re hyslop and the two babylons in article may geneva rutgers edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes seeing as how the two babylons has been brought up again it is time for me to respond once again and say that this book is junk it is nothing more that an anti catholic tract of the sort published ever since the there were protestants its scholarship is phony and its assertions spurious i have not seen this book though i have had several people quote it in support of some tendentious assertions they were making so i have become curious about it i don t want to malign this hislop fellow whoever he may be as i have only heard the arguments at second hand but both of the arguments seemed to turn on false etymology that seemed to be derived from hislop i would be interested in knowing more about these things the first one claimed that the word church was derived from the greek cyclos and that it was therefore related to the worship of circe i don t know if hislop is the source of this assertion but it does seem to be based on false etymology the second claimed an etymological relationship between ishtar and easter which seemed to be even more fanciful and far fetched than some of the wilder notions of the british israelites regarding the latter as far as i have been able to find out easter is derived from the old english name for april eosturmonath the venerable bede mentioned that this was associated with a goddess called eostre but apart from that reference i have not been able to find out anything more about her it also seems that the term easter is only used by the english and those they evangelized the germans for example also use the term ostern but germany was evangelized by english missionaries so i would be interested in any evidence of easter being used for pascha by people who do not have any kind of connection with the ancient anglo saxons and their offshoots such evidence might support the claims of those who appear to derive the theory from hislop steve hayes department of missiology editorial department univ of south africa p o box pretoria south africa internet hayesstw risc unisa ac za fidonet steve hayes p f n z fidonet org faq missiology is the study of christian mission and is part of the faculty of theology at unisa
