense, or in a Presbyterian sense, or in others. God does not
impose their meaning - that would take away our freedom.
I respect Hislop’s skill as a writer - I suspect he was very intelligent, because there are some mistakes that only very intelligent people can make. I just wonder how he found the time to write it.
I worry more about the influence of people who sound more plausible because they are less ignorant of Mesopotamian religion. ##
