it was bernal diaz “conquest of new spain” that converted me to christianity. Why? Because there was no contact between the old world and the new world.Yet the new world people had the same nasty habits as the old world people of the bible.
that meant that the bad behavior grew out of something genetic. that the biblical contention that people are NATURALLY bad to the bone is forensically correct.
that only divine intervention can save a person or a people from destruction
Fascinating. I’m listening to a set of recorded lectures on “The Conquest of the Americas,” and Bernal Diaz is one of the sources most often mentioned. I probably read at least some of it in the course of ten years of Spanish classes, but that was a long time ago.
When I was teaching a religion class on Tuesday, I gave a quick summary of events in Joshua-through-Kings, and told the class that this is what people are like: lust, murder, betrayal, conquest. Then I asked the class, many of whom are from Mexico, if they knew about the Mayas. Some did, so I told them about the recent (since I was in college) translation of the Mayan glyphs, and how their inscriptions revealed a history of lust, murder, betrayal, and conquest. “This is what people are like, and only Christ can change them.”