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Handbook for Bible Students

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    “V” Entries

    Virgin Mary, From Babylon.—The very name by which the Italians commonly designate the Virgin, is just the translation of one of the titles of the Babylonian goddess. As Baal or Belus was the name of the great male divinity of Babylon, so the female divinity was called Beltis. (Hesychius, Lexicon, p. 188.) This name has been found in Nineveh applied to the “mother of the gods” (Vaux’s “Nineveh and Persepolis,” p. 459); and in a speech attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, preserved in Eusebii “Praparatio Evangelii,” lib. ix, cap. 41, both titles, “Belus and Beltis,” are conjoined as the titles of the great Babylonian god and goddess. The Greek Belus, as representing the highest title of the Babylonian god, was undoubtedly Baal, “The Lord.” Beltis, therefore, as the title of the female divinity, was equivalent to “Baalti,” which in English is “My Lady,” in Latin, “Mea Domina,” and in Italian, is corrupted into the well-known “Madonna.”-“The Two Babylons,” Rev. Alexander Hislop, p. 20, note, 7th edition. London: S. W. Partridge & Co.HBS 484.4

    Virgin Mary, Assumption of.—The doctrine on which the festival of the Assumption is founded, is this: that the Virgin Mary saw no corruption, that in body and in soul she was carried up to heaven, and now is invested with all power in heaven and in earth.... This doctrine has now received the stamp of papal infallibility, having been embodied in the late blasphemous decree that proclaims the “Immaculate Conception.” Now, it is impossible for the priests of Rome to find one shred of countenance for such a doctrine in Scripture. But in the Babylonian system, the fable was ready made to their hand. There it was taught that Bacchus went down to hell, rescued his mother from the infernal powers, and carried her with him in triumph to heaven. This fable spread wherever the Babylonian system spread; and accordingly, at this day, the Chinese celebrate, as they have done from time immemorial, a festival in honor of a mother who by her son was rescued from the power of death and the grave.—“The Two Babylons,” Rev. Alexander Hislop, pp. 125, 126, 7th edition. London: S. W. Partridge & Co.HBS 484.5

    Virgin Mary, Assumption of, Not Taught in the Early Church.—Neither the New Testament nor the patristic writings tell us anything about the destiny of the Holy Virgin after the death of Christ. Two apocryphal works of the fourth or fifth century-one ascribed to St. John, the other to Melito, bishop of Sardis-are the earliest authorities for the tradition about her bodily assumption. It is contained also in the pseudo-Dionysius; he and Gregory of Tours brought it into the Western Church. But centuries passed before it found any recognition. Even the Martyrology of Usuard, used in the Roman Church in the ninth century, confined itself to the statement that nothing was known of the manner of the holy Virgin’s death and the subsequent condition of her body.—“The Pope and the Council,” Janus (Dr. J. J. Ign. von Döllinger) (R. C.), pp. 34, 35, London: Rivingtons, 1869.HBS 485.1

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