Sign of the Cross Babylonian, Says Who? Hislop? Or ...?

Catholic priest says, "We don't worship statues and idols" oh really? Landmark 2018 Stockton ca
GabeTheStreetPreacher | 26.XI.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4DcEZt1cx8

Here is a guy who pretends after he had told Catholics not to make the sign of the Cross, it was rebellion against "the preacher" to make the sign of the Cross anyway.

Now, there is a problem already here, since the "fides ex auditu" passage says preachers have to be sent.

That is why I content myself with Apologetics, which even a layman can do, and do not pretend to preach or assume authority over people on God's behalf.

But we see more:



He was the second before - as subtitles seemed sufficiently consistent - speaking of the Sign or the Cross.

Now, he claims, Apostles never did that, contrary to the Catholic claim, we have the Sign of the Cross by tradition from Apostles.

One little query is, how does he know a negative about Apostles, directly that is, not as a conclusion from the following?

If he claims to have received tradition from the Apostles, he can start stating where the intermediates between them and himself were in the 5th or 8th C. Or other centuries previous to Reformation and its post-year-thousand prequels.

If he doesn't claim that, he is claiming it is in the Bible - but it isn't directly.

While we Catholics claim it is consistent with the Bible and a fuller realisation of certain words of Christ on taking the cross, and a tradition from Him through His Apostles, or simply from His Apostles guided by the Holy Ghost, we do not claim to see the words "sign of the cross" mentioned directly in the Bible.

I "google" the words sign of the cross in drbo dot org and get the result "No verse contains all the words in the query."

So, he can't have found a verse which contains the phrase "sign of the cross" and considers it as idolatry or invented by non-Apostles outside the Apostolic Church or by Pagans before them.

Therefore his sole case rests only on concluding this from a piece of information from outside the Bible.

Namely, as he states, "that ritual goes back to ancient Babylon".

Now, he does not have this from the Bible, as "sign of the cross" is in no verse (and a Douay Rheims Bible has more books and more verses than a King James Bible, not fewer, so it can't be the verse missing).

He does not get it from a "real Apostolic Church" having all the time existed outside the Catholic Church and been there before it, since there isn't any.

He does also not get it from any real research about what the Babylonian rites actually involved, as far as I can tell.

If he does, he might want to share the source, but for my part, I believe he gets that statement from someone like Hislop, probably either he read himself the fraudulent work The Two Babylons, or he got his info from someone who had.

His next statement actually involves making Hindoos Babylonian.

"making hand gestures, a mudra" (visible subtitle at 1:26 in video)

I have in fact read (but not much practised) a book on yoga for children, and seen how the mudras look. First of all, they are not hand gestures, since hand is usually resting on knees of a lotus position while one does them. They are finger positions. But the Sign of the Cross also has a few finger positions, do the mudras coincide with them? None of them has thumb against next two fingers and last two fingers folded into the palm (Austrian sign of the cross "mudra"). None of them has thumb against last two fingers and the two longest ones crosses in an X (Orthodox Sign of the Cross "mudra", perhaps also used by Uniates). I don't recall any Hindoo or Yoga mudra either having the fingers aligned like a flat surface (Roman Sign of the Cross "mudra").

I very definitely don't see any exercise of yoga, with or without mudras, involving hand going from forehead to breast and then from shoulder to shoulder (left to right for Catholics and right to left for Orthodox) and then back to breast.

I also do not recall any taking the own thumb and drawing two crossed lines or a T on the forehead, the mouth and the breast.

I will actually have to ask a person who actually did get into yoga.

That said, I don't think Yoga and Hindooism are very Babylonian things.

Babylonian mythology seems to be materialistic, all gods coming from pre-existent matter, a bit on the lines of abiogenesis. Not Pantheistic, like Hindooism has become. Even in idol worship, apart from philosophy, Hinduism seems not to have worshipped any "super strong" over gods (while Mithra and Varuna are indeed monster killers, they are closer to Castor and Pollux than to Bel, and Indra seems to lose importance in proportion as Hindoos start meditation).

In the Vedas, Indra is the king of Svarga (Heaven) and the Devas. He is the god of lightning, thunder, storms, rains and river flows.[6] Indra is the most referred to deity in the Rigveda.[7] He is celebrated for his powers, and the one who kills the great symbolic evil (Asura) named Vritra who obstructs human prosperity and happiness. Indra destroys Vritra and his "deceiving forces", and thereby brings rains and the sunshine as the friend of mankind.[1][8] His importance diminishes in the post-Vedic Indian literature where he is depicted as a powerful hero but one who is getting in trouble with his drunken, hedonistic and adulterous ways, and the god who disturbs Hindu monks as they meditate because he fears self-realized human beings may become more powerful than him.

So, the Hindoo god who is most Babylonian is also least relevant for yoga.

This does not seem like a good clue about mudras coming from Babylon, actually, since they are associated with yoga, not with Indra worship. Apart from already mentioned fact that Hindoo mudras are finger positions other than those used for Sign of the Cross, apart fril the already mentioned fact that no yoga exercise includes any look alike of Sign of the Cross - that I know of, at least.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Ash Wednesday
14.II.2018*

* Ash Wednesday comes before St Valentine's Day, when they coincide, as this year.