The God Culture: 100 Lies About The Philippines: #2 Ferdinand Pinto Located The Philippines at 9N20

Welcome back to 100 lies The God Culture teaches about the Philippines. Today's lie concerns Ferdinand Pinto's shipwreck on the Lequios islands. Timothy Jay Schwab claims that Pinto located the Lequios islands at coordinates that match the Philippines and concludes that the Philippine islands are the Lequios islands. But as we shall see that is a lie. 

This lie can be found on page 163 of  Timothy Jay Schwab's book The Search for King Solomon's Treasure. 

Solomon's Treasure, pg. 163

Contemporary to Magellan, Ferdinand Pinto classified the Lequios and Chinese as the wealthiest in the Orient trading in gold and silver especially. He defines the Lequios Islands as an archipelago, not Taiwan, as well as a separate country. He also differentiates the Lequios as not Japan, China, Indonesia nor Malaysia but in between those. Pinto also travelled to the Lequios Islands from Malaysia headed North which he placed in the modern Philippines specifically on 9N20.  

Tim's source for this claim is J.G. Cheock's book Phoenicians in the land of Gold. 

Take note that Tim is citing Cheock who is citing Rebecca Catz's translation of The Travels of Mendes Pinto. Why didn't Tim cut out the middle man and cite Rebecca Catz directly? Also take note that there is no page number given for Cheock's citation of Catz. In her book it looks like this:

Cheock claims Rebecca Catz is where she got Pinto locating the Leqouis Islands at 9N20. What is 9N20 anyway? 9 is a northern latitude but what is 20? Longitude? Which direction? East or West? On its face 9N20 is gibberish and not coordinates at all.

The fact is 9N20 does not appear anywhere in Catz's translation whatsoever.  Here is what her translation actually says:

page 1,291 of epub

“This Ryukyu island is situated at twenty-nine degrees latitude.”

Excerpt From: Fernão Mendes Pinto. “The Travels of Mendes Pinto.” Apple Books. 

That's right. Along with everyone else in the world Rebecca Catz identifies the Lequios Islands with the Ryukyu Islands which are off the coast of Japan going towards China. Now let's take a look at the first English edition of Pinto's Travels and see what it says. 

In this manner we departed from Pungor the capital City of the Island of Lequios, of which I will here make a brief relation, to the end that if it shall one day please God to inspire the Portugal Nation, principally for the exaltation and increase of the Catholick faith, and next for the great benefit that may redound thereof, to undertake the Conquest of this Island, they may know where first to begin, as also the commodities of it, and the easiness of this Conquest. We must understand then that this Island of Lequios, scituated in nine and twenty degrees, is two hundred leagues in circuit, threescore in length, and thirty in bredth.

Pinto, pg. 188

Here we see that he locates the Leqouis Islands at nine and twenty degrees! Somehow nine and twenty became 9 N 20 and now this mistake is being passed off as truth by Timothy Jay Schwab and J.G. Cheock. This first edition English translation of 1663 has this story which Cheock claims was too outrageous to be included and so was censored!

Explorer and writer Ferdinand Mendes Pinto who travelled in service to the Portugese crown and in association with the Jesuit Missionaries, recounted in his journal, how he had been shipwrecked on the island of Lequois while passing through the Malay Archipelago. He described the Lequios as a land belonging to a large group of islands that had abundant resources of gold and silver. In his journal he had the audacity to give details on Lequois, putting it in the latitude of 9N20 on a meridian similar to that of Japan. Given these directions, Lequois would be at the very heart of the Philippines. The story of his shipwreck on Lequios was deemed so outrageous that it was omitted from his book when it was first published.

Phoenicians in the Lands of Gold, pg. 11

J.G. Cheock is wrong and Tim is wrong because he cites her. If The God Culture were an actual group of researchers and not just one man it is doubtful this mistake would have been made. Surely someone on the team would have gone looking for the original source rather than rely on a second hand citation. But Tim is on record saying it does not matter if he cites sources secondhand because they always say what he claims they say. 

https://youtu.be/EscrM4o-h4M

17:18 However a Pharisee looks at that and scoffs. "Heh! Well you could have used a better source. Why is your font so small on that screen? That one quote doesn't say that!" Though it always does say exactly what we represent by the way because it always vets, every single challenge has. "That map that shows those islands southeast of China's not really showing southeast of China. That's, well, India." Huh? No it's southeast of China. That's what the maps shows, duh. "And that map, and that map, and those directions, and those directions, and aww that font should be larger and yaw you should have quoted that differently, and..." 

I mean that's the kind of stuff that you get for going out, stepping out on a limb, and doing the research and telling people what is truth. And we prove it.  Those same people don't even bother to actually review the whole case. No. No, no. They'll watch one brief video or a few brief videos and then go and just ramble on and on and on.  And they are absolutely ignorant.  They don't even know what we prove, what we don't prove but all along they'll say "Ah see you didn't prove that." Well how will you know what we prove? You didn't even review the case. But it doesn't matter because it's not their point. They throw it all out in ignorance, haven't even reviewed the case yet they know because they know what we're going to prove because they have what basis? Absolutely none.  

"You used a font too small! Throw it out!"  Really? "You quoted a secondary source citing the original" oh which happens to be true and in representation actually match the original? Duh! I mean could you be more ridiculous? Yet we get all of this.

As you can see Tim did not step out and do any research when it comes to Ferdinand Pinto's locating the Leqouis Islands. Instead he relies on Cheock and he gets it wrong and now this lie is a part of his "monumental case for the Philippines no one can disprove." This is why primary sources are imperative. He would know that if he was a real researcher but Timothy Jay Schwab is no researcher. He is a propagandist.

Tim makes this same claim about Pinto locating the Lequios islands at 9N20 in a video where he gives a source very different from J.G. Cheock. 

Clue#25: Philippines is Ophir: Magellan, Pinto, Barbosa, King of Spain, Cabot KNEW - Ophir, Tarshish

6:15 Pinto even goes as far as to give the exact location latitude of the main Lequios Island as modern-day Luzon Philippines in fact if you follow his directions exactly and we'll do that later you will end up in Northwest Luzon or Ilocos specifically

The source here is ancientphilippines.blogspot.com. He also has a very long citation as if he were actually citing page 262 of the 1663 English translation of Pinto's Travels but he is definitely not citing it. That citation is not to be found on the ancientphilippines blog site. As I showed above on page 188 Pinto locates the Lequios Islands at a latitude of 29 North. It just goes to show that accurately citing primary sources is very important. 

So where exactly do the coordinates 9N20 put you anyway?

9N20

Central Africa! That's a long way from the Philippines.