The God Culture: Columbus Rebuked Marco Polo and the Great Khan

Conspiracy is the hallmark of the historical revisionism project of Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture. The gist is the whole world knew the land of Ophir was the Philippines and then bad actors, i.e. the British, came along to cover up the fact. According to Tim even Marco Polo and Kublai Khan covered up the true location of Ophir and for doing so received a rebuke from Christopher Columbus. 

In chapter 4, page 95, of Garden of Eden Revealed Tim writes the following:

Garden of Eden Revealed, pg 95

Columbus wrote that Cipangu of Marco Polo was Ophir and that Marco Polo and the Great Khan "failed" to represent Cipangu as Ophir. They were always the same land! "Encouraged by the interest with which the sovereigns listened to his account of his recent voyage along the coast of Cuba, bordering, as he supposed, on the rich territories of the Grand Khan, and of his discovery of the mines of Hayna, which he failed not to represent as the Ophir of the of the ancients, Columbus now proposed a further enterprise, by which he promised to make yet more extensive discoveries and to annex a vast and unappropriated portion of the continent of Asia to their dominions."

Tim claims this citation is saying Columbus said Marco Polo and the Great Khan failed to represent Cipangu as Ophir. However, there is nothing about Cipangu in this paragraph. Neither are Marco Polo and the Great Khan mentioned. What is mentioned is Columbus giving his account of "his discovery of the mines of Hayna." It is Columbus who "failed not to represent as the Ophir of the ancients" these mines as he related his travels to "the sovereigns", i.e. the King and Queen of Spain. This is not an account of Columbus rebuking Marco Polo and Kublai Khan for concealing the location of Ophir. 

Tim either did not understand what he was reading or he willfully misinterpreted it. 

Tim repeats this same claim in one of his videos. 

1490 Columbus Map: Garden of Eden in the Philippines. Garden of Eden Revealed Map Series: Part 1

1:01:39 Columbus wrote that Cipangu of Marco Polo was in fact Ophir and he actually rebuked Marco Polo and the Great Khan who he said failed to represent Cipangu as Ophir. Wow! Yeah, that's in writing. It's right there.

Wow! But, no. It's not in writing. It's not there. Tim is misinterpreting the text. 

This same claim is carried over into Tim's new study guide.

Lost Isles of Gold Small Group Study Guide, pg. 13

15. When Columbus rebuked Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, what did he accuse them of concealing?

And so it snowballs from one medium to the next. Tim starts a lie in his book, rolls it over into his videos, and packs it into his study guide. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive. 

The source for this quote is Washington Irving's book The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

https://archive.org/details/lifevoyagesofchr00ir/page/210/mode/2up

Another quote Tim uses from Irving's book is as follows:

Garden of Eden Revealed, pg. 95

Columbus thinking he landed in the Philippines, began identifying an island as Ophir. Yes, the Ophir of King Solomon who built the Temple he wrote.  

"I had already surmised that Hispaniola might be the ancient Ophir; he now fancied he had discovered the identical mines from whence King Solomon had procured his great supplies of gold for the building of the temple of Jerusalem. He gave orders that a fortress should be immediately erected in the vicinity of the mines, and that they should be diligently worked; and he now looked forward with confidence to his return to Spain, the bearer of such golden tidings. "

This is completely wrong. "...King Solomon who built the temple he wrote?" That does not make any grammatical sense. Where is the editor?  Here is what Irving actually wrote. 

https://archive.org/details/lifevoyagesofchr00ir/page/204/mode/2up

He had already surmised that Hispaniola might be the ancient Ophir; he now fancied he had discovered the identical mines from whence King Solomon had procured his great supplies of gold for the building of the temple of Jerusalem. He gave orders that a fortress should be immediately erected in the vicinity of the mines, and that they should be diligently worked; and he now looked forward with confidence to his return to Spain, the bearer of such golden tidings.

See the difference? Tim writes "I had already surmised that Hispaniola might be the ancient Ophir" as if that is something Columbus wrote in his journal. But Irving is writing in the third person. He is not quoting from anything here, neither Columbus' journals nor his letters. 

In fact if you search the journals of Columbus you will not find any reference to Ophir or Ofir.

https://archive.org/details/fourvoyagesofchr0000jmco/page/300/mode/2up?q=ophir

Likewise if you search the letters of Columbus you will not find any reference to Ophir or Ofir.

https://archive.org/details/authenticletters00colu/mode/2up?q=ophir

So where does Washington Irving get the idea that Columbus thought Hispaniola is Ophir? Possibly from two places. The first is a letter written to Pope Alexander VI in 1502. This letter is not contained in the above collection. Translated it reads:

This island is Tharsis, Cethya, Ophyr, Ophaz and Çipanga, and we have called it Hispaniola.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924066476155&seq=390

The second place Columbus makes a mention of discovering Ophir is in the margin of his copy of Pliny's Natural History. Rather than cite Columbus' words Tim cites a secondhand source, The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800. Here is what Columbus actually wrote:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924066476155&seq=698&q1=ofir

Amber is certainly found in India under the ground, and I have had it dug out of several hills in Feyti, Ophir or Cipangu, which I afterwards named Hispaniola I have found one piece as big as a head, but it is not wholly clear, rather, clear-grey Another one is black I now have enough.

The place in Pliny being commented on is Book 27, chapter 11. The subject is amber and Columbus' note is about the amber he found on the island of Hispaniola. 

And that's it. These are, apparently, the only two times in Columbus' writings he mentions Ophir by name regarding a place he discovered. Anything beyond these mentions or regarding their meaning is pure speculation. 

Let's cite what Tim omits from his citation of The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800 concerning this note from Columbus. 

This note reveals Columbus’s remarkable ability to entertain numerous diverse and conflicting geographic hypotheses at the same time; Ophir, traditionally located near India, could hardly be the same place as Cipangu, the name Marco Polo had given to the island of Japan. Moreover, the idea that either place would need to be renamed by Columbus—since both were well known and written of under their original names—also raises troubling questions.

The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, pg. 30

Tim will of course pooh-pooh that comment and call the author a propagandist who is no scholar and has done no real research but what he will not do is consider what has been written. Why would Columbus need to rename an island Ophir or Cipnagu when they are both well-known locales?

The problem is Tim thinks Columbus was right about everything he thought regarding the discoveries he made though he was off by ten thousand miles. 

Columbus believed he was in Southeast Asia, not the Americas. This proved to be wrong in distance but his research on Ophir, the Garden of Eden, Chryse, Zipangu and Aurea Chersoneses as the same archipelago remains valid.

Columbus wrote that he used two maps on his journey which we will review in detail. They leave nothing to guesswork regarding the location of Chryse/Ophir and Zipangu as the Philippines.

Garden of Eden Revealed, pg. 96

There is a lot to unpack here but I will only make a few comments. First of all it is obvious that Columbus was wrong about everything he thought regarding the lands he discovered. Tim recognizes that fact but still insists Columbus was actually correct being wrong only "in distance" meaning if there were no Americas and he had landed in what we now know as the Philippines he would have been entirely correct in labelling wherever he landed as Ophir, Zipangu, etc.

Secondly even if the above situation were true, there being no Americas, Columbus would still be wrong. Tim thinks Columbus is right about Ophir/Zipangu because Tim is wrong in everything he says about those locations and is looking for confirmation for his false paradigm in the writings of others. Zipangu is Japan, not the Philippines. He is misreading and misinterpreting Marco Polo. You can read about that here. Ophir is India as Tim has even admitted in his resource test it contains all the resources attributed to Ophir.

Thirdly Columbus did not think an archipelago was Ophir. It was a singular island and he named it Hispaniola which is composed of the nations Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In the citations above it is Espanola and Spangola. It is also referred to as Feyti which is the same as Haiti.

Fourthly it is highly anachronistic to say Columbus thought anything about the Philippines because they were not discovered until 1520 during Magellan's voyage. Tim regularly employs anachronistic language which he would do well to avoid. 

The point of all this is threefold. Tim misunderstands the texts he cites, he misquotes the texts he cites, and he cannot be bothered to seek out primary sources. Tim is a poor researcher and he has no idea what he is talking about. The end result is a mishmash of citations that at first glance appear to back up his claims but which easily crumbles under the slightest scrutiny. As ever such ignorance is par for the course for Timothy Jay Schwab who is The God Culture.