Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture does not do history. He does myth-making. The most persistent myth in all of Tim's oeuvre is that the Philippines was the centre of all trade and commerce because it has been blessed with every valuable resource under the sun. That includes mineral wealth, botanical wealth, and animal wealth. In comparison to the Philippines every other nation is a desert which is why the Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs, Chinese, and Israelites sailed vast distances to trade with the archipelago. That includes circumnavigating Africa at a time when no one was circumnavigating Africa. Japan doesn't have any resources which is proof it is not Cipangu.
📖 Nippon on the Behaim Globe
What about the islands north of the Tropic of Cancer? They’re on the map too—but they are not Zipangu.
Nippon (or Nihon), known as Rìběn in Chinese, was the name used in the Grand Khan’s letter to the King of Japan—not Zipangu. The nation we now call Japan has no linguistic connection to “Zipangu” whatsoever—a fact acknowledged even by several Japanese scholars.
Yes, Japan does appear on the Behaim Globe—but without honor or distinction.
It is merely identified as part of “Indies Cathay”, i.e., the Indies east of China.
There is no special annotation, no gold, no pearls, no spices.
No mention of Zipangu, Lequios, or the legendary wealth described by Marco Polo.
In other words, Japan is not the target of Columbus, Magellan, or the explorers of the Age of Discovery.
Columbus, in his own journals, clearly places Zipangu at 20°–22°N—coordinates that perfectly match Luzon in the Philippines, not a single Japanese island.
Anyone claiming that Japan lies south of the Tropic of Cancer—displacing Luzon to do so—is not a scholar.
They are a propagandist.
📍The Geographic Problem:
Japan’s major islands fall far north of Zipangu’s mapped location.
The large, richly annotated island below the Tropic of Cancer on Behaim’s globe matches Luzon—in both latitude and description.
Attempts to conflate tiny Ryukyu into that island have no scholarly merit. Ryukyu is clearly marked elsewhere on historical maps—and never as Zipangu.
That's right. Cipangu or Zipangu on older maps was not Japan but Luzon, the Philippines. While Luzon was depicted on Behaim's 1492 Globe as being loaded with resources, Japan was depicted as just a few teeny-tiny islands "without honor or distinction." Tim knows Cipangu is not Japan because it is located in the general area of Luzon on Behaim's map. Get the idea out of your head that European maps were wrong for many years and needed correction based on evolving knowledge because that is "colonial revisionism."
Let’s be clear:
Japan is on the map—labeled as Indies Cathay, without distinction.
There is no Zipangu label on Japan.
There is no note of gold, spice, or resource wealth.
Any modern attempt to move Zipangu northward and displace Luzon with Japan is not academic work—it is colonial revisionism dressed in scholarly robes.
15th and 16th century European maps of East Asia were 100% correct and did not need any revisions according to Tim. Behaim's 1492 globe showed everything in its right place. Cipangu is placed in Luzon's location ergo it is Luzon. No backsies or corrections allowed. How did a map from 1492 depict discoveries from 1521? Stop scoffing, you agitator!
Compare that to a fake scholar who claims to know all about European cartography as it relates to Japan.
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| https://www.jstor.org/stable/3634221 |
By the middle of the sixteenth century the Pacific was gradually taking its correct shape as more expeditions course the seas between the Philippines and more traders and missionaries penet great Oriental kingdoms. In 1549, Francis Xavier began his famous mission in Japan. Yet it was a long time before correct concept and the northern Pacific appeared on European maps. The main reason was, of course, the false concepts inherited from Marinus, Ptolemy, and Marco Polo which made the earth too small and Asia too big. Other factors entered into it, however. For one thing, these missionaries were generally poor cartographers. Furthermore, the situation was complicated by the dispute that arose when the advance of Spain and Portugal in opposite directions east and west from Europe met on the other side of the globe. This dispute centered around the ownership of the Moluccas. Both Spain and Portugal claimed the islands as in their portion of the world between the two Lines of Demarcation. Before the position of these islands became a subject of controversy, the Portuguese had always placed them much further east (from the Cape of Good Hope) than their actual position warranted, apparently as a result of a continuing error by Portuguese navigators.
pg. 233-234
But while such map makers were continuing to misplace Japan, others were producing the first maps based on systematic cartographical material from persons who were well acquainted with Japan. The Portuguese were naturally the leaders in this field, having maintained the most intimate connections with the island kingdom in the early period of European acquaintance. Diogo Homem's map of 1558, although very defective in its depiction of the islands, at least puts them in their true relation to the continent of Asia and gives the coast of the southernmost island, Kyushu, in great detail.
pg. 234
The rest of the story consists of an uneven but effective progress in the delineation of Japan's boundaries and her location with respect to Asia.
p. 235
It was not until the expeditions of Vitus Bering, 1725-1728 and 1742, for the Russian government, that some semblance of geograp accuracy was obtained in the northern Pacific. Bering demonstrated the existence of a strait between North America and Asia, reduced Yezo to its true size, and charted much of the Kurile chain. Japan had lost her last hiding place.
Thus, finally, did "the shuttlecock of the Pacific" come to rest. The eye of inquiring, hypothesizing, Western cartographical science had variously placed her according to rumor, hope, or knowledge. Tied by lines of longitude and latitude, Marco Polo's mystery isle was finally subjected to the stare of the Western world. The early maps enable us to see in capsule form the whole history of the age of discovery. We see the Japan described on these maps luring Europeans to discovery and conquest by her proximity to Europe and by her great wealth. We find her ability to avoid the fate of the island first mistaken for her foreshadowed on these maps by their conceptions of her size and power. Here, in brief, captured in the few lines and letters of these early maps, is the picture of a past age.
p. 236
Suck it Washburn. You're a colonial propagandist. European maps placing Cipangu in the south were correct until the Jesuits conspired to alter them and remove the name of Cipangu from Luzon north to Japan. Oh, and if you think Cipangu was never a name for Luzon, you're also a colonial propagandist. Chinese history be damned!
- Aside from 三洲, Ma-i also consists of the islands of Pai-p'u-yen (巴布延, Hokkien POJ: Pa-pò͘-iân, Mandarin Pinyin: Bābùyán, "Babuyan"), P'u-li-lu (波利略, Hokkien POJ: Po-lī-lio̍k, Mandarin Pinyin: Bōlìlüè, "Polillo"), Lim-kia-tung (林加延, Hokkien POJ: Lîm-ka-iân, Mandarin Pinyin: Línjiāyán, "Lingayen"), Liu-sung (呂宋, Hokkien POJ: Lū-sòng, MandarinPinyin: Lǚsòng, "Luzon") and Li-ban (盧邦, Hokkien POJ: Lô͘-pang, Mandarin Pinyin: Lúbāng, "Lubang").[23] It was said that these islands had contacts with Chinese traders from Canton (Guangdong) as early as 982 AD.
- Liusung (呂宋, Hokkien POJ: Lū-sòng, Mandarin Pinyin: Lǚsòng) was the name ascribed by the Chinese to the present-day island of Luzon. It originated from the Tagalog word lusong, a wooden mortar that is used to pound rice. When the Spanish produced maps of the Philippines during the early 17th century, they called the island Luçonia which was later respelled as Luzonia, then Luzon.
Not only is Wikipedia in on the cover-up but so is the 13th century book Chau Ju-Kua: his work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chï."
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| https://archive.org/details/cu31924023289345/page/n185/mode/2up |
The country of Wo is to the north-east of Ts'uan-(chou). It is at present called Ji-pon (日本), which name has arisen from the fact that this country is situated near the place where the sun rises. Some people say that they changed the old name because they disliked it.
There are some who would say Zipangu is Marco Polo's mispronunciation or transliteration of Ji-pon (日本).
Marco Polo called Japan 'Cipangu' around 1300, based on the Chinese enunciation of the name, probably 日本國; 'sun source country' (compare modern Min Nan pronunciation ji̍t pún kok).
They are wrong!! Zipangu is Zipangu. Marco Polo wrote what he meant. There is no such thing as Europeans mispronouncing or transliterating foreign words. Duh! The Pangu in Zipangu identifies it as the Philippines.
On the chapter cover pages, we offered Marco Polo’s description of the amazing island of gold he refers to as the Chinese words Zi Pangu. These already identify much one can test settling this debate which academia seems incapable of simple logic. Let us begin with the word. What does it mean? For this is two words and one is a god in their pantheon which gets overlooked by most.
“Pangu (Chinese: 盤古, PAN-koo) is a primordial being and creation figure in Chinese mythology and Taoism who separated heaven and earth, and his body later became geographic features such as mountains and rivers.” 2
Is it really possible that academics are so incapable? Not likely. Their forgetting who Pangu is to the Chinese demonstrates they are committing propaganda. Pangu is the creator god in their religion and legends. After he created, he literally became the land. We are not Taoists, and this is a twisting of the Genesis Creation account but one can quickly observe how such a legend can gain its origin. Yahuah, the actual Creator, went into the Earth with His physical presence in His Holy of Holies in the Garden of Eden. Genesis is clear on this and Jubilees very directly. For when one locates this land of gold and Garden of Eden, they also pinpoint ground zero for the Creation event itself.
Pangu is geography. He became geographic features of the Earth, and the Land of Creation is the same as Havilah and the Garden of Eden which is the same as the isles of gold. This is not a mystery. Pangu can be found in interpretation as this land. Oddly, we have not found a single scholar who figured out this elementary detail.
The Garden of Eden Revealed, pgs. 128, 130
If you aren't familiar with Tim's books and videos, the Land of Creation, Havilah, the Garden of Eden, and isles of gold are various names of the Philippines.
But back to the resources. Japan has NONE!
There is no note of gold, spice, or resource wealth.
13th century Chinese scholar Chau Ju-Kua says differently because he is a propagandist.
The country yields all kinds of cereals, but little wheat. For purposes of exchange they use copper cash bearing the inscription Kien-yiian-ta-pau. They have water-buffalo, donkeys, sheep, (but neither) rhinoceros (nor) elephants, also gold and silver, fine silks and fancy cotton cloth.
https://archive.org/details/cu31924023289345/page/n185/mode/2up
See! They didn't even have rhinoceroses and Japan Today says Marco Polo said Zipangu has rhinoceroses!
In an article well explaining this, Japan Today admits there is no credible track in history to Zipangu as a name for Japan. Many have fabricated theories or guesses without any knowledge or facts to support. That is Pharisee leaven, not academics.
“While Japanese people usually refer to their country as Nihon or Nippon these days, in early texts, the names Oyashima (mother island) or Yamato (which was written with the Chinese characters for great and wa, see below) were used. However, evenin those early days, there is evidence that Japan had other names in other countries such as Wakoku (a name for identifying Japan at the time) by the Chinese.”
“The origin of the “wa” in Wakoku is hotly debated. The most likely theory is that the Japanese words waga (oneself) and ware (ourself) formed it.”
“In the West around the 14th century, Japan was likely going by “the noble island of Chipangu,” which was given to it by none other than the famous explorer Marco Polo. Although it seems likely that Chipangu was Japan, it is not confirmed as Marco Polo included some very fanciful tales about these isles including the presence of rhinos, cannibalistic natives and private houses made of gold.” – Japan TodayOops! Japan does not have rhinos meaning this country Marco Polo referred to did, says Japan Today, meaning Zipangu was not Japan.
The Garden of Eden Revealed, pgs. 127
Further research, like reading the footnote on Chau Ju-Kua's text mentioning the original text of the Sung-shi affirming the presence of rhinoceroses and elephants is corrupt, is totally unnecessary.
If you think Marco Polo wrote there were rhinos in Zipangu but that was based on an error in the Sung-shi because he never visited Japan, well you're basically a bigot. A "colonial propagandist." Marco Polo wrote what he wrote and he was right. Japan has no rhinos therefore it's not Zipangu. Away with nuance in understanding textual transmission.
Even further research like reading Marco Polo's actual journal instead of relying on an internet article from Japan Today and noticing he does not mention rhinoceroses in connection with Zipangu but with Java and other countries is also something one does not need to do.
There are wild elephants in the country, and numerous unicorns, which are very nearly as big. They have hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of the forehead, which is black and very thick.
Japan Today's commentary about Marco Polo is much more reliable than Marco Polo's actual words.
Cipangu is actually one of many names of the Philippines.
Chryse, Maniola, Sabadibae, Argye, Aurea, Lequios, Zipangu / Cipangu, Ophir, Aurea, Uphaz, Zipangu, Paradise, and Tarshish
In other words: same place, different names, which should be no surprise for an archipelago rich in gold and every resource fitting all these designations on its 7,000 islands.
https://thegodculturephilippines.com/bananas-behaim-behold----zipangu-was-never-japan/
This article started off by claiming Tim's overarching narrative is that only the Philippines has the resources the world wanted. So far only his claims about Japan have been examined but this also extends to India.
In his testing the resources of Ophir The God Culture admits that India has all the resources attributed to Ophir.
#33: Is India Ophir? 100 Clues The Philippines Is Ophir 2:29 One such claim is that India must be Ophir. Now we will give them that India does in fact have the resources on Solomon's list. Yes it does.
In his book The Search for King Solomon's Treasure he says the same thing.
The only other coherent claim as far as resources are concerned is India yet it’s own history says it had a source of ancient gold and silver, isles to the East thus none of these make any sense except the Philippines.
Every resource of Solomon tests as native to the Philippines and all other claims fail in this chapter except India whose claim already failed the test of it’s own history.
Notice how in the same sentence Tim contradicts himself by saying India's claim does not fail but also fails the test of history despite Josephus claiming India is Ophir. What is important to note is that Tim admits India has all the resources of Ophir which affirms the historical claim of Josephus that Ophir is in India.
https://thegodculturephilippines.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-god-culture-philippines-is-not-ophir.html
27:30 The question for the land of gold is who has the most gold in the ground now.
38:09 But we don't need this. We don't need it to show on mining gold reports for production. The report that matters is untapped gold in the ground now.
