When is Hislop Wrong? Everytime!

Tuborg will excuse me for using a meme from their own publicity ... but it is really to the point.

Here is a video by some Hislop fan, and below it are 17 comment sections of mine:

Know Your Enemy (Part 23 - Roman Catholicism)
TheFuelProject | 29.I.2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=221sYyagu2I

I

4:03 "the traditional Sabbath of God"

In other words, you consider the true Church needs to keep the Sabbath on Saturday (or perhaps on set days of lunar months, like new moon and every seventh day from the new moon up to next new moon).

On the other hand - where do you find a Church which did so through the centuries?

Matthew 28:20
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.

So, we must conclude that:

• since God ordered Apostles to teach all nations to observe whatsoever He commanded them;
• since God promised to be with them all days to Doomsday;
• since Doomsday has not yet occurred;
• thus every day from then to now and beyond now to Doomsday, there has to be a Church which teaches (this implies visibility, an invisible Church of just souls cannot effectively teach) all God commanded His apostles.

You suppose unlike us, that He did not command them after Resurrection to worship and rest instead primarily on the weekday of His Resurrection, so, where is, through the centuries, the Church which agrees with you?

Untouched by the love of Christ to the end ...

Well, precisely as an invisible Church of just souls cannot be teaching, so also a visible Church can teach even by men who are unjust and who are in a state of mortal sin.

However, Constantine was not an official teacher of the Catholic Church.

Also, what he did for Catholicism, his sons reversed by doing it instead for various shades of Arianism.

But the Catholic Church condemns Arianism, therefore is not Arianism.

So, if ever a Church was started by evil Roman Emperors, it was the one which seduced the Goths for a few centuries, and which ended when the Goths in Spain converted to Catholicism.

II

5:45 Personal corruption and pursuit of wealth had been in the Church Christ was leading Himself.

Judas Ischariot, remember?

If you recall the words he used of the precious ointment, see John identifying him as speaking them, the other Gospels or some say that disciples, in the plural, were saying them and Christ corrected all of them.

Now, Judas was personally corrupt and definitely pursuing wealth as a bishop should not (please note, I am not a bishop, I am a writer, so if I invite readers to become paper editors and send me voluntary royalties, this is not a betrayal of episcopal duties, me not having any such), his error echoed for some seconds in the Church, and then Christ corrected it.

This is what we should expect to happen later as well.

5:50 They forgot Jesus saying "My Kingdom is not of this world"?

Or they remembered Him saying "teach ye all nations" rather?

III

6:52 The Pope was called Damasus, not Damascus.

He held the Council of Rome from which you have (I presume) your NT canon.

"One of the important works of Pope Damasus was to preside in the Council of Rome of 382 that determined the canon or official list of Sacred Scripture. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, states: A council probably held at Rome in 382 under St. Damasus gave a complete list of the canonical books of both the Old Testament and the New Testament (also known as the 'Gelasian Decree' because it was reproduced by Gelasius in 495), which is identical with the list given at Trent. American Catholic priest and historian William Jurgens stated: "The first part of this decree has long been known as the Decree of Damasus, and concerns the Holy Spirit and the seven-fold gifts. The second part of the decree is more familiarly known as the opening part of the Gelasian Decree, in regard to the canon of Scripture: De libris recipiendis vel non recipiendis. It is now commonly held that the part of the Gelasian Decree dealing with the accepted canon of Scripture is an authentic work of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D. and that Gelasius edited it again at the end of the fifth century, adding to it the catalog of the rejected books, the apocrypha. It is now almost universally accepted that these parts one and two of the Decree of Damasus are authentic parts of the Acts of the Council of Rome of 382 A.D. (Jurgens, Faith of the Early Fathers)"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Damasus_I

While you presumably reject his OT canon, you do not have an earlier canon version involving all the books you do recognise. St Athanasius may have used all 27 of NT, but he seems to have been doubtful about Esther.

Canon of Council of Laudicaea agrees with your OT canon, but omits Apocalypse from NT.

If you consider Ursinus (the rival of Damasus) was the true leader of Christians in Rome, how do you explain that Ursinus probably and his followers after his death certainly accepted Damasus and his followers?

IV

6:22 You said Gratian refused the title of supreme pontiff.

"The reign of Gratian forms an important epoch in ecclesiastical history, since during that period Nicene Christianity for the first time became dominant throughout the empire."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratian

V

7:09 "And therefore the Catholic Pope is still the head of the mysteries of Babylon"

Does not follow.

Verbal identity of title does not imply real continuity or identity of thing.

Applies to "pontifex maximus" and also to "regina coeli".

The Blessed Virgin is not Ashtoreth and the honours given Her is not Ashtoreth worship.

The ire of God against Ashtoreth as "regina coeli" is totally explicable if He intended to raise His Mother to a position with similar title (it seems in Hebrew there are two words for queen, Jeremiah uses one of Astoreth and Kings uses another of Bathsheba as Queen when Solomon was King - the latter being relevant for the Blessed Virgin).

VI

7:27 Are you quoting this man?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Penrhyn_Stanley

Bc he was Broad Church - i e same party in CoE as Charles Lyell, those not believing the Bible.

Citing wiki:

"Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, FRS (13 December 1815 – 18 July 1881), known as Dean Stanley, was an English churchman and academic. He was Dean of Westminster from 1864 to 1881. His position was that of a Broad Churchman and he was the author of a number of works on Church History."

There were three parties in CoE : High Church = closer to Catholicism; Low Church = further away from Catholicism; Broad Church = not Christian (Liberal Theologians, Modernists).

VII

7:42 "he believed himself to be head not just over the Christian Church, but also over the Pagans in Rome"

In what way? That he could destroy their temples?

So ...? In any other way? Where do you get that from? Stanley?

VIII

8:03 (on screen) "Key point : in order to rule Pagans and Christians, the Catholic Church compromised Christianity."

I've heard that one very often, and since I was a child. I have never believed it.

I also have a Biblical reason to disbelieve it.

You can claim such a thing of Catholicism ONLY if you can show a visible Church existing in the same days (Matthew 28:20) and to ours, consistently opposing Catholicism on the same points as you do.

You do not have such a thing.

9:02 If this were so, (you were continuing the allegation of RC = Paganism + Christian façade) how come the fake Christianity fulfilled the command of converting nations and the sects you consider as true Christianity were very inactive as missionaries?

You do consider some sects opposed to Catholic Rome as true Christianity, don't you?

Or do you consider true Christianity had just vanished? That's same as saying (Matthew 28:20) that Christianity is not true.

IX

9:19 You cite:

"Now the Spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error, and doctrines of devils,"
[1 Timothy 4:1]

As being fulfilled in Catholicism.

Note, it says "some" - not "all".

9:36 [3] Forbidding to marry, to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and by them that have known the truth.

There was one fulfilment in Albigensians, an earlier in Manicheans, and there is one now, when teens are forbidden to marry, mental patients (some of whom are sane) are forbidden to marry, some were to recently forbidden marriage or at least real marriage as with fertility on racial grounds.

Similarily there is one now which promotes veganism - not on Fridays, but all year round.

X

9:46 You cited "idolatry" as one "accepted doctrine of the Church" (back then).

• A) what do you refer to?
• B) where was the visible Church which rejected what you consider as idolatry?

Remember, it has to have been there in those days as in all days up to Doomsday and still be there today, as Doomsday hasn't come yet.

You also called baptismal regeneration an error, what about John 3: [5] Jesus answered: Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

XI

10:08 Patron saints ... Hebrews 11 - 12:

[36] And others had trial of mockeries and stripes, moreover also of bands and prisons. [37] They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put to death by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted: [38] Of whom the world was not worthy; wandering in deserts, in mountains, and in dens, and in caves of the earth. [39] And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise; [40] God providing some better thing for us, that they should not be perfected without us. [1] And therefore we also having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, laying aside every weight and sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us: [2] Looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God.

In other words, St Paul is considering OT saints as patron saints of the Church, now they have been perfected and now that Heaven is open to them, after Calvary.

This ties in with Pope St Damasus promoting honours to martyrs.

"He also did much to encourage the veneration of the Christian martyrs,[25] restoring and creating access to their tombs in the Catacombs of Rome and elsewhere, and setting up tablets with verse inscriptions composed by himself, several of which survive or are recorded in his Epigrammata.[26] Damasus rebuilt or repaired his father's church named for Saint Laurence, known as San Lorenzo fuori le Mura ("St Lawrence outside the walls"), which by the 7th century was a station on the itineraries of the graves of the Roman martyrs. Damasus' regard for the Roman martyr is attested also by the tradition according to which the Pope built a church devoted to Laurence in his own house, San Lorenzo in Damaso. St. Damasus sat in the Chair of St. Peter for eighteen years and two months. His feast day is 11 December. He was buried beside his mother and sister in a "funerary basilica ... somewhere between the Via Appia and Via Ardeatina", the exact location of which is lost."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Damasus_I#Devotion_to_the_martyrs

Gives reference:

Grig, 213 note 50 - referring to Grig, Lucy, "Portraits, Pontiffs and the Christianization of Fourth-Century Rome", Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 72, (2004), pp. 203–230, JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40311081

10:23 - 10:34 Gods were sacrificed to, saints are supposed to and asked to pray for us.

XII

10:56 "all the mother and child cults, which originally represented Semiramis and Tammuz"

Back that up, will you?

Sounds like - Hislop.

A much closer analogy, in Paganism, would be Isis and Horus - but the problem is, they are also close enough to Apocalypse 12.

Yes, part of Apocalypse 12 seems like an echo of the Holy Family fleeing from Herod, and that exact story is so close to Isis and Horus fleeing from Seth, that obviously Zeitgeist and similar minded claim Christianity - the Gospel writers, hagiographers - took this over from Isis and Horus.

Btw, to someone with some real knowledge of letters, you need not expect Hislop to be taken as an authority or as someone who might know what he's talking about.

XIII

11:22 "instead of abandoning the old pagan holidays, they would simply adopt them under a new meaning, the winter solstice festival ..."

I go from subtitles and look at screen : Saturnalia.

Now, the thing about Saturnalia is, they were from December 17 to December 23:rd.

They were NOT on December 25. And the last few days before Christmas were NOT like starting to get in the mood, they were very strict Advent fasts. Polish Catholics still do 40 days of fasting leading up to Christmas and starting on or after 11.XI, St. Martin's day, therefore they are called St. Martin's fast.

This means that, while Christmas of Christians and Saturnalia of Pagans were both done, which was a few centuries or at least one, celebrating Saturnalia meant breaking the Christmas Fast, and that means they were doubly forbidden by the Church : both as Pagan and as breaking the fast.

Natalis Invictus Solis - sure that Natalis was part of the Pagan name?

In fact, the Pagan feast is so late in attestation (a few decades before Constantine's edict of Milan) that it could have been put in place in such a policy as you describe, but by a Pagan Emperor trying to bring Christians around, namely, if he knew they celebrated Christmas.

Which, at least in Egypt, they did.

But yes, it was on December 25. Unlike Saturnalia, which clearly is pre-Christian.

11:45 "indeed 25th of December was widely regarded by all Babylonian religions"

As Nimrod's birthday? As per what shows on screen?

You know what, the months January to December are a Roman invention. Especially having them alternate between 31 and 30 days except February getting 28 or sometimes 29 days was a Roman invention, by the Pontifex Maximus Julius Caesar.

Know one more? Other Pagan calendars usually had - like OT Judaism - real Lunar Months (which is what Roman calendar also started out with), and in such a system, one specific day on one specific month coinciding with a day in Roman calendar would be impossible. Precisely as onset of 25th of Kislev can vary at least as early as sunset 28 November (1st day of Chanukkah in 2021) to at least as late as sunset of 24th of December (1st day of Chanukkah in 2016-2017), so any date in any Lunar month would have no precise correspondence in this specifically Roman calendar. Typically, some years there is an intercalatory month, so years on average get close to Solar years.

With the Babylonian calendar of 12 non-lunar months of 30 days, we have a shift from year to year, precisely as with, though less than, the Muslim calendar with 12 and never 13 Lunar months. There it would be even less possible to assign any date in Roman calendar to a date in Babylonian one.

No, Egyptian calendar did not have 25th December as birthday of Isis and also Isis is not exactly Ashera.

Here is what I find on Isis' birthday:

"The Gods’ Birthday Parties: The Five Special Days"

"The five days added to the Egyptian calendar to bring it up to 365 days each involved the celebration of the birth of a specific god. The first was the birth of Osiris, the Lord of the Duat (the Egyptian underworld). The second day was the birth of Horus, a very prominent falcon-headed deity associated with kingship. The third day celebrated Seth, a god associated with chaos and the wild deserts of Egypt. The fourth and fifth days celebrated the goddesses Isis and Nepthys, two sisters who were associated with protective funerary rites and who brought the god Osiris back from the dead."

https://garstangmuseum.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/ancient-egyptian-festivals/

Note that here the Egyptian year was exactly 365 days, so, every four years, it removed one day from the Roman year. Four Egyptian years = 1460 days, four Roman years 1461 days.

12:08 "Similarily, the spring equinox festival ..."

On screen : Ishtar.

Remark : no.

There are known feasts to Ishtar, unlike Jewish Pesach and Catholic Easter, they are not tied to spring equinox.

Constantine would have pronounced Easter as Pascha, and for details, go here:

https://bellejar.ca/2013/03/28/easter-is-not-named-after-ishtar-and-other-truths-i-have-to-tell-you/

12:19 "Eastre in Gaelic"?

Sorry, Eastre is Anglo-Saxon. Easter and Ostern are the only words with this root I know of.

Frisian has Peaske and Netherlandish or Dutch has Pasen. From ??? Yes, Pascha.

In Gaelic, Easter is Cáisc, and since feminine, with definite article it is an Cháisc - and it comes from Latin Pascha.

http://www.tearma.ie/Search.aspx?term=Easter

https://fy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaske

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasen

XIV

12:38 "Lent has no Biblical basis"

Jesus fasted 40 days - wait, this would have been the Christmas fast, as in St Martin's fast. His fast was after His baptism, and His baptism was when He was nearly 30, while feast in Cana after the fast was when he was already 30.

Well, at least the term 40 days occurs.

Also, Pascha is celebrated for both Redemption and Resurrection. So, Lent gives a kind of OT backdrop on what happened so we needed Redemption. That is why Genesis was traditionally read in Lent - or still is in Orthodox Church - at least chapters 1 through 3.

Also, at Pascha we need some cleanness, spiritually speaking, and unclean spirits are sometimes driven away by ... yes, prayer and fasting.

"but was an essential part of the Babylonian spring festivals"

Would you care to give a reference - and I mean outside Hislop, please!

XV

12:51 "in autumn, there was a harvest festival that honoured the goddess Pomona and this became Christianised as All Souls' Day"

O ... K ... some facts might be nice here!

"In the myth narrated by Ovid, she scorned the love of the woodland gods Silvanus and Picus, but married Vertumnus after he tricked her, disguised as an old woman.[4] She and Vertumnus shared a festival held on August 13. Her priest was called the flamen Pomonalis. The pruning knife was her attribute. There is a grove that is sacred to her called the Pomonal, located not far from Ostia, the ancient port of Rome."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomona_(mythology)

Not All Saints' or All Souls' AND not Our Lady's Assumption either. As you know, that is August 15th. Again, a Christian feast before which fasting was done (Western rite : August 14, Eastern rite : August 1 - 14) comes a few days after a Pagan feast ... as with Saturnalia and Christmas.

13:26 Not sure whether Adam's and Eve's fall is reenacted at bobbing of apples.

Very sure, however, Christmas tree decorations involving apples originated with a reenactment. On 24th of December, in certain cities, a man and a woman would stand naked under a fir tree (the only green one on such a date of the year) to which apples had been tied and speak with some actor impersonating a snake, and then with an actor spekaing up for God and then with actors impersonating the cherubs with swords.

So, thanks for bringing this up.

XVI

13:52 "the Pagan religions polluted Christianity to produce Catholicism"

Nice myth ... you are into murder of Hiram Abiff too?

But if we like a bit less Freemasonry as I do, and a bit more reality, where does this leave the UNPOLLUTED Christianity back then?

You know, back then was not night 24 hours per day, there were days, so the time period has to match Christ's promise in Matthew 28:20.

XVII

15:53 "[it can be guaranteed that the secular counterpart is] coming from Satan to take attention away from Jesus"

No, it can't.

When you have spent 24 hours, or even 12 hours with all of your attention on Jesus, we can talk again ... meanwhile, the Church may prefer secular festive things to using lots of time on secular non-festive and everyday things, since spending 24 hours with all attention on Jesus is really not for everyone.