author
Alexander Hislop
1807–1865
A Scottish minister best remembered for the fiercely argued The Two Babylons, he wrote with the urgency and confidence of a 19th-century religious controversialist. His work stayed widely discussed long after his death, both for its influence and for the debate it continues to spark.
1 Audiobook
The Proverbs of Scotland
by Alexander Hislop
About the author
Born in 1807, Alexander Hislop was a Free Church of Scotland minister from Duns, Berwickshire. He became known for strong criticism of the Roman Catholic Church, writing in a direct, combative style that reflected the religious disputes of his time.
He is most closely associated with The Two Babylons, a work that began as a pamphlet in 1853 and was later expanded into book form. In it, he argued that Roman Catholic practices had roots in ancient pagan religion, a claim that made the book influential in some Protestant circles and controversial far beyond them.
Hislop died on March 13, 1865, in Arbroath, Scotland. Though his conclusions have often been challenged, his name remains tied to one of the best-known polemical religious books of the 19th century.