Mike Evans - Christopher Columbus: Secret Jew

Christopher Columbus, Secret Jew

Copyright 2014
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

Published by TimeWorthy Books
Phoenix, AZ 85046

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible, Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from The Amplified Bible . Old Testament copyright and New Testament copyright are by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked Living Bible are from The Living Bible , copyright 1971 by Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from The King James Version of the Bible.

Design: Peter Gloege | LOOK Design Studio

PDF: 978-1-62961-045-0
ePub: 978-1-62961-046-7
Mobi: 978-1-62961-047-4

This book is dedicated,
with great admiration, to my dear friend,
Reuven Rivlin, President of Israel.
He and his ancestors have been
established in Jerusalem since 1809.
Reuven received a law degree from
Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
He and his wife, Nechama have four children.

PREFACE

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Christopher Columbus. The name alone evokes visions of sailing ships, strange lands, adventure and discovery. His likeness carved in marble or cast in bronze stands in cities such as Barcelona, Madeira, Genoa, Havana, Cartagena, San Juan, Santo Domingo, Havana, and Washington, D.C.

Have you ever pondered the reason why Columbus decided to sail in search of a new land in 1492? As we will discover, it was even more important to the Jewish people than it would become to the people of North and South America and the islands of the Caribbean Sea. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had issued an edict of ejection regarding the Jews. It decreed that every person of Jewish descent had to leave Spain or be executed. As a result, several Jewish businessmen went to Christopher Columbus, a Genoese Jew whose family had supposedly converted to Christianity under duress, and pledged to finance his efforts to discover a new land. They purchased two of the three ships that carried Columbus and his sailors across the ocean to find the territory that would later become known as the Americas. Why was this so crucial?

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were seeking a means to unite the country and had selected Toms de Torquemada as the Inquisitor General for most of Spain. The harassment began with attempts to drive out Jews, Protestants, and nonbelievers. Benzion Netanyahu, father of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote of the Marranos and conversos (Spanish Jews) and the basic reasons behind the attacks on them. According to history professor Netanyahu, the persecution launched against the Jews was based on racial hatred and political considerations rather than by religious zeal. He continued his explanation with:

The minority that still adhered to Judaism in the three decades preceding the Inquisition was... constantly diminishing in size and influence; that it would have, in all likelihood, soon faded into nothingness, had not the process of assimilation been violently interfered with by the repellent and bewildering actions of the Inquisition; and that, thus, it was due to the Inquisition itself that the dying Marranism in Spain was given a new lease on life.... It was not a powerful Marrano movement that provoked the establishment of the Inquisition, but it was the establishment of the Inquisition that caused the temporary resurgence of the Spanish Marrano movement.... The aim of the Inquisition, therefore, as I see it, was not to eradicate a Jewish heresy from the midst of the Marrano group, but to eradicate the Marrano group from the midst of the Spanish people.

Christopher Columbus, Secret Jew does not necessarily follow the path that took him to many of those cities named at the beginning of this chapter; rather, it explores the fascination with Jerusalem that impelled him on his journey. It will answer questions that perhaps you may never have known to ask. For instance, were you aware that

Columbus was a conversoone who chose to convert to Christianity through coercion?

his initial voyage was funded not by Queen Isabellas jewels but by a group of wealthy Jews?

he hoped to find a source of goldperhaps King Solomons minesin Asia in order to recapture the city of Jerusalem from the Muslims and fund the restoration of the Temple?

on his journey, he hoped to find a place of refuge for Christians and Jews alike in order for them to escape the horrors of persecution descending upon Spain?

he traveled with a Jew who spoke Hebrew in hopes of finding the ten lost tribes during his trip to the New World?

The following pages uncover the secrets of Christopher Columbus, the man who plied the ocean in an attempt to aid both Jews and Christians, a man who was devoutly religious, a man who died long before his ultimate dream was fulfilled.

INTRODUCTION

This is the log of Christopher Columbus:

In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Whereas, Most Christian, high, Excellent and Powerful Princes, King and Queen of Spain and of the Islands of the Sea, our Sovereigns, this present year 1492, after your Highnesses had terminated the war with the Moors reigning in Europe, the same having been brought to an end in the great city of Granada, where on the second day of January, this present year, I saw the royal banners of your Highnesses planted by force of arms upon the towers of the Alhambra, which is the fortress of that city, and saw the Moorish king come out at the gate of the city and kiss the hands of your Highnesses, and of the Prince my Sovereign; and in the present month, in consequence of the information which I had given your Highnesses respecting the countries of India and of a Prince, called Great Khan, which in our language signifies King of Kings, how at many times he, and his predecessors had sent to Rome soliciting instructors who might teach him our holy faith, and the holy Father had never granted his request, whereby great numbers of people were lost, believing in idolatry and doctrines of perdition.

Therefore, Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians, and princes who love and promote the holy Christian faith, and are enemies of the doctrine of Mahomet, and of all idolatry and heresy, determined to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the above-mentioned countries of India, to see the said princes, people, and territories, and to learn their disposition and the proper method of converting them to our holy faith; and furthermore directed that I should not proceed by land to the East, as is customary, but by a Westerly route, in which direction we have hitherto no certain evidence that any one has gone...

Thus after expelling the Jews from your domains in the same month of January, your Highness ordered that I should go with sufficient fleet to the same part of India, and for that purpose most graciously elevated me to the title of Don, High Admiral of the sea and perpetual Viceroy and Governor of all the Islands and continents that I should discover and gain both now and hereafter in the ocean sea, and that my son should succeed me so long from generation to generation forever.

Whereupon, I left the city of Granada on Saturday, May 12, 1492, and came to the town of Palos, a seaport, where I did arm three vessels for such enterprise; and departed from that port well-supplied with provisions and with many sailors, on the third day of August of the same year, being Friday, half an hour before sunrise. I steered for the Canary Islands of your Highness, which are in the said ocean sea that I might thence set out for the Indies to perform the embassy of your Highnesses to the Princes there, so as to comply with my order.