Fact Check History!

The Truth is Out There. . . Well, So Are Lots of Other Versions of it: A Few Examples of How We Redefine The Facts! 

4 to 5 min read

Pocahontas...

The little truths we cling to are the building blocks of our world, but when we really test them, they're not always authentic. Let's just say, Pocahontas, for example, the Walt Disney  princess who, by marrying John Smith, brought Native Americans and European colonists closer. She was, in all truth, only a child of around ten years of age when she met Smith. Historically, Pocahontas played a very minor role in any of the developments that the big screen makes out, for example, she didn't marry Smith, but John Rolfe instead in 1614. 

Pocahontas engraving

Kingdom of Heaven: Relatable Heroes and Honour Dynamics...

This really is an awesome historical film! Bailian of Ibelin is a peasant, a french blacksmith, who is taken by his repenting Crusader father and taught to fight, and then, they all go to the holy land where he pretty much single handedly saves Jerusalem before bedding Sybilla, sister of King Baldwin IV! Only issue is that it's all wrong: First off, Balian was born into the Christian Crusader nobility in Jerusalem, he was a trained military leader. It was highly unlikely that he mounted the monarch's sibling either, but yes, he was part of Jerusalem's defence, but he had lots of help! He would've simply blended in as one of the other heroic knights. 

Good Guys and Bad Guys: Concentrating on World War II Camps... 

When we talk about the US liberating concentration camps in the second world war, very few know that America used their own camps to imprison Japanese and Japanese-American citizens! Of course, they also took German and Italian Americans, given espionage and sabotage fears. US anti-Japanese propaganda featured deliberately racist cartoon caricaturizations, which exaggerated and demonised Japanese features and moral character; the same was done to Jewish people in Germany by Nazi’s! Likewise, incarceration was also entirely dependent on race. 

Conditions inside the US camps were harsh with limited movement, echoing the racist regimes the allied forces were fighting. The US used the term ‘internment camps,’ which was much like rebranding the kettle, calling it the ‘water boiling device’. The ten internment camps, once stretching across the length and breadth of the country actually ended up getting quite a few people into some real hot water.

Well, there's more, have you ever heard of a Gulag? That was a corrective forced labour camp for anyone in, or around Russia deemed a threat to Stalin's politics. Anyone could do a stretch; ethnic minorities, religious folk, wealthy peasants (Kulaks) who would not surrender their land and animals to the regime. To be fair, you could find innocent people and criminals alike inside those labour camps. Why? Communist paranoia. 

Above all, between the 1920s and the 1950s, millions served pointless sentences and over a million individuals died. It’s not surprising how the most notorious of all concentration camps eclipsed the others; in reality, however, it was a dark side of humanity itself that had emerged. It was not limited to politics or nationalism or culture, but a human born evil!

From Dogma Breath to Holy Molars: A Theory About Divinity And Jesus Christ... 

Jesus Christ is never portrayed as an eye sore, but rather a man infused with the beauties that divinity might bring. Themes common in Greco-Roman culture such as Platonism, Aristotelianism and mythology later ended up in the words of Greek biblical writers, Christian Gnostics and Church Fathers. 

The Church began depicting Jesus with the essence of godlike qualities, look at Achilles of the Illiad, for example. Today, we see nearly all Christian scriptures are written in old Greek, and the ‘god in human form’ thing is abundantly clear — Alexander the Great influences? All Christian themed movies use attractive actors, well . . . I suppose there’s always an exception. We have to forgive whoever decided to cast Robert Powell, we all drop the ball from time to time! 

Could The Following be a More Realistic State of Events?:

Our Jesus Christ comes from the Greek, Iesous Christos, which referred to a Palestinian man who would have been known as Yeshua Ben Yosef or Yeshua ben Pantera, or maybe Yeshu Rabban (Jesus the teacher). The divinity of a person in early first century Judah usually signified being on some kind of mission for God, being in service for or holding a special relationship with Yahweh—Elaha, or Elohim in Aramaic or Hebrew, even Allaha. 

God is an English word from Proto-Germanic ǥuđán, phonetically: goo- than. Unlike Greco-Roman culture, some Jewish Aramaic speaking people were prophets or teachers. Divine presence was not a set of physical characteristics. This means that Yeshu was physically a regular person, in other words; he was not a chiselled divine biological specimen or a greek demi-god figure. Elaha was an unseen quality. If Judas was paid to signal him out to the authorities, it was because Jesus was an unremarkable, 'everyman,' a Joe Bloggs, and not easily recognisable.

Many ancient Jews enjoyed rich carb diets high in bread which causes tooth decay. With no dentist available, many first century people, including Jesus, would most likely have experience poor oral health and tooth loss!

Everything Has a History Not Just a Version of Events! 

These are but a few simple threads, pulled loose from a large woven tapestry waiting to be unravelled. I’m not a historian, but I do agree, it's vital to uncover knowledge and test our dogmas. Critical scholars and historians, thank you!  

Happy exploring everybody!