3.2—The Myths & Legends (15 min video)

Transcript

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Well, today we’re going to take a look at the whole idea of myth and some specific myths of explorers who may have existed and may have come over here prior to Columbus.

That sounds kind of funny, because we’re talking about people– this is a history class– we’re talking about people who may not have even actually existed. But the thing about history, even though a lot of modern historians try to treat history like a science, actually call it social science. History isn’t a science. You cannot test these things in a laboratory. You can’t put them under a microscope or do some kind of chemical test to see if they’re really accurate or not. Now, you can dig things up from the earth and you can run various chemical tests on them and things of that nature, but that only tells you information.

You also have to know how to actually apply the information. And so, one of the interesting things that we encounter very often in history is we encounter the whole idea of the myth or the legend.

Now we have lots of characters throughout history, characters like Robin Hood or characters like King Arthur, for example, who may or may not have existed and with all the stories we have on them, we can be pretty certain that most likely all of those stories aren’t actually true. In fact, if you look at the story of King Arthur, which you’re probably familiar with. The whole idea that he had a magician who was able to perform magic, and the whole idea that he got this sword from a magical lady in the lake, and the whole idea that he had the Knights of the Round Table, and so forth, it’s quite possible that all those things happened in that way. But what myths do is they tell us something very important, something that we often miss. There’s actually an idea of G.K. Chesterton’s, a brilliant writer from the early 20th century, late 19th century. Anyway, Chesterton took a look at myths. He said, “You know what? Whenever you have someone who a big story’s been told about, and most likely a lot of stories aren’t true, so say for example Robin Hood or King Arthur, when you have a man like that or a woman like that who has all of these tales surrounding them and you know that some of them are probably not accurate, that didn’t actually occur that way, it tells you one very important thing. It tells you that people thought highly of that person enough that they actually wanted to kind of exaggerate or even fudge a little bit about what they actually did.

That’s how important that person was to them. So when you have a character like King Arthur, no, he may not have done all the things that the typical stories or tales tell you that he did.

But one thing we do know about King Arthur is he probably was a significant king. He probably was a noble and a good and a brave king. Otherwise, there’s no other real great reason to explain why people would have invented so many stories about him. But of course, it’s the stories about him that we remember. It’s those character traits that we really latch onto. So today, as we take a look at the myths of the men who may have come over here prior to Columbus, keep that in mind.

It’s not so much, “Did this actually happen this way?” as it is, “What was behind these men’s motives?” What actually was behind why these men came here in the first place? Now, for the first story, or the first part that we’ll take a look at, it actually centers around a people from antiquity, the Carthaginians. In fact, if you remember, we mentioned the Carthaginians when we talked about the Mesoamericans, because they were similar civilizations. The Carthaginians were great people of trade, they were great merchants. They sailed all over the Mediterranean, all over the known world. They might have even sailed far down Africa. We’re not entirely certain, but we know that they were quite daring. Sometimes it was for profit, but there were of course those men who just wanted to see what was out there. Now the first Carthaginian explorer I want you to note is Hanno the Navigator. Now Hanno the Navigator was known because he explored much of West Africa. He sailed down that coast, explored its various lands and its peoples and its creatures centuries before Christ ever came. But perhaps what’s most intriguing about Hanno the Navigator is that when he returned to Carthage, He began to spread the idea that maybe someone with the right ship, with the right people, with the right tools and the right number of supplies could sail west across the great ocean which we call the Atlantic Ocean today and they actually would find land.

Now this was just an idea but the funny thing about ideas is ideas always have consequences as Richard Weaver once said. Ideas always matter. Ideas always do something to us. And this idea did something to the Carthaginians because later Carthaginian explorers took up on this idea. The next Carthaginian explorer I want you to note, his name was Lanable. You’ll see his name here as well so you can properly spell Lanable. But Lanable is interesting. He actually, from what we can tell from records, discovered the Canary Islands, from which we get the bird name. It’s this island’s group out in the middle, roughly, of the Atlantic Ocean. And it was always a stopping place before you crossed the Great Ocean. But when he discovered it, people in many ways thought that it was the edge of the known world. But he also discovered that there was this interesting phenomenon in the ocean. There was a section where the water became warmer and also faster. In other words, we think that Landible may have discovered the Gulf Stream stream centuries before we were able to really document it. Another Carthaginian explorer to note, his name was Taharqa. And Taharqa sailed far south of the Atlantic Ocean. He actually came to the island of what we think was St. Helena because he reported there were no trees or very few trees on the island, which is true about St. Helena. And he also reported that he saw rats that were about the size of your fat cat or your small dog. In other words, he came to what we know of as the island of Saint Helena, which is the farthest island from any other continent in the whole world.

And according to some records and some stories and some legends, we even believe that he may have seen the coast of South America. Perhaps you can imagine a mist that just opened up very quickly and he saw a side of land but was not able to sail that way for some ship reason or for some lack of supplies or some near mutiny.

We’ll never know, or at least not on this side of heaven. But there are other explorers There’s an other miss as well. Besides the Carthaginians, we have the Irish, for example. If you can think back in the history you may have learned about, going back to medieval times and so forth, you’ll probably remember Patrick. Patrick who actually was a Roman Briton, who was captured by pirates, was made a slave in Ireland for several years, but then returned to Ireland after he’d escaped from there. He returned back there to evangelize the people. Well, after Patrick, the Irish, who became fiercely alive for Christ, who became a fierce gospel people, they loved the idea of spreading the gospel, but also of saving civilization.

Because during this time in the history of Europe, the barbarian tribes who knew very little of the gospel, and who cared very little for all of the wealth of art and literature and architecture of the Romans and Greeks, were coming into those areas of the Romans and Greeks and destroying everything.

And so the Irish set up these monasteries, these missions all over Europe, in which they copied down all the great works of Christendom and of antiquity.

And they kept those alive so we can still actually read those and know the beautiful things that people penned centuries and centuries ago. Well, after Patrick, missionaries came, missionaries such as Columba, who settled and re-evangelized much of Scotland, and then England had to be re-evangelized from his missionaries as well.

But there was one very interesting missionary who applies today’s lesson. His name was Brendan. And Brendan devised a very small boat. A boat that would be the size, just a little bit bigger probably than your dining room table. It was a boat big enough to carry a few people, had a simple sail. It was roughly open, so if you had choppy waters or if there was rain, you had very little cover in all likelihood. But it also kept things nice and open so you could quickly steer your way out of danger and you could also, on a clear night, you could navigate by looking at the stars.

These were things that Brendan was trained to do. And what Brendan did was with a group of followers, according to the stories, in the year 557 AD. That’s a date you should note. Sometimes these dates… It’s not so important to always memorize dates, but it is helpful to write them down so we have an idea, “Okay, this happened here, and this happened here,” and we can see how they relate to each other. because dates reveal how God unfolds history. Well, Brendan set sail in the year 557 AD. He crossed the Atlantic, from what we can tell, and he landed somewhere in the Americas. Most legends tell us that he left behind a few followers and he came back for a second voyage. He might have returned back home to Ireland. He might have stayed over here. We’re not entirely certain, but what is curious is if you remember to last week, when we talked about Quetzalcoatl and Viracoca, those legends of the Inca and of the Aztecs about this mysterious man with fair skin and a white sail and long robes and a red cross who told him to stop sacrificing humans.

It’s quite possible that Brendan was the origination of that whole legend of Quetzalcoatl and Viracoca. Again, we’ll probably never know on this side of heaven. But he’s not the only one. There’s also a legend about a man named Madoc or Maedoc of Wales. Maedoc was a prince in Wales. In fact, he was one of 17 princes. His father had been married many times and not always the mothers of Maedoc’s brothers was his father actually married to. But when his father died, the Welsh kingdom began to be fought over by these 17 brothers. And Maedoc quickly had his brothers saying, “Here, join my side or come and fight with me. “We’ll take over our kingdom and we’ll rule it together.” But Madoc quickly realized that he wanted nothing to do with this family feud. So he needed something else to do, specifically, he needed some place to go. And so Madoc gathers his loyal followers, he gathers those who are closest to him, they board a ship, and they set sail west. And the legend has it that Madoc found warm waters and he finished, most likely, at the area of Mobile Bay. Now again, we’ll talk about why that might have happened, but it’s curious, years later, someone wrote down the idea of what Madoc was looking for. And Madoc wrote this about himself. It’s been heavily changed throughout history, but here it is in our English. Madoc I am, son of Owen Gwyned, with stature large and comely grace. No lands at home, no store of wealth did please. My mind was whole to search the ocean seas in order to bring forth the gospel of grace. So, Madoch, if this is true, actually had in mind evangelism as well. The other people, and the last people we’ll look at in this video, are the Vikings. Now, the Vikings we actually have a lot more evidence on, but I’ll tell you the story briefly, which you’re in all likelihood familiar with. If you’re not, this is a great time to learn it. But the character we’re gonna look at first with the Vikings is Eric the Red. And Erik the Red came out of a Viking culture that was kind of restless. This was a culture that was all about war, that was all about manliness, that was all about basically taking what she wanted. And throughout the late 8th century, 9th century, leading up to about 1000 AD, from what we can tell from records, the world was going through a period of global cooling.

Not global warming at the time, but global cooling. Things were getting colder. And so if you went further north, Sometimes it would stay cold or wintry all year long, kind of like it does in Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe.

And so the Vikings began to travel south. They began to conquer the shorter English. They were actually a foot shorter than them, and take over their lands. And they began to found new places such as Iceland, which actually isn’t terribly icy. It’s actually fairly green. And there in Iceland, one night, Eric the Red in the year 982 AD, got into a bar fight with some other people in the village.

He was so upset with them that he went back the following day, or the following evening, to the same village, and he probably killed about 50 of them in a drunken rage.

So not exactly our hero here. But anyway, Eric the Red was banished from the village. He set sail, and he landed at what we now know today as Greenland, which isn’t actually green. It’s actually covered in ice most of the year. But Eric the Red was a brilliant marketing strategist, and he thought, if I call it Greenland, people will want to come and settle here.

The story doesn’t stop there, though, because as you may know, Eric the Red had a son named Leaf, or Leaf Erickson as he’s known. And Leaf began sailing on his own at the age of 14. And when he was 19 years old, around the year 1000 AD, he was blown off course and went further and further west, and he landed at what we now believe to be Eastern Canada or New Finland.

He called it Vinland because it had these beautiful vines. But what we know about the Vikings is that the Vikings established these incredible towns there. In fact, we have records showing that the Vikings established 14 different churches. They didn’t stay pagan during all that time. They eventually became Christians. They established churches as heavily as any other people who had a passion for the gospel did. And the Vikings even requested that they be able to establish a diocese. That’s a collection or a group of churches that’s organized by Rome. What we know about all of these places is it raised an incredible love and an incredible curiosity to see what was out west. The Vikings, for example, called it Altamuthul. In Latin, it was called Terras Incognitas. In English of old days, it was called the Isles of the Blessed. And so, people all over the known world, especially those explorers and those who read the old legends, were curious to see what was out there.

We’ll take a look at more of the evidences in our next video.