Video from 2016.
"Petroglyphs found across North America have suggested that ancient Chinese explorers made contact with Native Americans. Yaoliang Song, a professor at the East China Normal University in Shanghai who has studied petroglyphs as a visiting scholar at Harvard University, recently announced that he supports the interpretation that the petroglyphs are of ancient Chinese origin." Source: Ancient Origins. (This is the 2016 article reviewed in the video.)
"John A. Ruskamp Jr., Ed.D., has led the research on the petroglyphs over the past few years, enlisting the help of experts such as David N. Keightley, Ph.D., who is considered by many to be the leading analyst in America of early Chinese oracle-bone writings."
I have no idea what to make of this. The theory is controversial, naturally, and I'm not sure where it stands as of 2020. If prehistoric Chinese mariners did reach the Americas it would have required a long, dangerous voyage, but we know that ancient Austronesians were island-hopping across the Pacific back then so I suppose it's possible. The similarity of the petroglyphs found in Arizona and New Mexico with the written characters in China is a matter of interpretation, but they do look similar even if they're not exactly the same:
"These ancient scripts were not 100 percent uniform, some variance was employed by each artist. But Ruskamp has determined that the glyphs are close enough to known examples of ancient Chinese script that it is more than 95 percent likely the similarity is due to direct contact with the Chinese and not due to chance."
The petroglyphs in question here are a couple thousand years old. I'm not sure if anyone has dated them more precisely than that, but Ruskamp has said (according to Ancient Origins) that the Chinese oracle-bone writings they supposedly match are from the Shang Dynasty ( app. 1600-1050 BC).
Note: This theory shouldn't be confused with the 1421 Theory, which argues that a Chinese fleet reached the Americas around 70 years before Columbus. This idea, proposed by British author Gavin Menzies, has been widely dismissed as pseudo-history, but I can't comment on it because I haven't read Menzies' book.
The Trinity Is Pagan
Comment: I don't believe in God myself, so the nature of the god I don't believe in has always been more or less irrelevant. Now that I think about it, though, this three-faced Christian deity seems to be completely pagan.
Another example of a polymorphous deity would be the Hindu god Brahma, usually pictured as having four faces signifying different aspects of his underlying nature. (Image: Probably Nurpur, Punjab Hills, Northern India [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.)
As it turns out, the Christian god we're all so familiar with has deeper pagan roots than I would have thought.
The concept of the Trinity as such isn't found in the Bible, apparently, but there are references to "the Father, Son and Holy Ghost." The idea of a three-in-one god was basically invented by the church, which borrowed heavily from pagan philosophy when it came up with the doctrine. According to Wikipedia, "[t]he doctrine of the trinity . . . is not a product of the earliest Christian period, and we do not find it carefully expressed before the end of the second century."
The Trinity doctrine was influenced by Greek metaphysical philosophy and created a split in the early church:
"Such metaphysical thinking was common among the intelligentsia of the Greek world and carried over into the thinking of the Roman world of the New Testament period and succeeding centuries." Source: United Church of God. The so-called "true" church "resisted such infiltration" and "... [t]wo distinct threads of Christianity split and developed separately—one true to the plain and simple teachings of the Bible and the other increasingly compromised with pagan thought and practices adopted from the Greco-Roman world."
Apparently the doctrine of the Trinity wasn't formally accepted until the fourth century when Christianity became the official state religion of what was left of the Roman empire:
"Nontrinitarianism (or antitrinitarianism) refers to Christian belief systems that reject the doctrine of the Trinity as found in the Nicene Creed as not having a scriptural origin. Nontrinitarian views differ widely on the nature of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Various nontrinitarian views, such as Adoptionism, Monarchianism, and Arianism existed prior to the formal definition of the Trinity doctrine in AD 325, 360, and 431, at the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus, respectively. Following the final victory of orthodoxy at Constantinople in 381, Arianism was driven from the Empire, retaining a foothold amongst the Teutonic tribes. When the Franks converted to Catholicism in 496, however, it gradually faded out. Nontrinitarianism was later renewed in the Gnosticism of the Cathars in the 11th through 13th centuries, in the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, and in some groups arising during the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century." (Wikipedia)
It's ironic that some of the so-called heretical Christian movements, at least in this one aspect, were more scripturally "pure" than the official church.
Vaguely related: Duterte calls trinity doctrine "silly."
Posted at 07:00 AM in Catholic Church, Christianity, Commentary, Culture, Religion, Videos | Permalink