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When Christopher Columbus first arrived in the islands of the new world, he was astonished to find that the Tainos, the First Nations people that he met, already believed in heaven and hell, good and bad spirits, and above all One God who had a Son who died, and they were praying to God to save them from the Caribes, a violent tribe working their way up from South America invading island after island killing and pillaging.
Robert Warokuia Felix, a Taino descendant and scholar, in his insightful Africanus Journal article, “Taino Myths and the Early Revelations of the Bible,” points out that “Columbus reported that Tainos are ‘so guileless and so generous with all that they possess, that no one could believe it who has not seen it. They refuse nothing that they possess, if it be asked of them, on the contrary, they invite anyone to share it and display as much love as if they would give their hearts.’”[1] So, these noble people certainly received their visitors with a God-pleasing welcome. And Robert reminds us, “The Antillean islands were far removed from any ‘civilized’ nation. So, how could the Tainos, in essence, live the ‘beatitudes’ found in the Bible?”[2]
Here is one reason, wrapped in a cryptic remark that John recorded in his gospel, 10:14-16, while explaining his ministry to the Pharisees, the crowds, and his disciples. Jesus employed a metaphor, calling himself “The Good Shepherd,” and announced: “I myself am the Good Shepherd and I know my own (‘emautou) and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me, I also know the Father, and my life (or, self psuchē) I lay down (or put down, or give up tithēmi ) in behalf of the sheep. And other sheep I have that are not out of this fold (or corral, the word for an enclosed open space aulē) and those I must lead and my voice they will hear and will become one flock, one shepherd.”[3]
Were the Tainos Columbus met when he arrived at the shores of Quisqueya (a large island which would become known as Hispañola, and the home today of the Dominican Republic and Haiti) have been an example of another fold of Jesus?
Robert Felix suggests their knowledge and godly ways may had been due to general revelation. Thus, “they were able to practice the law found in their hearts.” He explains: “The apostle Paul in the letter to the Romans addresses the gentiles and the special revelation they received from God. ‘For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them, since God has made it plain to them: ever since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and his everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things” (Rom 1:19-20).[4] This is certainly commensurate with a biblical explanation, that they received a revelation from God as they contemplated creation.
The great sadness is that their graciousness was not returned in kindness.
Bartolomé De Las Casas, a priest Columbus brought along on a return voyage lamented, “Endless testimonies…prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives, as well as the fact that we surpassed them in arms so that, had we lived among them as Christians, we would have had no need of weapons, horses or fierce dogs to attract them to us. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle, and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then.”[5]
Had Columbus, himself, who was a Christian and left his son in the care of a Franciscan monk when he was trying to find financial backing for his exploration, able to control his violent crews on his subsequent journeys, the entire history of what came to be called the Americas might have been completely different.[6]
Another option for the Tainos understanding of God’s revelation is provided in Charles Michael Boland’s intriguing book, They All Discovered America, published first by Doubleday in 1961, and reissued by Pocket Books in 1963. The goal of this book was to hunt down and present proof that many explorers visited what would become the Americas long before Columbus was born.
Among these he cites a possible visit by Christians fleeing the horrors of execution in Nero’s Rome, when that debauched and maniacal emperor blamed them for the fires at Rome. This would have been in AD 64, and is based on ancient Christian inscriptions on rocks. The inscriptions included symbols of a double cross and a rectangle divided into six squares (see p. 74), in which Christians, when it was safe to do so, included the letters for the word ichthus (fish), which reference the five first letters of “Jesus, Son of God, Savior,” or, when it was unsafe, were left blank, but suggestive. These two rocks were unearthed among artifacts like a bronze cup and iron bars by an engineer James V. Howe from 223 acres he bought in 1943 on the Roanoke River bank of Virginia.[7]
Another, even stronger entry is the story of a sea-faring Irish Monk, Brendan the Bold, born in AD 484, who became famous for setting sail in the 500s with fourteen other Irish monks and discovering the legendary “Fortunate Isle” across the Atlantic Ocean, where, we are told, Brendan “is somewhat, although not inordinately, surprised to find an entire colony of his brethren enjoying the tropical beauty of Florida.”[8] After they enjoyed a “reasonable time” they sailed back “to Ireland and resumed a monastic life.”[9] Their “Fortunate Isle” may also have been in what is now called the Caribbean and that would account for how the First Nations Tainos knew about the Son of God.
Brendan’s story became so compelling that monks fleeing from invading Northmen (or Norsemen) in the tenth century also fled to these islands across the sea.[10] Boland’s book details twenty such explorers (some Christian, some not), some possibly legendary, but some, like Leif Erickson, in 1003, well-known and validated by all. Leif was appointed by the enthusiastic Christian King Olav of Norway to evangelize Greenland for Christ, which Leif did. By the year 1000, Olav had already converted both Norway and Iceland from paganism to Christianity. After completing his task, Leif went exploring across from Greenland and down the coast, and his interest seemed to be captured by what would become New England, and, particularly, Massachusetts, which he called “Vinland.”[11]
So, with all such visits and more, a second solution for the Tainos knowing the good news about Jesus Christ is that these Christian visitors, long before Columbus arrived, told them about Christ and lived, we would surmise, in peaceful, God-pleasing ways..
This solution reminds us of one other prophesy of Jesus: “And I, when I am lifted out of the earth, all I will draw to myself” (John 12:32). His message certainly spread far and wide, just as he promised. Interestingly, the word Jesus uses for “draw” is a sea-faring term, describing drawing fish out of the water in a net (elkusō).” So, gentiles in other countries and other time periods could be Jesus’s other fold.
Jesus’s disciples certainly took his Great Commission seriously. We are told that Andrew went to Scythia, which today is southern Russia, another tradition has him in Greece, another in Ephesus in Turkey.[12] John was based in Ephesus. Ancient traditions set Bartholomew’s ministry in Persia (today’s Iran), and other traditions in India as well as ministering with Thaddeus in Armenia.[13] Early reports have Thomas in Babylon, the Middle East, and India and Matthew in Ethiopia.[14] Prisca and Aquila may have gone to Spain, along with Paul.[15]
So, given all this evangelical zeal, we, also, who follow Christ as our Lord and Savior, should look for other potential sheep for Jesus’s fold all around us in our multi-ethnic world, the way all these Christians we mentioned looked for them in their lifetimes, not to take advantage of them as Columbus’s crew did, but to bless them so they too will listen to Jesus’s voice and we shall together be one flock with one Shepherd.
Bill
[1] Robert Warokuia Felix, citing Lionel Cecil Jane’s translation of The Journal of Christopher Columbus (New York: Bramhall, 1960), p. 124. “Taino Myths and the Early Revelations of the Bible Africanus Journal, Vol. 15, no. 1 (April 2023), 5.
[2] Felix, “Taino Myths and the Early Revelations of the Bible,” 5.
[3] All translations are by the present author.
[4] Felix, “Taino Myths and the Early Revelations of the Bible,” 5.
[5] Bartolomé De Las Casas, History of the Indies, Andrée Collard, trans. and ed. (New York: Harper, 1912), 2.1.
[6] For more information of the resulting history, please see my ch., “God of Power Versus God of Love: The United States of America,” in Aída Besançon Spencer and William David Spencer, eds., The Global God: Multicultural Evangelical Views of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), pp.37-62.
[7] Charles Michael Boland, They All Discovered America (New York: Pocket Books, 1961), see ch. 3, pp. 55-78.
[8] Boland, They All Discovered America, p. 103.
[9] Boland, They All Discovered America, ch. 5, pp. 103-126.
[10] Boland, They All Discovered America, p. 122.
[11] Boland, They All Discovered America, ch. 10, pp. 193-222.
[12] William Steuart McBirnie, The Search for the Twelve Apostles (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1973), pp. 80-81.
[13] McBirnie, The Search for the Twelve Apostles, pp. 130-133.
[14]McBirnie, The Search for the Twelve Apostles, pp. 144-46, 176.
[15] Rom 15:24. S. Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints 7 (1898), 183. Cited by Aída Besançon Spencer, 2 Timothy and Titus, NCCS (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), 155.
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