World History, Chapter Fifteen, revised

World History – Chapter Fifteen
Aztecs and Mongols
Plus Russia, Imperial China, and the great African Empires

From the year 409 to 711 a tribe called the Visigoths dominated Spain. This period is bracketed by two invasions. The first was of the Alans, Sueves, and Vandals who crossed the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate Spain and Portugal, called the Iberian Peninsula, and virtually ended Roman Imperial rule there. Taking from the article by Roger Collins called “Visigothic Spain” in the book Spain, a History, edited by Raymond Carr, I learned that the Visigoths didn’t complete their conquest of the last imperial holdouts until the 470’s. These events started a series of monarchies that were of Germanic origin ruling Spain. At the other end of this period was the invasion by Arabs and Berbers from North Africa that toppled the Visigothic kingdom ending the existence of a united state over the entire peninsula which would last until the Habsburg Kings of Spain would also rule Portugal between 1580 and 1640.

The Visigoths were said to be of the Christian persuasion called Arian which denied the equality of God the Son, Jesus Christ, with God the Father. The reading in John 1:18 of “only begotten God” in some manuscripts was said to be a favorite of theirs implying that Jesus was a lesser, begotten God to the Father. The Visigoths had been converted to Christianity while in the Balkans, north of Greece, and had carried this heresy with them. However, unlike the Vandals of North Africa, who were also Arians, the Visigoths did not make war on their Roman Catholic subjects like the Vandals did when they invaded North Africa as described in Thomas Hodgkin’s Huns, Vandals, and the Fall of the Roman Empire. The Vandals had also converted to Arian Christianity, according to secular historians. Then, in the late sixth century the divide between Arian and Catholic was erased. Spain was now Roman Catholic.

In the book on the history of Spain, an article by Richard Fletcher tells of how the Muslim invasions of the 8th century gave the country a mix of three religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, along with their cultures. The Muslims were politically dominant until the 11th century.

Islam itself went through a golden age of science and culture during the early Middle Ages that was unheard of in Europe. The Muslim conquerors of Samarkand in the Central Asian steppes learned the art of making paper from the Chinese and the first paper manufacturing plant opened at Baghdad in 794. They brought it to Sicily and Spain, where it moved into France and Italy. It was reported at one time that Baghdad had over 100 booksellers. Mosul, in present day Iraq, had by 950 a library and supplied students with paper. Princes in Islamic lands were said to have libraries more extensive than all the libraries of Europe combined.

Muslim scholars learned Syriac and Greek and delved into scientific studies, including even the study of Sanskrit. The Islamic world excelled in every science, from astronomy to medicine, and gave us the name for the mathematical science, algebra. Muslims traveled around the known world and mapmaking was a great endeavor. Many of their

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scientific achievements, copied from and improved upon from the ancient Greeks, Persians, Indians, and Romans were then copied by the Europeans. In many ways, without saying it in these words, Durant, in his The Age of Faith makes it clear that medieval Islam was a bridge of science and knowledge between the ancient world and modern Europe.

At first, Islam’s sole art had been poetry, as Muhammad had forbidden sculpture and painting as idolatrous. Eventually, though, Islamic art and architecture became majestic from the Alhambra in Spain to the Taj Mahal in India. Music at first had been a sin in Islam but became distinctive and unique, however, is hardly understandable to the Western ear.

The Islamic empire stretched from Spain to India. It was rich with architecture, science, literature, and the countries it dominated were usually ruled well and places of tolerance for religions other than Islam. As all things created by man and not God tend to do, it started to fall apart. The great Seljuq Sultan, or King, Malik Shah, who ruled from 1072 to 1092 was blessed with a great prime minister named Nizam al-Mulk, who ruled for the sultan in Baghdad. He by all accounts was a beneficent leader to his people and even wrote a manual called Book of the Art of Rule or Siyasat-Nama. He was assassinated by a member of the religious sect of murderers called Hashasheen, who enticed their young disciples with earthly scenes of the Islamic paradise consisting of drugs and women, and demanded obedience to kill whomever the leaders required. We get our word, assassin, from this group who, legend has it, were even hired by Richard the Lion Hearted, crusader and king of England, to kill one of his European enemies while on a crusade. While we will cover the Crusades in our next class, let me say that the Islamic world had to deal with this invasion and conquest of the Holy Land by Europeans fighting at the behest of the Pope and then were forced to deal with another threat, the Mongols.

The sultans after Malik Shah had allowed the empire to break down into autonomous kingdoms that were culturally strong but militarily weak. Religious fanaticism and racial hatreds had weakened the ability to fight the Europeans in the Crusades.

The Mongols, on the other hand, lived in the plains and deserts of northwestern Asia. While the Islamic world was becoming weak with ease of living, fabulous wealth, and the benefits of science and medicine, the Mongols thrived on hardship and primitive fertility. Living in tents in the open and following their herds they loved the art of war. Like their ancestors, the Huns before them, eight centuries previous, they were experts at firing arrows while riding their horses at full speed. One Catholic missionary said they would eat anything edible, even lice. They were known to eat rats, cats, dogs, and to drink human blood. Their great king, Jenghiz Khan, or Genghis Khan, who ruled them from 1167 to 1227, disciplined them brutally. His name means, according to Durant, The Great King. He conquered an empire from Eastern Europe and the Middle East to the Great Wall of China.

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The Mongol invasion of Islam began in 1219. They annihilated the great trading cities of Central Asia, a bridge between China and the West. One source indicates that Genghis ordered as many as a million people executed on the same day. Some cities were left only as tombs for thousands of corpses. His armies were so brutal, and even for a brutal era, thought to be so inhuman, that legends have arose that at the end of time, he and his bloodthirsty Mongol hordes, now demons, will arise out of Hell to ravage the world.

The writer, Baabar (Bat-Erdene Batbayar), in his book, Twentieth Century Mongolia, makes this statement; “the primitive nomadic herders, strangers to everyone but the Chinese, suddenly swept the world scene in the thirteenth century and won notoriety by perpetuating a bloodbath of extraordinary scale.”

The infamous leader, whose birth name was Temujin, grew up to be the Great King, Genghis Khan. As a child he was much abused and abandoned and grew up in poverty, humiliation, and hunger so that he reached adulthood with a burning desire for revenge or so reports Baabar. After having suffered the abduction of his wife by a rival tribe, he got his revenge and eventually became supreme leader over all the Mongols. In order to control a warlike people one must always be making war and just as, in one respect, Rome built an empire by attempting to expand its defensible borders, Genghis built an empire first by expanding his control over rival clans, and then over rival ethnic groups, and then over rival countries and empires.

In the first great battle with Islam, Genghis’ son and general, Juji, killed 160,000 Muslim troops and began destroying cities. A second Mongol army under another son, Jagatai captured and destroyed more cities. Then, as Durant puts it, “A third Army, under Jenghiz himself, burned Bokhara to the ground, raped thousands of women, and massacred 30,000 men.” Samarkand surrendered but was destroyed anyway and remained so for centuries. Islamic libraries were burned and the inhabitants of its cities were massacred. In some cities, every man, woman, and child was murdered. Genghiz eventually died in bed, enjoying his 500 wives and concubines, having struck terror in the world. The assassin sect named earlier was destroyed by one of his successors and the entire Middle East was invaded until a Mongolian army was finally defeated at the battle of Ain Jalut by Egyptian Mamluks in 1260.

Durant says that never in history had a civilization suffered so devastating a blow. Rome suffered over many centuries but in one fell swoop, the pride, prestige, and power of Islam was nearly destroyed. Within forty years, the Mongols came to rape, pillage, burn, and destroy. Islam never recovered from the total destruction and depopulation of its great centers of culture and power. “For five centuries”, Durant says, “from 700 to 1200, it led the world in power, order, and extent of government, in refinement of manners, in standards of living, in humane legislation and religious toleration, in literature, scholarship, medicine, and philosophy.” Catholic Europe received foods, drink, drugs, and medicine, armor, art, industry, naval expertise, and words for things such as


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orange, lemon, sugar, syrup, sherbet, julep, elizir, jar, azure, arabesque, mattress, sofa, muslin, satin, fustian, bazaar, caravan, check, tariff, traffic, magazine, risk, sloop, barge, cable, and admiral as well as the game of chess from India via Islam with its checkmate or shah mat, meaning the king is dead. Words like lute, guitar, and tambourine came from Islam, as well.

Islamic culture and civilization never recovered from the deprivations of the Mongols. We will save a discussion of the next great wave of conquest over the Islamic world, the Turks, for another class.

Moving north of the Islamic lands, let’s move to Russia. Russia, before the Russians, according to Nicholas V. Riasanovsky’s A History of Russia, was first written about with references to the Slavic tribes by the classical writers of the Christian era, particularly Pliny the Elder and the historian, Tacitus. In the 6th century the Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire) historian Procopius wrote about them as did the Gothic Jordanes. The terms most frequently used to designate them were “Venedi” and “Antes” with the first word often referring to the Eastern Slavs and the latter (last) title sometimes referring to pre-Slavic Iranian inhabitants of southern Russia or Goths. Most historians now assume that the Slavs consisted of the bulk of the inhabitants of Southern Russia at the time of the Biblical Scythians.

“Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” Colossians 3:11

Notice how the Bible gives the southern Russians a brief mention as it does China in Isaiah 49:12;

“Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.”

Many Bible students, particularly during the “Cold War” with Soviet Russia, say that words like Gog, Magog, and Meshech in Ezekiel 38:2 and other places refer to Russia which is to invade Israel from the North at the end of history.

“Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him,”

J.M. Roberts in A History of Europe refers to the Scythians Russians as trading with the Greeks in the middle of the first millennium BC. By the 9th century AD East Slavic economy and culture was well developed and advanced. However, we don’t get our name for this area from the Slavic people according to western historians. The Rus, from which we derive the name Russia, according to Gwyn Jones’ A History of the Vikings, were a tribe, mostly Swedish, of commercial and military adventurers who created the first great


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Russian republics of Novgorod and Kiev, which started out as armed trading posts. There is actually, though, a great controversy surrounding the influence and significance of the
Viking settlement among the Slavic people. While some writers tend to attribute leaps forward in Slavic culture to the influence of the Scandinavian adventurers others tend to dismiss their influence as being of minor importance. The traditional histories you will read dismiss the Slavic people as mere benefactors of the superior and more energetic Vikings while many Russian historians, Riasonovsky included, state their evidence for the absorption of the Viking settlers into Slavic culture claiming that all attempts to credit Russia’s civilization to the Vikings have been vastly overblown.

Nevertheless, we have two contenders, at least, for the founding of the great Russian city state of Kiev; the first were men of Scandinavian stock or what were called Varangians (the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Emperor had a Varangian Guard at one time) led by their greatest ruler, Rurik, which Jones says has overwhelming evidence, both literary and archaeological, to support them and the second, as Riasonovsky would suggest were Gothic/Slavic people who were only slightly influenced by Viking visitors who were absorbed into their own culture. Durant even admits to the controversy and the legendary accounts of Russia’s founding that have been taught as factual. So, what does that mean to normal people like you and me, that is, non-scholars? What it means is that when you read that historians are divided over an issue, any issue, it is wise, if you are interested, in searching out all sides and deciding for yourself and when, if you go on to college, your teacher says that Russia owes its cultural heritage and its name in a large part to Vikings, particularly Swedish Vikings, you can let him know that you know that this is based on legend, selective interpretation of historical documents, and assumption, and while it may be true, it is a topic not without controversy.

The important thing is that Kiev became an important trading city and center of power that was actually able to send a fleet of 200 ships to attack Constantinople in 860 and remained the commercial and political focus of Russia and it ruled nearly all of the Eastern Slavonic tribes. Kiev made six attempts between 860 and 1043 to take Constantinople for itself, part of an ongoing attempt by Russians to secure a post on the Mediterranean Sea. It is said that the Russians adopted Christianity because the established church permitted them to drink alcohol while Islam did not, which doesn’t say much for either the Russian leaders or the established church of Constantinople or Rome. The Turkic speaking Khazar kingdom of Southern Russia that so dominated the crossroad cities of trade between Europe and Asia was also an influential factor in what we consider to be the history of Russia. They adopted Judaism in the 9th century and were a bulwark against the spread of Islam in Russian territory as well.

Russia became Christian under Vladimir, 5th Grand Duke of Kiev, who ruled from 972 until 1015. He married the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II and from that point on until the revolution of 1917 Russia, in religion, art, alphabet, and coinage, Durant tells us, was a “daughter of Byzantium”. The Kievan state grew to its greatest under Vladimir’s son, Yaroslav from 1036 to 1054, the year of the great schism between the Roman

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Catholic Church in the west and its eastern counterpart. Kiev then suffered under bitter civil wars and blood feuds between uncles and nephews vying for power. It was sacked
once in 1203 and finally destroyed by the Mongol hordes (a mean sounding name for a large group of invaders attacking you) in 1240.

Novgorod, under the rule of Kiev, became an independent principality as the Kievan state began to collapse in on itself. It is most significant to our general study for its defense of Russian lands from foreign invaders. The greatest name associated with these epic battles for freedom from foreign occupation was Alexander Nevsky. He was Prince Alexander, known as Nevsky for his victory over a Swedish force at the Neva River. He was born in 1219 and died in 1263 according to Riasanovksy and had to face the Mongol invasion and major assaults on Russia from Europe. The European assaults came mostly from Swedes and Teutonic Knights with an added dose of Finnish and Lithuanian pressure. The German Teutonic Knights’ attack is most significant because it represents a continual German ideal of “the drive to the east” which culminated in Hitler’s attempt to take Russia six hundred years later. .

In the year that Kiev fell to the Mongols, Prince Alexander, only 21 years old, defeated the Swedes. He then turned to face the Teutonic Knights and drove them backwards until the famous battle of frozen Lake Chud, also called Peipus, on April 5, 1242. It has been called “the massacre on ice” and is the subject of many songs and poems plus an epic movie by the Soviet film maker Eisenstein, Alexander Nevskii. Between 1142 and 1446 Novgorod fought the Swedes 26 times, German knights 11 times, Lithuanians 14 times, and Norwegians 5 times. The Mongol invasion failed to reach as far as Novgorod but Alexander chose to pay tribute and acknowledge co-operation with the Mongols, becoming the Grand Prince of Russia under them until his death, wisely realizing that resistance to them was absolutely hopeless. For his patriotic actions and wise diplomacy he was made a saint by the Russian version of the Greek Orthodox Church. Finally, in 1471 the city surrendered to Ivan III, and became absorbed into the Moscow state.

Moscow first appeared in writing in 1147. The entire walled city was destroyed by the Mongols in 1237. Daniel, Alexander Nevsky’s youngest son, became the rebuilt town’s ruler in the second half of that century, called the 13th century. It’s important to remember that the years of a century, say 1200 to 1299, are referred to as the 13th century in history (even though it should be 1201 to 1300 but that’s another story). It’s like saying once you’ve had your 15th birthday you are working on your 16th year. In any event, Daniel’s son, George, began expanding Moscow territory and controlled the entire flow of the Moscow River. He married the sister of the great khan of the Golden Horde, first a part of the Mongol Empire, then finally a separate state, and became Grand Prince. Moscow grew in influence through the attempted invasion of the great Turkic conqueror, Tamerlane, in the late 14th century, through to the disintegration of the Golden Horde, and the rise of the Turkish Empire, whose success isolated Russia from Greek culture and church, thereby establishing its own unique identity.


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Ivan III and Basil III, ruling from 1462 to 1505, asserted complete independence of Muscovite (Moscow dominated) Russia from the Mongols who had “swarmed over” (like a horde of wasps) much of the world and were now disappearing into history. Territory was increased by conquest and Ivan III became known as Ivan the Great.

Now, I’d like to talk about what is happening to the Jews outside of Europe during this time. Having failed in their attempts at revolt under Bar Cochba in 135 and again under Antoninus Pius in 161, they were forbidden to enter Jerusalem except on the anniversary of its destruction when they were allowed to come in and mourn by the destroyed wall of the Temple. In Palestine, where nearly 1,000 villages and towns had been eliminated and well over half a million men and women had been slain the population had dwindled to half its former number. Soon, though, the Jewish National Council, or Beth Din, a group of 71 rabbinical scholars, was established at Tiberias promoting the teaching of their religion.

After the Emperor Constantine accepted his form of Christianity the Jews received added humiliation of being forbidden to have any association with Christians. Constantius banned rabbi’s (teachers) in 337 and made the marriage of a Jew with a Christian woman, a capital crime, or one punishable by death. The Jews were taxed so heavily that some sold their children to meet the demand. In 352 they rebelled and were brutally defeated again. Thousands of Jews were killed and enslaved. The condition of Palestinian Jews had sunk so low that in 359 Hillel II composed a calendar still in use today for all Jews to determine the dates of their festivals so they would not forget.

The Emperor Julian (aka The Apostate) lifted them up again and acknowledged their right to their faith and even ordered the Temple to be rebuilt from state funds so that they could once again conduct sacrifices in obedience to the Old Testament Law. Therefore, about 361, Jews poured in from everywhere to Jerusalem and gave of their personal wealth to rebuild the Temple. However, as the foundations were being dug, Durant relates, flames burst from the ground killing several workmen. This was repeated a second time. Although, Durant insists that this was probably due to their hitting a natural gas deposit (as any good atheist would), this situation and the death of Julian, the withdrawal of state funds, and the return of the old persecutions sent them back into their previous condition of mourning.

Many moved into Persia and reinvigorated the Babylonian Jewish population which had continuously lived there since the Babylonian Captivity nearly a thousand years previous.In Persia, the Jews were excluded from state office but so was anyone else who wasn’t in the nobility so the rule didn’t sting as much. Taxation was less severe, as well, and the government was pretty co-operative, even to recognizing the head of the Jewish exiles, the exilarch, as being an important person in the eyes of the Persian kings. Curiously, Persian law permitted polygamy and important traveling rabbis would even advertise for temporary wives in each city. Schools of higher education arose and


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Babylonian Jewish scholarship was recognized by Jews everywhere as valuable and noteworthy.

The Dispersion, as it is called, continued throughout the lands around the Mediterranean and Arabia, preparing the idolatrous Arab mind for the introduction of Mohammed’s belief system. In Abyssinia, or Ethiopia, eventually half the population became Jewish. All of the North African cities had large populations of Jews.

In Palestine and Babylon, the scribes and the rabbis composed enormous bodies of law and commentary known as the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud. This was justified under the argument that God had not only given the Jews a written law in the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Bible, called the ‘First Book of Moses called Genesis’, ‘The Second Book of Moses called Exodus’, etc. etc. in The Holy Bible but also an oral law which was alleged to have been handed down from generation to generation, teacher to teacher. This was spoken of as their tradition by Jesus and roundly condemned.



Matthew 15:3 –
But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
Matthew 15:6 -
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
Mark 7:9 –
And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.
Mark 7:13 –
Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

Peter, as well, referred to this oral tradition.

1Peter 1:18 –
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;

The main issue of contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees was whether or not this oral law was divine and therefore binding, or not. When the Sadduccees disappeared after the destruction of the Temple, the Pharisees belief that the oral law was divine became the standard for all orthodox Jews. For a thousand years, they debated and wrote until finally the oral law was given the written form called the Mishna with two Gemaras as commentaries on the Mishna. The shorter Gemara and the Mishna made up


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the Palestinian Talmud and the longer one united with the Mishna for the Babylonian Talmud.

It is of interest to note that when Peter announced his greetings from the small Jewish Christian community at Babylon, that is probably exactly where he was, not Rome, as the Roman Catholic Church has insisted. Paul does not mention him in the list of the Christians at Rome at the end of his letter to the Romans.

1Peter 5:13 -
“The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son. “

The Mishna or oral law plus the Pentateuch or written law becomes the Torah, by which the Jews lived throughout the Medieval period, the Middle Ages.

The rabbinical colleges at Sura and Pumbeditha provided religious and intellectual leadership for the Jews of Islam from the 7th to the 11th century led by a group of men who assumed the title of Gaon, or Excellency. This institution of leadership is called the Gaonate, or the period of the Geonim. In 762 a rabbi who had been denied his hereditary role as Gaon, named Anan ben David, fled to Palestine and set up his own synagogue that insisted that only the written law, the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, should be followed, not the Talmud. This return to the Bible was considered a heresy. His followers received the name of Qaraites or Karaites, meaning followers of the text.

The Crusades further isolated the Babylonian Jews from European Jewry. They finally disappeared from history when the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258. Long before this, however, Jews had migrated all over the world. It is said that there were over 20,000 in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1165. The next power center of Jewish learning and influence became Egypt, where they experienced relative freedom. There were persecutions but little equaled what the Jews faced in Europe during the time we will save for a different class.

Now, we’ll move east to China. Following the Han Dynasty, and after a further century of weak governing, a long period of division into Northern and Southern Dynasties from 317 to 589 led finally to a new unification. The Sui accomplished this reunification, ruling from 581 to 618 Reading from F.W. Mote’s book, Imperial China, we learn that the Chinese civilization had experienced a golden age of culture under the Tang dynasty that existed from 618 to 907. The T’ang dynasty, founded by Kao-tsu, experienced its greatest emperor under his son, T’ai Tsung from 627 to 650. By greatest, the historians mean to say that he murdered his brothers who were rivals for his throne and drove the barbarians back and re-established Chinese authority over territories that had been lost since the collapse of the Han dynasty.



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Suddenly, he is said to have grown tired of war and retired to study, read, and publish the writings of Confucius. His capital of Ch’ang-an became so beautiful that Durant says that tourists flocked to it from India and Europe. Buddhist monks arrived in great numbers as did missionaries preaching Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity, which is a version of the Christian faith condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 that said that Christ was two distinct persons, the man Jesus and the Son of God, which resulted in the Assyrian Church splitting from the Greek Orthodox. Oddly enough, Nestorius, its so called founder, a fifth century Patriarch of Constantinople, denied holding the belief. Theological debates aside, T’ai Tsung held a very modern view toward crime, law, and order. He said;

“If I diminish expenses, lighten the taxes, employ only honest officials, so that the people have clothing enough, this will do more to abolish robbery than the employment of the severest punishments.” The unscriptural idea that only external conditions are the basis for crime is held today, as well.

Compare the emotional outburst reported when he died;

“When he died the grief of the people knew no bounds, and even the foreign envoys cut themselves with knives and lancets and sprinkled the dead emperor’s bier with their self shed blood.”

to the state of Baal worship in 1 Kings 18:28;

“And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.”

Durant quotes Arthur Waley, writing in the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as saying, “In the T’ang dynasty, China was without doubt the greatest and most civilized power in the world.” At the height of it ruled Ming Huang, “The Brilliant Emperor”, who ruled for 40 years from 713 to 756AD with some breaks in his reign, the kind of which the Bible believer will find in the descriptions of Ahaziah’s reign in 2 Kings 8 and 2 Chronicles 22. This can also be found in the history of Vlad Tepes, history’s Dracula, who reigned on two separate occasions over the same people and other various monarchs and princes throughout history.

Ming Huang was a complicated ruler who wrote poetry and attacked lands far from home even exacting tribute from Turkey, Persia, and Samarkand. He fell in love with a courtesan, Yang Kwei-fei, formerly the concubine of his 18th son (courtesan and concubine are two genteel words describing a not so genteel type of woman). Eventually there was one of his ministers, Lu-shan, the Tatar (read that; barbarian) northern provincial governor, who also fell in lust with the woman. He declared himself emperor and a civil war was fought. Lu-shan called on his barbarian allies and they sacked Ch’ang-an and China, and out of China’s already vast population Durant tells us that 36

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million people lost their lives in the rebellion. Ming Huang won but died a broken hearted old man.

This was the era of the great Chinese poet, Li Po, whose mother was said to have had a dream of Venus, in China called Tai-po Hsing or Great White Star, at his birth. The T’ang dynasty, however, never recovered from Lu-shan’s rebellion or the massive destruction left in its wake.

The great Silk Roads, the avenues across Asia that brought silk from China and goods from Europe, reached the height of their importance connecting the T’ang capital to what the Chinese called the Western Regions. Next came the era of the Five Dynasties and the Liao dynasty. Amid all of this chaos, one soldier emerged to create the Sung Dynasty. His name was T’ai Tsu.

The most interesting emperor of the Sung was Wang An-shih (1021-1086). Wang believed that government must hold itself accountable for the welfare of all its citizens. The state should oversee all matters of commerce and industry, as well as government, to keep the working class from “being ground into dust by the rich”. He abolished the forced labor that the Chinese governments had always enacted from the people to build everything from the Great Wall to roads. Like the Inca Empire, the government owned everything and distributed everything. Pensions were provided for the aged and the poor. To fight corruption he had a Budget Commission that tightly controlled all money the government received. He put in place universal conscription where every family was responsible for providing one soldier for the defense of the country. His experiment at socialist government failed due to the universal objection to high taxes and absolute government control.

In 950, paper money was first used in China. In 970, the first great Chinese encyclopedia was printed. In 1041, this was enhanced by the invention of movable type by Pi Sheng. 1161 brought the first known use of gunpowder. Then, in 1212, Genghis Khan invaded China and destroyed the Sung, creating the Yuan or Mongol dynasty, whose most notable emperor was Kublai Khan. The Mongol Yuan lasted until 1368 when the Mongol control finally ended and the Ming dynasty arose which lasted until 1644.

During Kublai Khan’s reign, in the latter part of the 1200’s or the 13th century, a Venetian adventurer, Marco Polo, his father and his uncle, visited all of the East that they could. They stayed in China for a quarter century and were very successful under the great Khan. Marco even rose to be the governor of Hangchow under the Khan, a city he later claimed was more beautiful and further ahead of any European city in its hospitals, buildings, bridges, manners, and refinement. His travels are some of the most famous in history and a study of his statements on the eastern world through the eyes of a medieval European are fascinating.



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The Mongols were better warriors than administrators. And although Kublai Khan was no barbarian by any standards, it is a fact of history that it is easier to conquer a country than it is to occupy it for long. Once again, the Chinese married their conquerors, as they did each time the Huns, the Tatars, or any warriors from the steppes of Asia invaded
them, then they civilized them, and finally overthrew them. In 1368, an ex-Buddhist priest led a revolt and entering Peking in triumph proclaimed himself first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. This dynasty, too, finally ended in chaos and rebellion and was overthrown by the Manchu invaders from what is now called Manchuria.

Now, let’s move to sub-Saharan Africa, that is, the part of Africa below the Sahara Desert. By the early part of the first millennium after Christ people of African origin could be found all over the world due to trade with China, India, and Europe. Some had been sold as slaves in Europe and Asia. By the beginning of the Islamic era Africans had been a not uncommon sight in Europe and Asia as both merchants and merchandise. Remember the character, Othello, in Shakespeare’s play, is considered by most to represent an African operating as a general in the service of Venice against Turkey.

Three powerful states emerged in Africa during the time period we are discussing; Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. These empires were advanced cultures by any standard. The economic life of these African nations revolved around agriculture, manufacturing, and international trade with rulers exercising their authority through powerful standing armies.

The wealth of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay came from the trans-Saharan trade whose basis was gold. While goods and luxury items flowed south from the Islamic countries to the north, gold was sent the other way. Ghana is first mentioned by Arabs in 800AD and for three centuries, reaching the peak of its power in the 11th. The rulers of Ghana were the main suppliers of gold for North Africa and Europe and it was said by Al-Bakri, an Arab geographer in 1067 that their king owned a nugget of gold so large he could tether his horse to it.

Tenkamenin ruled Ghana in the middle of the 11th century and had an army of 200,000 men and lived in a castle decorated with sculpture and painted windows. Finally, Ghana fell to Mali, which started out as a small state of the Mandingo tribe on the Niger River. Two men made Mali famous in history. Sundiata Keita and Mansa Musa. Keita made the small state a great empire. Musa, who came to power in 1307, produced one of the greatest countries in the medieval world. The most famous event in his reign was his pilgrimage to Mecca, something Muslims are expected to attempt to do at least once in their lives if they are able. He had an entourage of 60,000 persons including 12,000 servants. 500 servants, each carrying a 6 pound gold staff, walked in front of him. 80 camels bore 24,000 pounds of gold which the black king distributed as alms for the poor and gifts. It is said that his generous contributions of gold wreaked havoc in Egypt’s economic system for a while. He is also credited with building great buildings in Timbuktu. Mali declined in importance in the 15th century and in its place, the Songhay

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arose. Askia Muhammed was their greatest leader. He took power in 1493 and ruled for nineteen years ruling a realm or kingdom larger than all of Europe and including most of West Africa.

Timbuktu, during Askia’s reign, was a city of a hundred thousand. The Sankore Mosque and the attached Sankore University were the center of intellectual life. Arab and African chroniclers, Christian and Muslim, like Leo Africanus, wrote extensively of the wonders of this city. People supposedly came from all over the Muslim world to study law and surgery at the University of Sankore. Es Sadi, a Timbuktu scholar, said that his brother came from the city of Jenne’ to have cataract surgery on his eyes at Timbuktu. It was successful. By the way, Es Sadi was supposed to have had a library of over 1600 books.

Leo Africanus, writing in the 1500’s, said that there were numerous judges, doctors, and clerics (religious leaders such as priests in Catholic Christianity or Imams in Islam) who received good salaries from the king. He went on to say that there was a big demand for books imported from North Africa. He makes a very curious statement for the world of Africa based on the western prejudice concerning what was going on in that continent, at least south of the Sahara, at that or any other time. He says that more profit was made from the book trade than any other business. Greek and Latin manuscripts were so prevalent in Timbuktu that hundreds of years later a traveler named Heinrich Barth reported meeting an old man in that area and having a conversation with him about Plato, which he had a manuscript of that had been translated into Arabic from Greek.

Timbuktu, like all great cities, was also a place of vice and pleasure. Musical orchestras consisting of male and female singers were present, men and women were fond of jewels, and dramatic displays of dancing, fencing, and gymnastics were common. Chess was so popular that it is said that a Songhay general admitted to losing a battle because he was so engrossed in a game that he ignored the reports of his scouts. Askia was disturbed by the licentious and often drunken lifestyle of the city but was unable to curb its excesses. Social dissolution and growing fat and soft on good living were part of the reason for the decline of the West African states in the 17th century. I suspect, though, and this is just my own conjecture, that the transfer of the source of gold for Europe from Africa to the Americas provides an economic reason for the fall of Africa. The slave trade and European colonization finished the process.

On the eastern side of Africa, the city of Aksum struggled for control of its Arabian provinces, particularly Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, against the native Arabians. This struggle consumed the years 400 to 525. King Ella-Abeha appointed Abraha viceroy of Himyar in southwest Yemen about 545. He was successful in retaking most of Yemen for Aksum but was in conflict with the Persian Empire from the north. Along the Nile River, the kingdoms of the Sudan; Nobatia, Maquarrah, and ‘Alwah all adopted Christianity as their state religion between 543 and 575. Abraha finally tried to extend Aksumite dominion over Mecca itself but his attack was repulsed in 570. Despite military

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aid from the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, Aksum was unable to hold onto its Arabian provinces by 585 due to Persian intervention.

Small kingdoms developed along the Red Sea coast from Ethiopia to Egypt. Among them were Qata, Jarin, Baza, Baqlin, and Naqis. Further south, the Bantu tribe’s kingdom of Zanj occupied much of what is now Kenya and southern Somalia. What was left of Aksum after the great plague of the sixth century waned between 800 and 1000. By then, Arab Moslems had conquered territory down the coast and set up small settlements. In southwestern Ethiopia, the black Jewish Damot Kingdom under Queen Esato (Judith) devastated Aksum up to the city gates in 976.

Early in the 11th century, reading the Harper Encyclopedia of Military History, the Zagwe Dynasty of central Ethiopia took over what was left of Aksum. This kingdom became a refuge for Christian monks running from persecution in Muslim Egypt. The growth and power of Islam isolated Ethiopia except for a few patches of territory on the Arabian Peninsula’s coast with the Red Sea, which they ruled as late as 1200. Islamic traders continued to expand their influence on the coast of East Africa and Mogadishu began to arise as an important trading settlement.

Between 1075 and 1200 the Somali Muslim’s destroyed the Bantu kingdom of Zanj and alongside the pagan Galla tribe fought against the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia.

In West Africa, the wealthy empire of Ghana, which had made so much from the “silent trade” of salt for gold was forcibly converted to Islam between 1054 and 1076 by the Almoravid Berbers. Salt, from which (through the Roman Army) we get the world salary and the phrase, “worth his salt”, was left for those who mined gold and was replaced with an equal value of gold. This kept potentially hostile tribes from confrontation and made the great wealth of West African kingdoms possible.

During the 11th century there were built in Zimbabwe great stone structures. Zimbabwe itself means “stone dwellings” in Bantu. It became a ceremonial and religious center for a large inland kingdom called Karanga which traded with Arab merchants on the coast for glass and porcelain from China.

Between 1200 and 1230, the Soso temporarily took over the ancient Ghanaian capital of Kumbi and conquered Mali under Sumanguru. This dominance was ended by Sundiata, previously mentioned, the founder of the Mali Empire. The Benin kingdom of modern southwestern Nigeria rose to prominence in the late 1200’s under the great Oba, or king, Ewedo.

Moving forward between 1340 and 1360 several city states arose in modern Nigeria of the Hausa ethnic group including Yoruba, a language found today in Nigeria. The Kongo Kingdom first took form in or about 1350 around modern day Songolo and was ruled by


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the Manikongo or king. West of Lake Chad was the kingdom of Kanem-Bornu which developed in the late 1300’s.

The Bantu ethnic group’s language and culture of Swahili developed over this period drawing, like English, loan words from other cultures, including Arabic, and later English.

The Zagwe Dynasty in Ethiopia ended around 1270 and Arab raids destroyed the Christian kingdom of Maqurrah. The Mamelukes of Egypt also contributed to its fall. Finally, between 1314 and 1344 the great king of Ethiopia, Amda Tseyon defeated four coalitions of Muslims and conquered much territory, even intervening on behalf of Egyptian Coptic Christians with the Mamelukes of Egypt. It would be over two hundred years before the Portuguese would form an alliance with Ethiopia to fight the Muslims.

As you approach Africa south of the Sahara in the 1400’s you notice that the European starts to make inroads into it. Spain conquered the Canary Islands between 1402 and 1404. The Portuguese explored the coast of Africa extensively between 1434 and 1498 and they and the Spanish fought over possession of the Canaries.

I knew nothing of Africa before the Europeans from my classes in high school. It wasn’t until I went to college and by chance took an African history class that my eyes were opened to the rich history of that continent. I must also credit Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s controversial book, Before the Mayflower. The wicked slave trade will be saved for a couple of classes from now.

Early in the 14th century, that is the 1300’s, the Mexica or Aztecs, a nomadic warlike tribe from northern Mexico arrived in what is called the Valley of Mexico and settled on two islands called Tenochitlan and Tlatilulco in Lake Texcoco. This natural fortress connected by only three causeways to the mainland with removable bridges gave them a secure base to operate from and successful wars combined with smart alliances helped them to conquer the Valley of Mexico. The era of 1427 to 1440 saw the rise of their Emperor Itzacoatl, the “Black Serpent”, who defeated the Tepanaca who tried to destroy them in fear of their growing mastery of the area. But it was his nephew, Tlacaelel, who lived for 82 years from 1398 to 1480 who was the real genius of the Aztecs.

He was twice offered the leadership but turned it down twice, preferring to be the influential head of internal affairs and truly ruling behind the scenes for much of his life. He was responsible for destroying the Aztec history that showed their humble beginnings as wanderers so he could instill a new kind of heroic patriotism in them. With his prompting the Aztec would think that he was always great and that empire was his heritage. This instilled a superpatriotic loyalty in the members of what was called the Triple Alliance. Tlacaelel served as a general under Itzcoatl and believed that the Mexica or Aztecs were destined to be a great empire.


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Tlacaelel created an ideology based on the notion that Huitzilopochtli, the god who wore a hummingbird head shaped helmet and carried a fire breathing serpent as a weapon, the Mexica’s patron deity, was not just their god, but he was THE god. The fate of humankind was in his hands and he was one of the four sons of the sustainer of the universe, Ometeotl. He became the sun in one story and supervised its workings in others. In either one there was only one way to sustain his energy and receive his blessings, human sacrifice We know this god, like other gods of the pagan peoples of the
world under his Biblical names; Satan, Lucifer, Baal, the Enemy (Matthew 13:39; Luke 10:19), the Adversary (1 Peter 5:8), the Accuser (Revelation 12:10), and the Devil. In other cultures he is in reality Jupiter, Zeus, Odin, Viracocha or in his feminine form Ishtar, Venus, Diana, Cybele, or the Roman Catholic version of Mary (without sin, having never died, co-redemptrix with the Lord Jesus Christ), under these names and others called the “celestial virgin”, “the mother of god”, and “the holy virgin” by every Satanist from Madame Blavatsky back to the priests of Babylon.

Human sacrifice, also a cornerstone of Baalite religion in the Ancient Near East, was made possible by conquest, using the captured in war as the victims or rather the offerings to the god. To obtain prisoners for sacrifice to this Mesoamerican version of the sun god the Triple Alliance’s destiny was to, in Tlacaelel’s ideology, take over the world. Mexican anthropologist, Miguel Leon-Portilla, has said that the Aztecs viewed imperial conquest as “a moral combat against evil”. This is simple evidence at how twisted manmade religions are at the outset and how Satan, the enemy of mankind and rebel against God, is often served by man’s most faithful and pious efforts. He goes on to say that they believed that “the survival of the universe depended on them.” His two books on the subject are Aztec Thought and Culture; A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind and The Broken Spears, The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico.

Of course, many modern historical revisionists claim that the Aztecs never practiced human sacrifice, in order to uplift this Central American version of the Near Eastern Assyrians to the “heights” of modern man’s moral standards. You know which ones these are, the moral standards that have allowed us to murder 100 million of our own kind in the 20th century in wars and genocides. The Aztecs were not much different from our European ancestors in their lack of regard for the lives of anyone considered “the others”. Criminals beheaded, heretics burned, assassins drawn and quartered, were free entertainment that drew huge crowds in Catholic and Protestant Europe. The English diplomat, Samuel Pepys, in 1664, wrote of one hanging that drew a crowd of 12 to 14,000 people who came to watch the victim beg for mercy and paid a shilling for a good view. In most cities of Catholic Europe bodies were impaled upon city walls and left along highways to deter crime. Bodies hung from trees were so much backdrop in life according to one chronicler of medieval and later Europe. France and Spain were the most bloodthirsty of the nations of Europe and the percentage of population they publicly executed in this way far outshone the brutality of the Aztecs.



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When we read Luke 4:5-7; 16:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4; and Daniel 4:17 let us think about these remarks in the book 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann;

“In their penchant for ceremonial public slaughter, the Alliance and Europe were more alike than either side grasped. In both places the public death was accompanied by the reading of ritual scripts. And in both the goal was to create a cathartic paroxysm of loyalty to the government – in the Mexica case, by recalling the spiritual justification for
the empire; in the European case, to reassert the sovereign’s divine power after it had been injured by a criminal act. Most important, neither society should be judged-or in the event judged each other- entirely by its brutality. Who today would want to live in the Greece of Plato or Socrates with its slavery, constant warfare, institutionalized pederasty, and relentless culling of excess population? Yet Athens had a coruscating tradition of rhetoric, lyric drama, and philosophy. So did Tenochitlan and the other cities in the Triple Alliance. In fact, the corpus of writings in classical Nahuatl, the language of the Alliance, is even larger than the corpus of texts in classical Greek.”

The fact is that all societies should be judged by God’s word alone and by that word they fall far short of God’s standard, and by the Bible’s clear words and by the study of history one can easily see who is leading mankind forward to that final rebellion against our Creator. Read Revelation 11:15 and Zephaniah 3:8 for the future of the world system as it currently stands and the nations of the earth.

Richard Adams in his book, Ancient Civilizations of the New World, claims that while human sacrifice was the most notorious practice of the Aztecs, they didn’t invent it. He reports that human sacrifice was common also in Olmec times. He does confirm that it was Tlacaelel who gave the Aztecs the practice as a religious expression and psychological terror tool to spark fear in the enemies of the Triple Alliance.

The Oxford History of Mexico edited by Michael Myer and William Beezeley has a chapter in it entitled “The Mexico that Spain Encountered” by Susan Schroeder that gives us some light on the claims in 1491 of the Aztecs literary achievements. She says,

“Without doubt, the highest Aztec aesthetic expression came in literature and music. Each Nahua altepetl (smallest independent political group similar, but not the same as, a clan) had its own literary tradition derived from annals; philosophical, theological, and astronomical treatises; dynastic genealogies; and oral histories. Moreover, it exalted its own heritage and accomplishments to the exclusion of almost everyone else’s. In tlilli in tlapalli (the black the red) was the Nahuatl metaphor for writing, but in truth their books were filled with brightly colored pictorial images. Recorded on paper made from the bark of a native tree (the amaquabuitl, or “paper tree”), the Nahuas stored their precious books, along with maps, tribute records, and other official and personal accounts, in royal libraries.


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But notwithstanding their other literary accomplishments, the Aztecs became masters of history and oratory. Among the population at large, the prevailing wisdom of their sages was presumed to to supersede that of everyone else. Rulers, priests, scholars, scribes, and artists collaborated to create an Aztec literary canon. Success in war, the installation of a new king on the throne, festivities in honor of a particular deity, and events called for by the ceremonial calendar were all occasions when books were brought before the public and the privileged information contained therein was revealed. The images in the texts were memorized and in concert with instrumental music, dancing, and burning incense, the Nahuatl song liturgy repeatedly brought to life the full pageant of Aztec culture.”

From 1440 to 1468 Moctezuma (Montezuma I) Ilhuicamina, or “Frowns Like a Lord”, helped the Aztecs expand with his conquests to the south. From 1468 to 1481 Axayactl moved eastward all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and west to the Pacific. A civil war occurred between the two cities in 1473 and Tenochitlan proved supreme, crushing Tlatilulco and their allies. The disastrous battle of Zamacuyahuac in 1478 resulted in a terrible defeat for the Aztecs but in the reigns of Emperor Tizoc and Ahuitzotol the empire was secured.

After the “discovery” or rather, re-discovery, of the Americas (as if somehow the two continents had been lost) by Europe in 1492 Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas which divided the world between them. Many of the events leading up to this will be covered in the next class so I want to concern myself with the conquest of the Aztecs here. After taking Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, the island that holds Haiti and the Dominican Republic today, the Spanish went on to capture Cuba and Nicaragua.

Moctezuma Xocoyotl, meaning Moctezuma the Younger, whom we call Montezuma II, ruled from 1502 to 1520, conquering much territory for the Aztecs to the southwest and the east of what is now called Mexico City. His expeditions met with mixed success and he left many enemies of the Triple Alliance unconquered. He also created many enemies, as his ancestors had done. These cities and tribes were looking for someone to unite them against what they viewed as a religio-political monster. That someone came in the form of dreams that Montezuma had of floating temples in the Gulf of Mexico. That was the fleet of Hernando Cortez.

Cortez was supposedly under the command of Diego de Velazquez but against the commander’s orders he led an expedition of 600 men, 17 horses, and 10 cannon from Hispaniola. In August of 1519 he burned his ships to prevent desertion of his men after landing at what is now Veracruz and subjugating the Mexican Indian Kingdom of Tabasco. He also opened negotiations with Montezuma. The next month he invaded Central Mexico. The Totonac tribe allied with him against the Triple Alliance, as did the Tlaxacala. In spite of this Montezuma let the Spanish into Tenochitlan, modern day Mexico City, as friends on November 8, 1519. In December, Cortez took Montezuma prisoner.

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Velazquez sent a force of 1500 men to defeat Cortez and punish him for disobedience. The conqueror of Mexico left his captured city and marched to the coast with his soldiers and Indian allies and defeated his fellow Spaniards, enlisting the vanquished into his own army. When they returned to Tenochitlan they found that the commander he had left behind, named Alvarado, had been so harsh that the Aztecs had revolted. Montezuma was murdered in the fighting that resulted. After suffering several defeats and having his force nearly annihilated in his attempt to retake the capital of the Triple Alliance, the
Aztec Empire, all looked lost for the Conquistador, or conquerer. As he built a small fleet to retake the city protected by water his fortunes turned when Montezuma’s successor and a great many of his soldiers were killed by smallpox, brought by the Spanish, who had some immunity to it. Cortez then laid siege to the city for approximately two months and the European soldiers, many now equipped only with bows, arrows, and javelins like their many thousands of Indian allies, many of which joined them after the smallpox epidemic was seen as the judgment of the gods, fought their way to the center of the city in an epic battle. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people died in this battle and the epidemic. Cortez is one of the most highly regarded generals of his era for this brilliant siege. The destruction of the Aztec empire that had lasted for 152 years was no cakewalk but a true contest in arms rivaling the greatest battles of the “old world”.

The Spanish also used their literary skills to justify their conquest of the Aztecs and other people in religious and political tones with the kind of justification that all conquerors have used to explain cruelty and destruction.

Moving west and south out into the Pacific Ocean west of the modern day country of Chile’ I want to briefly touch on a mystery before we sum up what we have discussed. Easter Island is one of the most isolated pieces of land in the world. Easter Island was once covered by tropical plant and animal life. Now, it’s a barren wasteland. 1600 years ago settlers began arriving from the western part of the Pacific as the islands of that ocean began to be populated and earlier peoples were pushed further and further out to make room for new populations or population surpluses. The massive stone heads that stand on that island and which have given it a great air of mystery were carved, it is thought, as stone representations of spiritual power by these people. The great forests were cut down starting in the 800’s and by the 1400’s as the people cleared land for gardens, to build the canoes, and to transport the stone heads carved by the various clans on the island. Each generation tried to out do the previous in the size of these heads to show their own superiority. But, like the Mayans, the Easter Islanders were headed toward ecological disaster.

Taking from a 1995 Discover Magazine article by Jared Diamond;
“After a few centuries, they began erecting stone statues on platforms, like the ones their Polynesian forebears had carved. With passing years, the statues and platforms became larger and larger, and the statues began sporting ten-ton red crowns-probably in an escalating spiral of one-upmanship, as rival clans tried to surpass each other with

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shows of wealth and power. (In the same way, successive Egyptian pharaohs built ever-larger pyramids. Today Hollywood movie moguls near my home in Los Angeles are displaying their wealth and power by building ever more ostentatious mansions. Tycoon Marvin Davis topped previous moguls with plans for a 50,000-square-foot house, so now Aaron Spelling has topped Davis with a 56,000-square-foot house. All that those buildings lack to make the message explicit are ten-ton red crowns.) On Easter, as in modern America, society was held together by a complex political system to redistribute locally available resources and to integrate the economies of different areas. Eventually Easter’s growing population was cutting the forest more rapidly than the forest was regenerating. The people used the land for gardens and the wood for fuel, canoes, and houses-and, of course, for lugging statues. As forest disappeared, the islanders ran out of timber and rope to transport and erect their statues. Life became more uncomfortable-springs and streams dried up, and wood was no longer available for fires. People also found it harder to fill their stomachs, as land birds, large sea snails, and many seabirds disappeared. Because timber for building seagoing canoes vanished, fish catches declined and porpoises disappeared from the table. Crop yields also declined, since deforestation allowed the soil to be eroded by rain and wind, dried by the sun, and its nutrients to be leeched from it. Intensified chicken production and cannibalism replaced only part of all those lost foods. Preserved statuettes with sunken cheeks and visible ribs suggest that people were starving.
With the disappearance of food surpluses, Easter Island could no longer feed the chiefs, bureaucrats, and priests who had kept a complex society running. Surviving islanders described to early European visitors how local chaos replaced centralized government and a warrior class took over from the hereditary chiefs. The stone points of spears and daggers, made by the warriors during their heyday in the 1600s and 1700s, still litter the ground of Easter today. By around 1700, the population began to crash toward between one-quarter and one-tenth of its former number. People took to living in caves for protection against their enemies. Around 1770 rival clans started to topple each other’s statues, breaking the heads off.”
Now, outside of aliens or people from the lost continent of Atlantis erecting these stone heads, this is the best explanation for them I could find. I bring up Easter Island because of its heyday during the period we have covered. The history of the rest of Polynesia and Australia we will cover in coming classes.
So, we have now covered the period of the Dark and Middle Ages outside of Europe. We have briefly discussed many issues and peoples, any one of which could be the subject of an entire 30 class series. There are many things we didn’t cover and as a history class can only be a springboard to your own personal study I leave that effort up to you. Get plenty of sources, not just one textbook, and judge everything by the Bible, the only sure and absolutely truthful word you have, as it is from God Himself. From the Mongols, who the book Warriors of the Steppes by Erik Hildinger says were equaled by no people in history as being “naturally” expert in war to the Aztecs, whose brief empire

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may have ruled or influenced tens of millions of people in Central America according to the book 1491 we have seen that there was a big world out there that was about to be changed forever by people from Europe. Next we will examine that swirling cauldron of nations that arose in Europe after the era that saw the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the great schism in the Roman Catholic and Greek churches in 1054.

Latest Reading

The Empire of Liberty, A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood, Oxford University Press, 2009. If the rest of the books in the Oxford HIstory of the United States are this well written, this fascinating, and this full of useful and impartially given information then I intend to read them all. This is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. If you want to know why we are where we are today it is vitally important to see where we came from. Both Liberal and Conservative will be amazed and will probably have to reevaluate their historical position within the framework of what it means to be an American upon reading this book. Not only a great read, but a very, very important read

World History, Chapter Fourteen, revised

World History – Chapter Fourteen

The Spiritual Empire of Darkness and the false Prophet

The Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, composed of many tribes including Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from the area of far northern Germany, was achieved with very little resistance after the battle of Deorham in 577, Durant tells us in his 4th volume of his epic history, The Story of Civilization, called The Age of Faith. The many small kingdoms that resulted and the seven which came to dominate (Mercia, Northumberland, East Anglia, Wessex, Essex, Sussex, and Kent with the Angles forming the first three, the Saxons the second three, and the Jutes the latter) were themselves combined into one kingdom by King Egbert of Wessex in 829. During that period of time, even before King Egbert, another invasion began to take place from a people further north than the Germanic tribes that displaced the Roman Britons, the Celts. These newer invaders we have come to call the Vikings. We will come back to them in a little while.

In the East, five years after Justinian died in 565, leaving a great empire behind him and the plague and climatic catastrophe that rocked the world, a man named Mohammed was born into a poor family in Arabia, a country almost completely composed of desert, a wilderness, the total wealth of which would not have furnished the inside of the church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople. The majority of the people were nomadic, meaning they moved around without living in one fixed location but in tents tending their herds and flocks much like the Rechabites of Jeremiah 35.

The desert Arab, idolatrous to the extreme as it says in Jeremiah 3:2, worshipped many deities, gods, and feared a multitude of spirits called Jinn, a word which is familiar to you in the word, Genie, as in “Genie in a bottle”. Occasionally, they offered human sacrifice and worshipped stones. The most important center of this stone worship was Mecca. In it, in a square structure called the Kaaba which is where our word, cube, comes from, was the sacred Black Stone. Among the many gods in the Kaaba which were worshipped was Allah which is etymologically linked to Al-il-lat according to Durant, mentioned as a major Arabian deity centuries before by Herodotus. Allah’s daughters were also worshipped; al-Uzza, al-Lat, and Manah. The Muslim’s might claim that Allah had no son but he most certainly did at one time have daughters. The Quraish tribe controlled the shrine, its priests and guardians, and controlled the government of Mecca.

It has also been said by some scholars I have read that the word, Allah, comes from a contraction of words, al-ilah, meaning “the one worshipped” and “the lord of this house”. An early reference I have read speaks of pagan Meccans praying to Allah while standing beside the image of another god, Hubal, which some scholars claim is actually a derivation of the ancient Canaanite, Baal, the Babylonian Bel, known as “the confounder”. Note that Beelzebub, the prince of devils, is translated as “lord of the house” by Strong’s Greek Dictionary and called Satan himself by Jesus in Matthew 12:24-28. Herodotus, as I’ve pointed out before, had connected Zeus of Grecian
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mythology to Bel of Babylon who is also Baal or Baalzebub (Lord of the Flies in Hebrew) of Canaan and Beelzebub (Lord of the house) in Greek, according to Strong’s. Comparative mythologists like Campbell connect Zeus with Viracocha in Peru, Odin in Norse mythology, and Quetzlcoatl of Mexico along with numerous other deities around the world. It is very clear by these associations that the god, Allah, was not then and is not now the God of the Bible, Jehovah, the creator, but a derivation of Satan himself. There are several noteworthy books from which to study the origin of the god, Allah; one of which is ‘Muhammed’s Mecca’ by W.M. Watt, who has written a number of scholarly works on Islam. By the way, I will be spelling Muhammad’s name with some variation and there will be no points taken off in a test or quiz if you do the same. There are many ways of spelling his name in print.

The orphaned Muhammad’s name means “highly praised” and in the book attributed to him that he did not actually write but containing a number of sayings and phrases he is alleged to have written down in several other places, the Koran, he equates himself with the Holy Spirit of God. It is claimed by some in the Islamic world that Muhammad was the Paracletos, the Comforter, promised to come to teach men all things in John 14:26.

Returning to Durant for a moment, he states that we know almost nothing of Muhammad’s youth, although there are many Islamic “fables” concerning it. It is said that he was a highly self-disciplined man, a merchant, who turned progressively to religion by the age of forty. There were many Christians in Arabia, and in Mecca, with at least one who was close to Muhammad, named Waraqah ibn Nawfal, a Catholic, who “knew the Scriptures of the Hebrews and of the Christians” according to Marmaduke Pickthall in his ‘The Meaning of the Glorious Koran’. This is the basis for the theory of some extremists that the Roman Catholic Church had a hand in the formation of Arabic Islam as a bulwark against the Greek Church. This is a bit of a stretch as the Greek Church had not split from Rome at the time of Islam’s formation and the influence of one person hardly constitutes proof that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church was involved in a conspiracy. It is clear, though, that Muhammad knew of the Bible and understood much of it but his knowledge was incomplete as, in the Koran, there are several gross errors, including mixing personages and the time frames they lived in with the events that characterized their lives. It is interesting to note, as well, that the Koran makes it quite clear that the Holy Land, Israel, belongs to the Jews so that the Koran itself makes the Palestinian people trespassers. As with the references to who Allah actually is, I will be glad to provide these verses called suras upon request.

Muhammad visited Medina, the place where his father died, and was influenced by the large Jewish population there. Durant says, “He felt the need of a new religion – perhaps of one that would unify all these factious groups into a virile and healthy nation; a religion that would give them a morality not earth-bound to the Bedouin law of violence and revenge, but based upon commandments of divine origin and therefore of indisputable force.” Islam, at its outset, was, like Roman Catholicism, essentially a political religion, destined to be an excuse for conquest and control.

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He withdrew eventually, during the holy month of Ramadan, to a cave at the foot of Mt. Hira, three miles from Mecca, and would spend many days in fasting, prayer, and meditation. The year 610 was three years after Pope Bonface III began the first official use of the title of Pope, and was called Universal Bishop, by order of Emperor Phocas ruling from Constantinople, after a coup d’etat, or overthrow of the legitimate emperor, Maurice. In 610 Heraclius overthrew Phocas and beheaded him, having his mutilated body dragged through the streets. It was a year ending a period of violent uncertainty in the empire. Phocas was the last emperor to have a monument in the city of Rome in the Roman Forum itself. The Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, ruled the Middle East at this time.

One night in 610, as he was alone in the cave, according to tradition written down in the Hadith or sayings attributed to Muhammad but not written in the Koran, he was visited by a 600 winged angel calling himself Gabriel who forced this merchant who some accounts say was illiterate to write what he commanded on the pain of death. There are various accounts of how this happened and of the details of what happened. It seems that upon returning to his wife, whose “Christian” cousin, Waraqah ibn Nawfal, had influenced them, he was convinced that the revelations were truly from heaven. You see, Muhammad had thought he was being oppressed by a demon. There are no winged angels in the Bible, only winged cherubim, called living creatures in Ezekiel 10:20 & beasts in Revelation 4, of which Satan was one (Ezekiel 28:14) who lost his position due to rebellious pride (Isaiah 14:12; Luke 10:18). He can appear as an “angel of light” as per 2 Corinthians 11:14 and either has led or will lead angels into rebellion as per Revelations 12:4,9 and Matthew 25:41. Gabriel, God’s special messenger to Daniel and to Mary, appears in the form of a man as in Daniel 9:21 but is called an angel in Luke 1:19, 26. Also, note the reference in Revelation 21:17. (All references from the traditional English Bible, commonly called the KJV). There is no Biblical reference to Gabriel having any wings, much less 600.

So began a period of bloodshed and conquest by the descendants of the archer, Ishmael, unparalleled in human history (see Genesis 21:20 & Revelation 6:1,2). Muhammad had many similar visions after that causing him to fall into convulsions or faint, covered in sweat. It is possible that he was suffering from epilepsy because the sound of a bell would precede the fits he had, which some say is a frequent occurrence in epilepsy. But, this is mere speculation and many of the known symptoms of an epileptic seizure are missing from the accounts of his visions so we can probably safely dismiss such a purely physical ailment and ascribe something more spiritual and sinister to his condition. Over the next several years he announced himself more and more as the messenger of Allah, who he said was the one true god. His claims of one god were disturbing to the merchants who depended on pilgrimage and the worship of many gods for their income, but he did gain some important converts including his wife and his cousin Ali along with high standing people in the community. The community leaders who followed him later became known as his “Companions” and they are the ones that wrote down his sayings, creating the Koran, lest those sayings be lost to posterity.

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The rest of the politically powerful in the city had people who had converted to Islam after being freed from slavery imprisoned, but Muhammad’s followers paid a fortune in fines to free them. Muhammad, known as The Prophet, suggested the freed followers emigrate to Abyssinia, current day Ethiopia, and they were received by the Christian king. This was in 615, the year that Pope Boniface the IVth died and Pope Pope Deusdedit began his pontificate.

It is also the time of the reign of Flavius Heraclius Augustus over the Roman Empire from the east, ruling from Constantinople. The empire was in disarray with the Persian Empire making great inroads into the Middle East and a distinct lack of imperial authority being characteristic of the time in Muhammad’s world. Things were so bad that Heraclius considered moving the capital to Carthage, rebuilt and populous by the second century, a center of Christianity in North Africa. But, the former general under the Emperor Maurice chose not to make the move but preferred to strengthen his army.

In 616, those citizens who still believed in the many gods of the Kaaba formed an alliance to fight Muhammad and his followers and by 620 Muhammad left Mecca and went to Taif but he and his group were thrown out of that town and he went back to Mecca where he “married”, at age 50, the seven year old daughter of one of his most important followers. Finally, rather than be massacred by the authorities, Muhammad and his followers fled to Medina on July 16, 622 and historians like Durant mark this event, called the Hegira or flight, as the beginning of the Muslim era. Now, the religion grew to be spread around the world. Durant says that, at Medina, Muhammad ended many kinship ties that so characterized Arabian society and tried to replace “bonds of blood with those of religious brotherhood in a theocratic state”. A theocracy is a state run by a religious organization. The Vatican is a theocracy as were many early Protestant countries such as England where church and state were one with the king or prince being the head of both. Once again, political religion raises its ugly head. No distinction was made between secular and religious affairs, all came under religious jurisdiction. Notice the difference between that concept and the Lord Jesus Christ’s refusal to engage in a civil dispute over property in Luke 12:13-21, only admonishing the petitioner with a parable about covetousness.

The authority of the Prophet, the false prophet, Muhammad, became absolute. His followers made up for their lacking in physical necessities by raiding caravans like common brigands, with one particular raid organized by Muhammad that took place on a special holy day. Mecca sent as small army to try to destroy the Prophet. They were defeated in what Muslims call a miracle at Wadi Bedr (a wadi is a dry riverbed). When a woman poet condemned his thievery and murderous ways in a poem one of his followers killed her in her sleep and was blessed for it by Muhammad himself. Islam means “submission” in Arabic and submission to Muhammad’s criminal behavior became the norm for this warlike cult and cult it was, not much different than the followers of a Jim Jones or David Koresh, only more successful, following their leader’s own peculiar view of the world and eternity to the death, theirs and others.

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When another poet, a man, criticized him, that poet’s head was laid at his feet. As Muhammad was also head of state as well as head of religion, this was viewed as perfectly acceptable in the light of the poet’s treason.

Formerly allying themselves with Muhammad, the Jews of Medina now turned on him and his interpretation of their scriptures, claiming to be their own awaited Messiah. As a result he not only changed the direction that Muslim’s were to pray in, from Jerusalem to Mecca and the Kaaba in 624 but he also exiled certain Jews from the city. In the meantime, early in 625, the Meccan leadership went forth to do battle with Muhammad and his followers again. This time, outnumbering the Muslims 3 to 1 the Meccans defeated them, even injuring Muhammad. The Meccan leader’s wife victoriously munched on the liver and made anklets and a necklace out of the skin and nails of a fallen Muslim warrior who had killed her father, uncle, and brother at the last battle. Muhammad, upon recovering, accused another group of Jews of plotting with his enemies and banished them. They proceeded to ally themselves with the Meccans and as a result faced Muslim wrath, as did many other Jewish clans. Finally, Muhammad was victorious consistently in battle and on the diplomatic front and entered Mecca in triumph. In his two remaining years until his death in 632, he continued to be the winner, even seeing all of Arabia submit to his command, his increasing skill as a general, and his drawing to him of other skilled generals, formerly his enemies, and his new religion.

Muhammad was tolerant of other religions as long as they did not oppose him in any way. He protected Christians in Arabia and merely limited their ability to charge interest on loans. One of his more infamous demands was that the Muslims observe a calendar he personally devised which kept their dating all out of sync with the seasons, and which gained a year every 32 and ½ years. He drew up no code of laws, had no system of government and pretty much dictated the life of his subjects based on his own whims. Muhammad was polygamous, in that he had a number of wives and concubines, which was not unusual in that world and he did marry a very young girl which was also not that out of the ordinary as women often suffered through arranged marriages from an early age with men that were either much older or strangers or both. Women and power were Muhammad’s great indulgences. However, he was also extremely vain; perfuming his body, painting his eyes, dying his hair, and wearing a ring inscribed with “Muhammad, Messenger of Allah”. He would fit right in with many TV preachers today, it would seem. Toward the end of his life he was known to sneak out in the middle of the night and go to the nearest graveyard, ask forgiveness of the dead, congratulate them on being dead, and pray aloud for them. On June 7, 632, Muhammad died after a brief illness. He was 62 or 63 years old depending upon whom you read.

Pope Honorius I was ruling from Rome, having succeeded Boniface V at his death in 625 after a pontificate Boniface V spent pulling the English Christians more firmly into the Catholic dominion. Honorius I, who was pope until 638, was later condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constantinople or First Trullan Council in 680, long after his


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death, for his compromising with the sect of the Monophysites, who believed that Christ only had one nature. This had been rejected at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. For Honorius’ attempt to compromise by upholding the alternative view called Monothelitism, that said that Christ had one will but two natures, human and divine, he was used as an argument against the doctrine of Papal Infallibility put forth at the First Vatican Council of 1870.

Having defeated the Persians in 627, the emperor Heraclius allied with the Ethiopians, and regained all of the territory he had lost. In 630, at the height of his and Muhammad’s power, he marched into Jerusalem and Muhammad marched into Mecca, Heraclius restoring a relic called The True Cross to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which supposedly encompasses the ground where Jesus was crucified. The emperor took sick immediately after his victory and never fought at the head of his army again. Before his death, the Eastern Roman army would come face to face with the triumphant Muslim army, which had united the Arabian Peninsula at the battle of Yarmuk in 636. The Roman army was defeated by the Muslim army there in a battle that is marked as one of the most important in the world as it represents the advent of Islamic conquest of the Middle East and, for that matter, all of Islam’s conquests outside of Arabia. I want to now talk about Muhammad’s other legacy, the Koran.

The word Koran or Qur’an means a reading or a discourse in Arabic and is considered to be the sacred scriptures to the Muslim. If you want to make a comparison with Roman Catholicism, Muhammad would be like Mary, the mother of God, and the Koran would be like Jesus Christ, the living, eternal Word. Of course, to a Bible believing Christian Muhammad is merely another in a long line of false prophets typifying the anti-Christ, the beast to come, in many different ways. The Koran is an accumulation of sayings, spoken by one man. Muhammad dictated some of the writings put down on parchment, leather, palm-leaves, or bones and they were spoken to an assembly, and deposited with other revelations in no special chronological or logical order. After Muhammad’s death it was ordered by his replacement in 633, the Caliph Abu Bekr, that these writings be brought together in a book for the edification of the Muslims. As these were brought together in various forms it became clear that there were too many different versions saying different things so another successor to Muhammad, another Caliph, in 651, ordered a definitive and official revision to be the standard for all Muslims. In spite of this, copies in various languages and dialects speak differently so it is considered imperative for the Muslim who truly wants to know to learn Arabic, the first and official language of Islam. The 114 chapters, called suras, are arranged in order of their length with the longest first, not doctrinal import or chronological sequence. Since the earlier revelations were shorter the Koran is actually written in a kind of reverse chronological order. The book is considered the first literature written in Arabic and the best. Muhammad borrows much from the Bible and mixes up timelines and puts people with other people who did not live at the same time, however. The Koran also makes odd statements about how the Holy Land does indeed belong to the Jews which makes the Palestinian Arab an interloper. There are contradictory statements about Christians and

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Jews, as well, first honoring them as “people of the book”, stating the gospels are the word of God and should be believed, but then going on to say that Christians and Jews are to be despised and that if a rock had one hiding behind it the rock would cry out and tell the Muslim that there was a Jew or Christian hiding behind it. Of course, this is irrelevant to the Muslim as like a modern Christian he or she is less concerned about what their holy book actually says as much as what some important person of the faith (to them) says that it actually means.

Now, to the efforts of the first Muslims to spread their religion; Muhammad’s successors, from 632 to 1058, cut a swathe of conquest, using the superior horsemanship of the Arabian nomad to overthrow the Roman and the Persian cavalry and infantry formations. In 635 they took Damascus, in 636 Antioch where Christians were first called as such, in 638 Jerusalem, the year that the emperor Heraclius died who had so proudly rode into Jerusalem to reconquer it eight years earlier. By 640, all of Syria was Muslim, and by 641 Persia and Egypt had been conquered. At first the Muslim conquerors were gracious to the Christians over which they ruled, even respecting their holy places. Islam spread through Afghanistan and then to throughout Asia Minor to the Black Sea. In the struggles for control of Islam, Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad was killed and became a martyr and those devoted to him became the Shia sect of Islam, called Shiites in today’s news. The minority sect of Islam, they are in contrast to the Sunni sect which represent the majority view. Two important dynasties ruled over Islam early on; the Umayyads from 661 to 750 and the Abbasids from 750 to 1058. From Spain to India, Islam was prevailing by force of arms and diplomatic persuasion.

In 1060, the Seljuk Turks of Central Asia conquered Armenia, which had been the first country to be called a Christian nation by historians and although only an individual person can be truly called a Christian, it does make for a convenient categorizing of nations by the predominant profession of faith. The Armenians had retained their independence by being nominally under the Caliph, keeping their faith and operating independently.

The Eastern Roman empire aka the Byzantine empire was led by a long line of rulers who squabbled over minute points of theology and engaged in bloody and ruthless, often fratricidal or killing within one’s family, infighting and assassination. While emperors fought over whether or not images should be used in worship and Iconcoclasts, influenced by Islam’s ban on pictures and images, destroyed many thousands of priceless pieces of art as relics of idolatry their empire was crumbling around them. The word, Byzantine, has become a term to describe a complex and treacherous, deceitful working behind the scenes, undecipherable to the outside, to impose one’s ideas or bloodline in power. The word, craft, is used in Daniel 8:25 for this type of political shenanigans according to Strong’s dictionary. The negative phrase, “the smoke filled room”, used to describe the location of so many modern, political decisions by the powerful and power hungry, is a like phrase to the term, Byzantine. Councils were called, Popes were consulted, and royal families saw their sons and daughters dismembered, beheaded,

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and eviscerated (insides cut out), in vainglorious and useless disputes by an apostate church-state over the proper way to worship God and the proper persons to decide that worship. The empire was doomed as the long chain of emperors and empresses became more and more detached from the nightmare that the world that was the beneficiary of the heritage of Rome had become although its death was prolonged by the occasional resurgence of intelligent and able emperors. The common people fared no better than their leaders. Durant tells us “The populace, disordered and manipulated by divisions of race, class, or creed, was fickle, bloodthirsty, periodically turbulent; bribed by the state with doles of bread, oil, and wine; diverted by horse races, beast baitings, rope dancing, indecent pantomimes in the theater, and by imperial or ecclesiastical pageantry in the streets. Gambling halls and saloons were everywhere; houses of prostitution could be found on almost every street, sometimes at the very church doors.”

The society and the empire were hopelessly corrupt but experienced a sort of revival under Macedonian emperors from 867-1057. While Western Europe was sinking into an abyss of misery and ignorance lit only by the devoted in Ireland, writing books and sending out missionaries and keeping civilization alive, the Eastern Empire recovered some of the territory lost to the Arabs, reclaimed south Italy for the empire, and experienced a rebirth of literature and art. The Greek side of the Roman Catholic Church grew stronger, with the power of the Byzantine state behind it as Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia came under its sway in conversion. This was deeply resented by the impoverished and debased Papacy at Rome. To the empire, the west seemed crude and barbaric, with Anglo-Saxons, Franks, and Germans nothing more than a violent and illiterate laity led by a corrupt clergy. The Pope rejected the Byzantine emperor’s choice for the king of the Franks, elected a rival emperor to the established one in Constantinople, and tried to make influential inroads into Greek dominated south Italy. The Eastern and Western parts of the state-church began to split severely over these political, not creedal, differences first and foremost.

Then, in 1043, Michael Cerularius was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople, a monk of noble birth, intelligence, a broad education, and a strong will. He rejected any submission to Rome. In 1053 he circulated a Latin treatise or paper, criticizing the Roman church for, among other things, enforced clerical celibacy whereby priests were now forbidden to marry (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5). He then closed all churches that followed Latin ritual and excommunicated their priests.

Pope Leo IX, also of noble birth, was famous for leading his own armies into battle and for attempting to reform the Roman church with traditional morality. He sent a letter to Cerularius demanding that he accept the authority of the Pope and branding any church that did not as Satanic. In a diplomatic vein he sent a delegation to the emperor and the patriarch to discuss the growing differences between the eastern and western church. Some historians say that Leo’s legation, his legates, deposited a Papal Bull, a public statement with the Pope’s authority, on the altar at St. Sophia church in response to Cerularius’ condemnation of the Roman church and his refusal to submit to Rome

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excommunicating Cerularius, kicking him out of the Christian church. Others say it was a preemptive strike but was delivered in July, 1054 several months after Leo’s death in April and was not the product of the Pope’s will. In any event, Cerularius convened a council representing all of Eastern Christianity and the split or schism was complete. There would now be a church called Eastern Orthodox in opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, also a state church willing and capable of killing anyone who opposed it, particularly those who adhered to the scriptures as their final authority rather than a Patriarch, king, or Pope. Two of the three measures of meal leavened by the woman in Matthew 13:33 (see also Luke 12:1; Exodus 12:15) were prepared. For a thousand years the Papacy would covet the return of the Eastern church fomenting wars and encouraging loyal secular leaders to win the East for Rome. Some scholars have blamed part of the reasons for the great wars of the 20th century on this effort based on a vision of the Virgin Mary in the early part of that century that promised that Russia would be won over to the Pope’s side of Christianity.

In the British Isles, Wales was a refuge for many Roman Britons of Celtic stock, from the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England. It had been converted to Christianity early on, perhaps as early as the first century by the missionaries Pudens and Claudia who had come under the ministry of Paul while in Rome according to J. Davis in his “History of the Welsh Baptists”. Studying Schaff’s ‘History of the Christian Church’, Ruckman’s ‘History of the New Testament Church’, and Durant shows that Christianity came early to the British Isles, was unique and clearly showed the influence of Antioch and the early, apostolic Christians and only later, by diplomacy, threats, and force came under the dominion of the Roman church. In the sixth century, Roman Catholicism was imposed on Wales. The Welsh, the people of Wales, were politically united under King Hywel the Good who ruled between 910-950, and provided them with a unified code of laws. Gruffydd ap Llywelyn defeated the English country of Mercia which, in turn resulted in the conquest of Wales for the English by King Harold in 1063.

After the death of Patrick and until the eleventh century Ireland was divided into seven kingdoms; three in Ulster which is the proper name for what we call Northern Ireland today, Connaught, Leinster, Munster, and Meath. They fought among themselves and quite early also raided the British coast. The chronicles called these raiders, Scots, a Celtic word for wanderer, which referred in the early part of the first millennium AD to the Irish. Government was tribal, warfare was endemic or common, and the family was the supreme governing entity. Several families made a clan, several clans made a tribe. The prefixes Ui or O began to be affixed to a tribal name to indicate descent from a common ancestor about the ninth century or the 800’s. For instance, the O’Neills claimed descent from Niall Glundubh, King of Ireland in 916. Early Christian monks opened schools of every scope and degree including studies in Bible, Latin, Greek, and Gaelic grammar, (Gaelic is the native language of Ireland). Poor students (in the English language a student used to be called, scholar, and a teacher, master; see 1 Chronicles 25:8; Malachi 2:12 in the Authorized Version), poor students were maintained by public funds as the Irish made every sacrifice to encourage literacy and learning. The time

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before Rome took control could hardly be called The Dark Ages in Ireland. Ireland was united under the great king, Brian Boru, between 941 and 1014. Politically and materially, they may have been far behind their contemporaries by our standards, but culturally they were the most advanced in the West, until 1172, when the English or Anglo-Norman king Henry II, under the authority of a papal bull of the English Pope, Adrian IV, invaded Ireland for Rome and England. Ireland has suffered much since that time. I have in my possession three large books, one called ‘Ireland in Poetry’ as Ireland had a long, profoundly deep, and literate poetic history, and “Irish Legends”, and “Legendary Ireland”, showing pictures and relating stories of Irish mythology and mythic history.

The tribes of Scotland, once called Caledonia; among them the Celtic Picts, had been so hard to conquer that the Roman Empire had built a wall separating them from the rest of Briton, called Hadrian’s Wall. Late in the 5th century (400’s) a tribe of Gaelic Scotti from Northern Ireland migrated there and basically took over. Three other groups of people; Picts, Briton refugees from the Anglo-Saxon invasion, and Anglo-Saxons themselves competed for the area of Scotland. In 617, Saxons under Edwin, king of Northumbria, captured a hilltop stronghold of the Picts and named it Ed(w)inburgh. It was retaken by Picts and Scots in 954 and made the capital. Malcolm II united much of Scotland in 1018. Duncan I, between 1034 and 1040 united Picts, Scots, Celtic Britons, and Anglo-Saxon settlers into one kingdom of Scotland. Duncan was defeated by the English at Durham and murdered by his general, Macbeth, in 1040, who reigned for 17 years and was murdered by Duncan’s son, Malcolm III. He also had a play written about him by Shakespeare. You might have heard about it. Of the 17 kings who ruled Scotland from 844 to 1057, 12 died by assassination.

Further south, the Germanic Anglo-Saxon invasion had barely been successful over the Celtic Britons (I highly recommend a book called “The Isles” by Norman Davies) when another invader, whom we mentioned at the beginning of this class, began their bloody work. According to Durant, the Northmen or Norsemen aka the Vikings were Teutonic (Germans) whose ancestors had moved from the general area the Anglo-Saxons had come from into Denmark, Sweden, and Norway displacing the Celtic population who had displaced a Mongolian population who were related to Eskimos and Laplanders (Lapland is the northernmost cultural region of Scandinavia). Dan Mikillati, an early chieftain, gave his name to Denmark or Dan’s march or province, Sweden came from Tacitus’ Suiones, and Norway was simply the Norge or northern way. I would also recommend Gywn Jones’ ‘A History of the Vikings’.

Gorm gave Denmark unity and ruled in the late 9th century (800’s to early 900’s) and early 10th century, Harald Bluetooth, his son, gave it Christianity between 945 and 985, Sweyn Forkbeard conquered England between 985 and 1014 and made Denmark one of the great powers of Europe for a time. King Olaf Scottkonung made Sweden nominally Christian sometime between 994 and 1022. In the mid-800’s, Norway, a conglomeration of 31 principalities ruled by a warrior chieftain, was almost all united under Halfdan the

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Black, who became its first king. His son, Harald Haarfager, between 860 and 933, conquered the rest of it. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a long history of the people who invaded Roman Briton, declares that in 787, before England had even been united under Anglo-Saxon rule “came three ships to the West Saxon shores….and they slew folk These were the first ships of Danish men that sought land of Engle folk.”

In 793 a Danish expedition sacked the famous monastery of Lindisfarne and murdered its monks. In 838 East Anglia and Kent were raided and in 839 a pirate fleet of 350 ships moored in the Thames river and sacked Canterbury and London. Monasteries were destroyed, libraries were burnt, and cities ruined. By 871, most of England north of the Thames River was Viking.

Then, at the age of 22, a great English king rose to the throne of West Saxony; a man named Alfred who would become known as Alfred the Great. He would translate part of the Bible and carry it with him. He was possibly an epileptic, suffering a seizure at a wedding feast, but he is portrayed as a hunter, handsome and graceful, Durant tells us, and surpassed all of his family in the warrior arts and wisdom. After being defeated by the Danes he managed to turn the tables in 878 at the battle of Edington. Half of the Danish invaders moved to attack France and the other half agreed to stay within a limited area of northeastern England called Danelaw. He then conquered the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, uniting them against the invaders, rebuilt his army, built a navy, established common law for all of his kingdoms, reformed the administration of justice, provided legal protection for the poor, and built or rebuilt towns and cities.

In 894, a fresh invasion of Danes, allied with Welsh Celts not yet conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, was defeated by Alfred’s son, Edward’s army and navy. Alfred died in or about 899 at a comparatively young, by our standards, 50-52 years of age. At the end of the 900’s another Scandinavian assault resulted in victory and the forcing of King Ethelred to pay a tribute to the conquerors which became known as the Danegeld. Later, after ordering the slaughter of many of the Danes he fled to Normandy when King Sweyn of Denmark conquered England in revenge. Ethelred had married the daughter of the Norman Duke Richard I. The Normans were also descendants of Viking conquerors on the west coast of France. By 1016 the invasion of England by Cnut, the Dane, was complete.

Before we move on to the continent during this era, I want to mention some important Anglo-Saxon literature. The history known as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle I’ve already mentioned. Another is the epic poem, Beowulf. Alfred’s life is preserved in The Life of Alfred by Asser. Caedmon is the oldest name of a poet on record of Anglo-Saxon origin, preserved only by comments of the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History.

The greatest of Medieval kings who ruled an empire comprising modern France and Germany was born in 742. His name was Charlemagne.


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The Merovingian dynasty had ruled the Frankish tribes in what is now France since before the great Clovis in the late 400’s forced Catholic Christianity upon his subjects. This line of kings eventually became ineffectual and basically worthless but had produced strong major domos or “mayors of the palace” who did their fighting for them like Charles Martel (the hammer) among others, who had defeated the Muslim invaders at Tours in 732 thereby stopping the northern advance of Islam into the rest of Europe from Spain. Pepin III overthrew the impotent Merovingians and began the Carolingian dynasty with Pope Zacharias’ blessing. This dynasty ruled the Franks from 751 to 987. Charlemagne was his son.

Charlemagne became sole king after his brother died in 771. He aided Pope Hadrian II in his struggle against the Lombard king, Desiderius, who had invaded the states directly controlled by the papacy. Charlemagne’s victory allowed him to claim Lombardy, part of Italy as his own. Returning to his capital of Aachen, he began a series of 53 campaigns that carved out an empire consisting of Germany, France, and part of Italy. He allied himself with one Muslim king in Spain against another but was forced to return home due to a revolt in German Saxony. As he retreated through the Pyrenees he was attacked by a force of Basques who wiped out his rear guard. This resulted in the epic poem, The Song of Roland, which was written down three centuries later. Finally, Charlemagne did conquer a strip of Northeast Spain for his empire. By becoming the military wing of the Papacy and forcing his empire to accept the Roman Catholic religion, Charlemagne became a type of the anti-Christ to come. In 800 Pope Leo III crowned him emperor of the Romans. By receiving the crown from the Pope he affirmed, even if unwittingly as some historians say, the Pope’s authority over kings and princes and created the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne was a ruthless dictator who was especially cruel, Durant says, in spreading Roman Catholic Christianity by force of arms. He had four wives and five concubines, many illegitimate children, and even encouraged his daughters to forebear marriage and they also produced many illegitimate offspring. He finally died in 814 and is said to have been buried with his finger pointed to an open Latin Vulgate on his chest, open to Matthew 16:26, although a later emperor, Otto III reported that when he opened Charlemagne’s tomb he was sitting up on a throne and no open Bible was in sight.

As is the case with most great conquerors, his successors were incompetent and quarrelsome. Viking invasions and demands for territory weakened their power significantly as did constant infighting and civil wars. When Louis V died in 987, the nobles of France with the approval of their archbishop elected Hugh Capet as king and Capetian line would rule France until the revolution. The western part of France had been lost to the Normans, Vikings, who had also established a strong base in the island of Sicily and other parts of Europe. Virtually the modern states of Italy, Germany, and France (although not by those names) had been partitioned by the Treaty of Verdun in 843 with different kings receiving different grants of territory.



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Throughout the first part of the Dark Ages, the Jews lived a miserable existence but God’s mercy permitted them to grow in influence in both Catholic Europe and the Islamic world. Jewish communities sprung up everywhere and in the cities of Palestine and Babylonia the Jewish scribes created great bodies of law and commentary known as the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. Their great dispute was over the divine origin of not just the written law that Moses had left them but of the oral law which had been passed down from priest to priest, the “traditions of men” which Jesus so roundly condemned. The Mishna or oral teaching was designed for memory by repetition and was the theme of many schools of Rabbinical thought. Durant puts it this way;

“Israel now had a law, but no state; a book, but no home. To 614 Jerusalem was a Christian city; till 629, Persian, till 637, again Christian; then till 1099, a Moslem provincial capital.”

In Frankish lands, the Merovingian kings persecuted them mercilessly. Although there are stories of Charlemagne using Jews in various professions and protecting them in that regard one king even threatened that if they did not convert to Catholicism he’d have their eyes torn out. Jews were often advisors to kings in medicine and other sciences.

The Spanish Jews called themselves Sephardim and traced their origin to the tribe of Judah. Before the Muslims conquered Spain the Visigothic kings of Spain made life miserable for them. The Jews, therefore, were very helpful when the Moors of North Africa and the Arabs invaded in 711. The Muslims encouraged immigration and 50,000 Jews came from Palestine and North Africa and some towns were completely inhabited by Jews. However, in 1066, the favored Jewish aristocracy that had been encouraged by enlightened Muslim rulers came to an end when Arab Spaniards revolted, crucified the most prominent Jewish advisor to their king and massacred 4000 Jews at Granada. The long peace between all Spanish Jews and Muslims came to an end within two decades of that event.

Groups of Christians who did not follow or submit to either the bishop of Rome or the Patriarch of Constantinople continued from the time of the apostles to the Reformation and beyond. We have mentioned several groups in previous classes but a mention from Foxe’s ‘Acts and Monuments’ will suffice to show what danger they faced by refusing to adopt infant baptism or the authority of the Pope or Patriarch. Welsh Christians were faced with a Roman Catholic Missionary named Austin who, when the Celtic Christians he faced refused to accept infant baptism, had them slaughtered. The majority of the Welsh submitted to the dictates of the Papacy after that. ‘Acts and Monuments’ offers a revealing look at the history of New Testament Christianity, the minority, running along side of the state church of the Dark Ages. As in 1 Kings 19:18, God kept a remnant of believers separate who did not follow the herd.




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We have spoken of several important dates here with many momentous events happening around the end of the first millennium AD. This particular time is worthy of note as a natural dividing line separating the Dark Ages into two sections or, as traditional historians insist, separating the Dark from the Middle Ages or the Medieval period. The conquest of England by the Danes, the fall of the Carolingians in France, and the Muslim invasion of Spain made the first millennium AD appear as if it was to be the last. The world appeared to be engulfed in cataclysmic political and religious events. In the book, ‘The First Apocalypse’ by James Reston, Jr. Europe at the year 1000AD is discussed. He goes into great detail about the political, religious, and ethnic upheavals in Europe at the end of the age. Other chroniclers tell us that Viking and Muslim invasions, Magyar invasions from the east, the fall of once victorious Frankish dynasties, and general uncertainty led many to surrender their land to the Roman church itself and wait humbly and often terrified for the end of history. When it didn’t happen the way they thought it would those foolish enough to have surrendered their property to the church of the so-called Vicar of Christ sitting in churches awaiting the end learned that it was lost to them forever.

Proceeding to the period after the expectations of the end of the world were dashed when the end of the first millennium came and went, the Viking conquest of England under Cnut was brutal and although he is heralded by historians as a true statesman, he was also extremely cruel to the English at first. He did, however, marry the widow of the defeated English king, a woman who was the daughter of the Norman Duke Richard I, making an alliance with her brother who was now the duke. He accepted Catholic Christianity and built many churches, thereby ingratiating himself to Rome. He also managed to keep continuity in Anglo-Saxon England by continuing cultural norms and legal systems. Finally, after his insecure, youthful rule he became himself more and more English and ultimately he brought the Isles twelve years of peace. He began to appoint only the English to positions of authority. He was not only King of England but King of Denmark and in 1028 he was King of Norway, as well. To quote Durant, “he came in as a Dane, and died as an Englishman”. Culturally, the Danish invasion was a disaster but the English recovered and architecture and the literature that Alfred promoted returned after a time. Cnut died at the young age of forty, in 1035.

Before the last Danish king, Harthacnut, died he summoned from Normandy the surviving son of Ethelred the Unready and Emma and recognized his Anglo-Saxon stepbrother as the new king of England. What a twist, huh? But, it gets better and more soap opera like. The new king, Edward the Confessor, was as much a foreigner as any Dane, having lived at the Norman court since the age of 10. He brought his French language and priests to England and his friends became high officials; religious and secular. He gave them royal grants, built Norman castles, and permitted them to show contempt for his English subjects spurring on the Norman conquest decades before it actually happened by force of arms. There was only one Englishman who had the power to influence the Norman acting, English king and that was Earl Godwin, governor of Wessex, and first counselor to the Danish kings that preceded Edward. He became a

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powerful influence and his daughter even married the king. Edward, though, had no children. Godwin’s son, Tostig, married the daughter of the count of Flanders and Godwin’s nephew Sweyn became ruler of Denmark, making Earl Godwin the most powerful man, by alliances, in Northern Europe, even more powerful than the King himself. Out of envy, Edward’s Norman friends convinced him to depose Godwin, who then fled to Flanders. His son, Harold, went to Ireland and raised an army against Edward the Confessor’s Norman dominated government. English nobles, resentful of the haughty Normans, who were only one or two generations away from their barbaric Viking ancestors, asked Godwin to return and promised support to overthrow Edward’s friends. Harold and his father, Godwin, with their loyal troops, invaded England and ran off the Normans who surrounded the king. Godwin then died. Harold went on to conquer Wales for England and presented Edward with the head of Welsh chieftain, Gruffyd.

Edward had begun building Westminster Abbey in 1055 and he was laid to rest there in 1066. On January 6, the assembled nobles elected Harold king. However, William, Duke of Normandy, illegitimate son of Robert I, also claimed the throne, claiming to have been promised it by Edward in 1051 as gratitude for 30 years of safe protection in Normandy. In spite of that promise, Edward also recommended Harold for king. William then claimed that as Harold had accepted knighthood from him that he, William, was Harold’s master and was promised support by Harold for his claim to the throne. William appealed to Pope Alexander II, who condemned and excommunicated Harold and granted the throne to William. Tostig, Harold’s brother, raised a Viking army to invade from the north under the leadership of Harald Hardrada, of Norway, under a promise of the English throne, even though Tostig was allied with William. Harold of England defeated Hardrada’s army at the battle of Stamford Bridge but was defeated at the battle of Hastings on October 14. William, the Pope’s man, was crowned king on Christmas day. Harold, whose body had been badly mutilated, was buried in pieces in a church he had built at Waltham. Norman England, a combination of Celtic Briton, Anglo-Saxon, French, and Viking civilization had officially begun.

Otto I the Great was the Charlemagne of Germany. Twenty four at his succession he created a German church tied to the state and united a powerful state consisting of present day German and Austria, loosely allied to the Pope. He also successfully defeated the Magyar tribe who had invaded his realm. Responding to an appeal for aid from Pope John XII he conquered Italy and was crowned Roman Emperor of the West by the Pope in 962.

Otto II married the daughter of Romanus II, the Byzantine emperor, but died trying to conquer southern Italy. Otto III, starting in 996, attempted to unite all Christendom under a revived Roman Empire, ruled from Rome. This figure, in typology, of the anti-Christ to come at the end of the church age installed his own pope, Gebhart, but his early death cancelled his dream. Henry II elevated the empire to its height, conquering territory, and bringing a brief golden age to Central Europe. He appointed two popes himself. Henry IV, fought with Pope Gregory VII, who had forbade the appointment of powerful bishops

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by laymen in a dispute called the investiture controversy that would last for centuries and for Henry IV resulted in a ten year war of diplomacy and violence that ended in his death in 1106.

Now, we are going to address the Bible itself during the period we have discussed, particularly in what is known to us today as England. The Cambridge History of the Bible edited by G.W.H. Lampe in 1969, has on page 427 of Volume 2 this interesting statement;

“No doubt only a small part of the translations actually made have come down to us…”

As we have seen England was dominated by Celtic Britons for at least 500 years before the Romans conquered in the middle of the first century with their laws, language, and massive building programs. In a very short time missionaries from the region of Syria would pass through Rome and deliver the gospel to the natives of Britain. Celtic Britons living in what might be referenced in the Bible as “the isles” had God’s word long before traditional and even so-called Christians historians honor the imposition of Roman Catholicism by the monk Augustine in 597. That is simply an error as is ascribing all Christian efforts in history to Rome.

John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, written in 1583, gives seven proofs that the gospel was spread all over Britain long before the Roman church arrived. Taking the testimony of the ancient chronicler, Gildas, writing in 633, he says that Britain received the gospel while Tiberius still reigned. Tiberius was the emperor under whom Christ was crucified. He then points out the old legend that Joseph of Arimathea, who gave Christ his own tomb, was sent by Philip the Apostle to Britain in about 63AD. This can be found in Volume I, page 306.

Walter Scott states in The Story of Our English Bible that “Christ and him crucified was preached in Great Britain as early as the first century, especially during the reigns of Nero and Domitian, A.D. 54-68, 81-96, and probably by the immediate companions of the Apostle Paul, while numerous translations of portions of the Scriptures from the …(Old) Latin Bible…were made and circulated during the second century. It is an interesting circumstance that Bran, a British king, was at Rome as a hostage for the good behavior of his country, during the imprisonment of Paul in the imperial city. He was probably converted by the Apostle, as on his return to Britain he was accompanied by certain Christian teachers, among who was Aristobulus (Romans 16:10). Bran preached Christ in Wales.” (page 126).

William of Malmesbury, writing in the 1100’s, reconfirms that Christianity was brought to Britain by at least the year 63, by Joseph of Arimathea and 12 companions in his On the Antiquity of the Church at Glastonbury as cited by Bruce Metzger on page 443 of his 1977 work, The Early Versions of the New Testament.


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John Marsden, who wrote a biography of The Venerable Bede, says that the Romans brought Christianity as far as Hadrian’s Wall in 121AD in his book, The Illustrated Bede.

Foxe goes on to say that Tertullian, the early church “father”, wrote in his Against the Jews that the gospel was taken to Britain and many places not covered by Roman authority. Metzger even admits that in his book.

Foxe’s third proof is a citation from Origen, who died in 254, that Christ was preached in Britain before the days of Eleutherius in 180. The fact that Origen states that Christianity was a great civilizing force in Britain in the first two centuries is also cited by Metzger.

Metzger cites J.M.C. Toynbee who says that Origen’s and Tertullian’s first hand account “testify to a well established Christian community, capable of at least some missionary effort, and to a fairly widespread diffusion of the faith, in the province (Britain) by about the year 200” (quoting Christianity in Roman Britain, an article in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, as cited in Metzger, page 444).

Foxe takes the word of the Venerable Bede as his fourth argument who claimed that the missionaries to Britain, the first ones, did not come from Rome but from what we call today “the Middle East”. Fifth, he says that one Nicephorous claimed that Simon Zelotes, an apostle called in Luke 6:15, also spread Christianity as far as Britain. Sixth, he quotes a Peter of Clugni saying that the Scots refused to acknowledge the primacy of the bishop of Rome (the Pope) above their practice of the faith, and seventh, he goes on to say that a King Lucius had received the faith in 180 from two missionaries, Fagan and Damian.

Bede wrote, in the 600’s, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, and he also wrote about Lucius, king of the Britons, in the second century, receiving Christ as referred to Blair in his 1996 book, Anglo-Saxon England, originally published by the Cambridge University Press.

William of Malmesbury is cited by Metzger as talking about the missionaries who converted King Lucius and how they found the church “that had been built the previous century by the hands of the disciples of Christ”.

The Christian community in Britain was, according to Foxe, Bede, Constantius, and Gildas was decimated by the persecution of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 303 and almost destroyed. Foxe says that we have no copies of the Celtic scriptures written before 300AD because they were all destroyed. Bede, using what he claims are “ancient documents” tells about the early Celtic Christians who were killed in that persecution. Gildas refers to the destruction of churches and their rebuilding. The persecution by Diocletian in 303 and the sack of Britain by the Saxon invaders in 449 destroyed any Bibles in Celtic Briton or the Old Latin in Britain.


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Gerhard Herm’s The Celts, a secular book, admits that the Celtic church flourished and was quite different than what the Pope desired with Christianity advanced by “the power of persuasion alone”. (try the Holy Spirit, Gerhard). I have already pointed out how Ireland produced missionaries and copied scriptures while Europe was languishing in darkness at the beginning of this period.

Blair has pointed out that missionaries from Ireland had a great influence in converting Anglo-Saxons and Jutes. Bede relates how Columba came to preach to the Picts in present day Scotland and how he converted the Anglo-Saxons using the “writings of the prophets, evangelists and apostles” as cited by Marsden in his The Illustrated Bede.

Peter Blair, in his Anglo-Saxon England, says “During its long period of isolation the Celtic Church had developed in complete independence and diverged considerably from the paths followed by Rome, not merely in matters of form and ritual, but more fundamentally in its whole organization. Rome could not readily brook the continued existence of what it regarded as schismatic ways and still less could it contemplate that so large a Christian community which shewed remarkable missionary zeal should not recognize the pope as its spiritual head.”

In Marsden’s book on Bede he records Bede’s account of Caedmon, who translated scriptures into English, which is Anglo-Saxon. Astoundingly, writing in the 600’s, Bede tells us that “reading of the scriptures is in general use among them all”.

Herm’s book quotes a poem from the 600’s;

“Grant me, sweet Christ, the grace to find
Son of the Living God!----
A little pool but very clear
To stand beside the place,
Where all men’s sins are washed away
by sanctifying grace…”

These allusions to such verses as Isaiah 4:4; Ezekiel 16:9; Mark 16:16, and John 6:69 show remarkably the depth of the knowledge of the Bible available to Anglo-Saxon England. John 6:69 is clearly represented in “Son of the Living God” and evidences the ancient authority of this phrase in the King James Bible. The oldest Anglo-Saxon book still surviving in its original binding, according to Anne Savage’s book The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles is the Stonyhurst Gospels containing the Gospel of John, the very gospel that modern, liberal scholars have placed in a separate category from the other three, them being called the Synoptic Gospels. The Gospel of John is the one that was written for the express purpose of getting people saved (John 20:31).

Blair reports that a copy of all four gospels was ordered in 678 for a newly dedicated church at Ripon. At the close of that century a version of the book of Psalms was

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translated by a person named Guthlac into Saxon. Aldhelm’s translation of the Psalms into a musical form to be sung or recited called a Psalter was found in the Royal Library at Paris. With regard to Bible translations, Wycliffe, in the preface to his Bible in the 1300’s states that Bede translated the Bible into Saxon. Bede had access to Greek manuscripts because, according to the historians I have mentioned, there were many well stocked libraries by this time in England, thanks partly to the work of the Celtic missionaries from Ireland and Scotland, one Scottish missionary, Aidan, being responsible for the conversion of a King Oswald. The Danish Vikings burnt a great many of these libraries, according to Foxe.

From the time of Alfred the adjective Englisc was in regular use, meaning both Englishman and the language, English. Alfred’s main chronicler, Asser, states that Alfred was in the habit of having the scriptures read to him. He studied translations and kept his own translation in Saxon close to him, calling it his Enchiridion or Manual, which stayed with him day and night. Asser claims that King Alfred’s children learned the Psalms by heart and that Alfred recited the Psalms and sang them day and night. William of Malmesbury recorded that Alfred memorized many of the verses of both the Old and New Testament, as well. J. Bosworth’s The Gospels records that the Scriptures were translated into Anglo-Saxon and revered by them.

Blair and Bosworth both report that the Anglo-Saxon translated scriptures were read in the churches and in daily use. Dore says in his Old Bibles that in the late 10th century, that is the 900’s, Aelfric took early translations of the Bible and translated them into Old English, the language of the day. Metzger supports this by saying that the West Saxon gospels contain a note associating them with Aelfric. The Worcester Fragment, written in the 1200’s but supposedly copied from a much earlier work that didn’t survive talks about men who preached the gospel. Aelfric aided in memorization because he paid close attention to rhythm. According to these scholars I’ve mentioned scripture study and memorization were widespread among Christians in Britain in spite of the commonly held notion that few Christians had scriptures and could read. In Thompson and Hicks’ World History and Cultures Aelfric, the Anglo-Saxon translator, is said to have rejected the Petrine theory that says that Peter was the first pope and that Bede, Aldheim, and Aelfric rejected the apocrypha that is found in the Vatican manuscripts and Bibles. The Rushworth Version of the Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, completed by Faerman and Owun about 950 contains them in the old Northumbrian and Mercian dialects.

These versions were not translated from the corrupted Latin and Greek texts but from the Old Latin Version which had been in constant use until Jerome created the Vulgate. The Gospel According to Saint Luke in Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian Versions Synoptically Arranged, with Collations Exhibiting ALL the Readings of All the MSS, by Walter Skeat points out the similarity of the Anglo-Saxon versions and how they were not arrived at from using the Roman Catholic Church’s corrupt Latin Vulgate.



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The Lindisfarne Gospels were originally done in Latin in 698 and redone by Aldred in 950 in the Old English dialect of Northumbrian. The Lord’s Prayer is written in part like this;

Urer Fader
Our Father

thu art in heofnum
that art in Heaven

gehalgad thin noma
be hallowed thy name

thin ric to-cymeth
thy kingdom to cometh

thin willo sie
thy will be done

in eortho suae in heofne
in earth as it is in heaven

We are now wrapping up what secular historians call The Dark Ages. Traditionally, the next period is called the Middle Ages or the Medieval Period. We will see the Papacy supreme, the Crusades, and take a close look at Medieval society, learn about the Inquisition, the Reconquista, and cover the period up until the first glimpses of the Reformation. But, first, a look at Aztecs, Mongols, Easter Island, and African empires.

Latest Reading

On The Truth of The Holy Scriptures by John Wyclif, translated with an introduction and Notes by Ian Christopher Levy, published by The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages, Medieval Institute Publications, Kalamazoo, 2001. Interesting reading but tough as medieval people thought differently then we do.

Latest Reading

Insanity Fair '67 by Douglas Reed, Garden City Press Limited, Letchworth, England, 1967. This is a pretty interesting appraisal of the Rhodesian situation not long after UDI. He does, however, make some predictions that don't come true, such as a major war between the communist powers and the west. Good read, though.