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Misconceptions about Christopher Columbus: How History Can Be Easily Corrupted with Lies and Propaganda
Kevin R. Henke
September 15, 2022
A lot of Lundahl (2022m) consists of quoting email exchanges that he and I had back in February 17-18, 2022. This is fine, although in some cases, Lundahl (2022m) neglects to mention relevant updates and references that I later gave on the topics in Henke (2022b).
In an email to Mr. Lundahl on February 17, 2022, 7:29 PM US Eastern Time, I stated:
“Today millions believe these lies in the Mormon churches and spread them through their evangelism projects. In other cases, people like Reagan confused movie plots and novels and thought that they were history, and there's a lot of Americans that still admire Reagan and believe what is in his speeches. There are millions of Americans that actually believe that Columbus proved that the Earth was round and that he landed in what is now the United States.” [my emphasis]
Mr. Lundahl then responded to my email on February 18, 2022 at 1:37 PM (Paris time) [February 18, 2022, 7:37 AM US Eastern Time in my email file]. Lundahl (2022m) then summarizes the email exchange and comments on the cultural impact of Star Wars and the falsehoods about Christopher Columbus:
“Now, the Force was already discussed in our correspondence:
Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : Continued Correspondence with Kevin : XV - XXVIII
In mail XV, Kevin R. Henke to me, 2/18/2022 at 1:29 AM (Paris time), he said:
‘There are millions of Americans that actually believe that Columbus proved that the Earth was round and that he landed in what is now the United States. There are people that believe that "The Force" exists. They knew nothing about Eastern religions until they saw Star Wars.’
Let's take both statements in turn. And, as I did it back in mail XVI, Me to Kevin R. Henke, 2/18/2022 at 1:37 PM (Paris time), here:
‘There are millions of Americans that actually believe that Columbus proved that the Earth was round and that he landed in what is now the United States.’
Which is not about non-events, just a distorted account of actual events.
He and Magellan did prove you could sail around the Earth, against people who predicted that too far West storms would make that impossible, or that they could not sail all the way from Spain to Japan on provisions a caravell could take along and didn't know there was a landmass in between. And he did come to the Americas, there is just a confusion between the Americas and the US which is colloquially named "America".
‘There are people that believe that "The Force" exists. They knew nothing about Eastern religions until they saw Star Wars.’
They don't take Luke Skywalker's childhood on Tatooine as history, which is a case in my point. There is a vast difference between changing outlook due to a work of fiction and believing the work of fiction as history.
It seems, Henke can't see that a point has been already answered. He's content to repeat, rather than try to show despite my answer how popular beliefs about Columbus or in the Force still prove his point despite my answers.” [my emphasis]
In Henke (2022df), I previously discussed how Mr. Lundahl does not fully realize the implications of people often cherry-picking ideas from works of fiction and then passing off those ideas as factual, such as taking the “Force” from Star Wars and claiming that it really exists. In this essay, I will discuss how the misinterpretations and lies about Christopher Columbus have become widely believed in the US.
Now, I think that Lundahl (2022m) is probably correct about people often mistakenly believing that Columbus landed in what is now the US because of a misunderstanding over what is meant by “America.” Communication errors have been common among humans since our ancestors first learned to communicate. Nevertheless, the claim that Columbus was trying to demonstrate that the world was round has a more nefarious origin involving lies and propaganda (Garwood 2007, pp. 1-14). Washington Irving passed off this myth as “history” in his 1828 book A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Anticlericalists Alponse de Lamartine (Life of Columbus, 1853) and Antoine-Jean Letronne also used the myth to attack the Roman Catholic Church by falsely accusing them of being backwards and unenlightened flat Earthers. The myth eventually made it into a popular 1919 textbook for schoolchildren The Boys’ and Girls’ Reader by Emma Miller Bolenius and became widely believed in the USA as fact after that (Garwood 2007, pp. 1-14). This is a prime example of how a lie may extensively spread and become widely believed in less than a century. Hypotheses #3 and #4 state that these types of lies and misinterpretations are common and are far more probable in explaining the origin of the Taking Snake of Genesis 3 than actually believing that a Talking Snake existed and Genesis 3 is history.
Now, also in response to the error about Columbus demonstrating that the Earth was round, Lundahl (2022m) states:
“Which is not about non-events, just a distorted account of actual events.”
Nevertheless, this error is not just “… a distorted account of actual events” as Lundahl (2022m) claims or even possibly a half-truth. It’s a totally blatant lie, a piece of propaganda, associated with an actual individual and his voyages. There’s an important distinction between distorting a piece of history (e.g., accidentally misinterpreting where Columbus landed) and making up lies and associating them with historical events and people (e.g., Columbus demonstrated that the Earth was round).
Later in Lundahl (2022m), Mr. Lundahl further comments on his views of Irving (1828):
“When Washington Irving wrote a novel on Columbus, he was kind of making overall a historic statement on him, and this historic statement involves the falsehood he discovered the roundness of earth, which he did not do, and it is very closely related to on the one hand a historic truth, he and Magellan between them proving earth circumnavigable (and Magellan thereby providing a final proof the Earth is round, rather than the three more conjectural proofs), and it is also very closely related to an agenda of painting the Middle Ages as gullible, ignorant people.” [my emphasis]
Notice that Lundahl (2022m) refers to Irving (1828) as a “novel” despite the claim in the title of Irving (1828): A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Mr. Lundahl is probably correct. Although I’ve never studied Irving (1828), I’m skeptical that it should be labelled as a “history.” Yet, the sad fact is that Irving passed his work off as history and too many gullible people took it as history. If Irving (1828) so grossly distorted the Church’s views on the shape of the Earth in 1492, what else might Irving have distorted about Christopher Columbus? This is why we need to approach these “biographies” and “histories” with great caution, especially after one extensively damaging lie has been found in them.
A lie, like what Irving (1828) said about the Roman Catholic Church believing in a flat Earth, should also never be labelled as “… kind of making overall a historical statement.” Again, it’s just a blatant lie and nothing else. It never happened. Despite his qualifiers, by Lundahl (2022m) labelling what Irving (1828) said as “… kind of making overall a historical statement”, Lundahl (2022m) degrades the meaning of the word history. A claim should only be labelled as history if it’s reliable; that is, if it’s been confirmed by archeology or other external evidence. Otherwise, at best, it’s only a plausible claim still worthy of skepticism.
So, lies and misconceptions are often associated with historical individuals, such as Christopher Columbus as explained in this essay, the likely false cherry tree and angelic visions stories associated with George Washington (also see Henke 2022bx), the Lady Hope story with Charles Darwin, etc. While I’m not saying that there’s any evidence whatsoever that any part of Genesis 3 actually happened, the common occurrence of lies and misunderstandings being attached to real people, places and events still has strong implications for the Bible. That is, there are plenty examples in the Bible, where likely false stories are associated with people that actually lived. For example, in Henke (2022a), I mentioned that the inscriptions in the Annuals of Sennacherib confirm King Sennacherib of Assyria’s successful attack on Judah during the reign of King Hezekiah as described in 2 Kings 18:13 (https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2019/10/04/king-hezekiah-an-archaeological-biography/). At the same time, I warned in Henke (2022a) that just because this piece of archeological evidence confirms the existence of King Hezekiah that does not mean that we should believe other claims in 2 Kings. That is, just because this valuable artifact confirms that King Hezekiah actually lived, should we automatically believe that a shadow miraculously reversed on the stairway of Ahaz for King Hezekiah as described in 2 Kings 20:8-11? Of course not. We should not accept that claim without good evidence any more than we should accept that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree without good evidence.
References
Bolenius, E.M. 1919. The Boys’ and Girls’ Reader: Fifth Reader: Houghton, Mifflin: New York, NY, USA.
Garwood, C. 2007. Flat Earth: Thomas Dunne Books: St. Martin’s Press: New York, NY, USA, 436pp.
Irving, W. 1828. A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus: John Murray, London, UK.
Lamartine, A. de. 1853. Life of Columbus: L. Hatchette et cie, Paris, France.
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