and the power of a fabricated diplomatic history

           

And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon.
                                                                                    — I Kings 9:28.           

On July 30th of this year (2023), a most bizarre headline appeared in one of the leading news publications in the Philippines: A congressman, Dan Fernandez of the lone district of the town of Santa Rosa, Laguna, gave credence to theories that the Philippines is the biblical city of Ophir in an otherwise lackluster speech. The congressman spent over 20 minutes citing historical evidence establishing the veracity of his claim. He invoked a 16th century document in the Archivo General de Indias that contained directions to get to the ancient city known for its great wealth, as well as the fact that the Baybayin, the writing system of indigenous Filipinos, bears a resemblance to Hebrew, in which the Tanakh was written. Fernandez is not the first to make the Philippines-is-Ophir claim; conspiracy theories abound on YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere.

In the Bible, Ophir is first mentioned in the book of Genesis not as a place but as a person, specifically one of the sons of Joktan, who is descended from Noah. Eventually, Ophir is described as a place famous for its gold. It was initially placed somewhere in Arabia, but by the time of King Solomon, it was apparently in a faraway land overseas.^[1]

In the Book of Kings, we find this passage: “The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons.”^[2] Ophir is also mentioned in other books in the Old Testament: “Then you will lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks”^[3]; “Kings’ daughters were among thy honorable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir”^[4]; “I will make a mortal more rare than fine gold, A man more than the golden wedge of Ophir.”^[5] Clearly this Ophir was a place known for great riches, wherever it was.

By the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, there is evidence of the royals sending naval expeditions to places in East Africa for things like monkeys, ivory, frankincense, and slaves, which led many to believe that Ophir could have been in that area. However, others contend that the city was actually in India. “The Hebrew words for the products of Ophir may be derived from Indian languages; furthermore, sandalwood and peacocks are commonly found in India, whereas, at least in modern times, they do not exist in East Africa[…]”^[6]

Another theory claims that Tell Qasile (modern-day Tel-Aviv) was Ophir based on a pottery shard that bore inscriptions that referenced the place. Even after the United States Geological Survey had made an announcement back in the 1970s that a place in Saudi Arabia called the Mahd adh Dhahab (Cradle of Gold) is the biblical Ophir, the legend of its location in the Philippines has persisted.^[7]

Perhaps the strongest evidence believers hold about Ophir being the Philippines is in the Colección General de Documentos Relativos a las Islas Filipinas (General Collection of Philippine Islands related Documents), produced by Spanish colonial administrators that gives specific directions to reach the ancient land.  In the section “Document No. 98,” dated 1519-1522, the book says that Ophir can be found “by traveling from the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, to India, to Burma, to Sumatra, to Moluccas, to Borneo, to Sulu, then finally Ophir facing the Pacific Ocean.”^[8] The book also said Ophir is “in front of China towards the sea, of many islands where the Moluccans, Chinese, and Lequios (allegedly a group of ancient Hebrews who supposedly settled around Ophir) met to trade…”^[9]

Conspiracy theorists have twisted the scholarship of respected historians like William Henry Scott, telling the uncritical reader that this “group of islands” could not be Japan because the Moluccans never reached Japan; nor could it be Taiwan, since it is not composed of “many islands.”^[10] By this logic, only the Philippine archipelago fits the description, and there are indeed Spanish records that mention the presence of the Lequios in the Islands to gather gold and silver. To be clear, Scott did not specifically write that the seat of Ophir in the Philippines is the Pacific Ocean side of the Island of Samar. Because of its name, Samar island has been hilariously identified as once upon a time ruled by a Samaritan Hadi Iberein. The Pacific side of Samar is recognized by Scott as the ancestral homeland of the Polynesians/Austronesians but nowhere in his scholarship did he write that Ophir is in the Island of Samar.^[11]

I would argue that although it would be futile to try to establish the Philippines as Biblical Ophir, the legend certainly has some currency in global affairs of the present. Not many people know that if not for the Philippines, the State of Israel might have never existed. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, passed on November 29, 1947, called for the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with an international administration for Jerusalem. The resolution was a significant development in the lead-up to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The newly-independent Philippines was the only Asian country to vote in the affirmative of this resolution. Having experienced its struggle for independence from colonial rule, the Philippines likely saw the establishment of Israel as an expression of the right to self-determination and broke the deadlock by voting in favor of separating Israel from Palestine.

As a gesture of gratitude for the historical ties between the two nations, Filipinos are not required to obtain visas for travel to Israel, which many have taken advantage of to embark on pilgrimages to the Holy Land or seek employment. The significant role the Philippines played in Israeli history starts from before the war. During the 1930s, numerous Jewish families sought refuge in the Philippines, escaping the atrocities of Adolf Hitler’s regime. President Manuel L. Quezon, recognized the dire circumstances faced by Jewish refugees between 1935 and 1941, and reinforced his Commonwealth government’s open-door policy by providing visas to persecuted Jews. Quezon allocated lands in Manila and Mindanao to facilitate the resettlement of Jewish families. The humanitarian gesture was particularly notable because there was no formal diplomatic connection between the two nations pre-World War II, during a period when discussions on human rights were scarce.^[12]

The search for the Biblical Ophir, the historical importance of the Philippine’s vote for the partition of Israel and Palestine, and Manuel Quezon’s righteous act to accept Jewish refugees form the basis of the diplomatic ties of the Philippines and Israel. 

In my first reflection paper, I wrote about how “every aspect of Israel’s history seems unstable; from geographical borders to the authenticity of material evidence.” Such instability though does not mean that the history, even if fabricated, does not gain cogency when invoked in global affairs. We see in the brief account of Israel and Philippine relations the critical role of postcolonial affinities that have developed between nations. It is perhaps important in this regard to revisit Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and how his notion of “parallel lives” can apply to entire nations such as Israel and the Philippines and not only for citizens: “the sense of intersubjectivity produced by modern print culture (synchronic novelty) could arise historically only when substantial groups of people are in a position to think of themselves as living lives parallel to those of other substantial groups of people; “never meeting, yet certainly proceeding along the same trajectory.”^[13]

Under the influence of American print media, Filipinos were able to imagine themselves through the suffering of Jews under Nazi occupied countries because of their long history of colonial subjugation. It bears revisiting my earlier idea about “the essential function of remembering past events and the associated construction of history” which not only expands “into the establishment and preservation of an essential and unchanging Israeli identity” but also gives the ability to modern-nation states to see themselves as intertwined with Israel. Therefore the myth legitimizes history and also justifies the recognition of nationhood via the reawakening of dormant, albeit imagined diplomatic ties. As in the case of Paul Veyne’s “plural and analogical” truth, the contested histories in the Bible and in historical scholarship of the Ophir matters (read: purified) even more as it segments myth. Such segments can be catalyzed into expressions of solidarity in the logic of diplomatic language  that give currency to a fabricated diplomatic history.^[14]

If ancient Israel is to be depicted in the Bible as a strong kingdom, the scribes found it necessary to account for its strong foreign relations. King Solomon, who ruled the ancient Israelite kingdom in the 10th century BCE, is often associated with wisdom, wealth, and diplomacy. His reign is particularly noted for its political and economic achievements. Solomon engaged in diplomatic alliances through strategic marriages. He formed alliances by marrying foreign princesses, such as the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh and women from other neighboring nations. These marriages were intended to solidify political relationships and promote peace. Solomon’s reign is renowned for its economic prosperity, much of which was attributed to his diplomatic efforts in establishing trade routes and partnerships. The book of Kings mentions the wealth accumulated through trade, including the famous visit of the Queen of Sheba to witness Solomon’s wisdom and bring gifts.

The construction of the First Temple in Jerusalem is attributed to the outstanding diplomatic success of the Davidic United Monarchy.^[15] Lest we forget, the temple was an edifice that showcased the centrality of Jerusalem in the political life of the ancient world and supplying its hardware was a significant undertaking. He sought the assistance of Hiram, the king of Tyre, for materials and skilled labor. The collaboration between Solomon and Hiram is often seen as an early example of diplomatic and economic cooperation between neighboring states.

As the only dominant Christian nation in Asia, the Philippines sees itself in parallel with the fate of the State of Israel which is surrounded by Arab and Islamic nations. This rapport manifests itself in longstanding cultural and economic relations. Most importantly, because of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, Israel supplies various military hardware to Philippines’ U.S. allied armed forces. Diplomacy works on both secular and non-secular fronts.

By way of conclusion and perhaps to prefigure a future study of how current state of Israel frames its diplomatic relations along fabricated, but no less potent, links to mythical faraway lands such as the Ophir, it is worth asking: if by some archaeological luck, we find out for certain that Ophir exists within another modern nation state, will this alter the Philippines’ diplomatic relations with the state of Israel?

 Here is my longish answer: this speculative aspect of historical thinking and writing on both Israel and the presumptive Ophir that I identified in my first reflection paper leads to two challenges: first, the elusive framing of events as either a rise and fall of an era or the search for a Golden Age and the revival of that age. The second can be characterized as philosophical because it concerns the status of historical knowledge and its relationship to power, and the nature of its acts of interpretation. These challenges are woven into the conditions and possibilities of history as a discipline, which is then applied to the study of a culture that thinks inherently of its own past in terms of linguistic and conceptual fragments. Such is “Ophir”: a spark of mythology which if understood in the frame of dābar or zikkārôn, is able to capture more within its pinhole by dilating conceptual fragments so they may speak more universally (read: above and beyond the concern for facts and errors). Ergo, not at all.

When we started this course, we sought to examine the fixity of the Bible’s representations of Israel, as it relates to the fluidity of Israel’s social, political and religious experience as revealed in archaeology and extra-biblical texts. Here, I argued that even within the biblical text, that fixity is hardly evident. I briefly examined the longstanding myth of the Biblical Ophir which continues to stir the political imagination of a Filipino politician to decolonize the name of the country (named after the syphilitic King Philip II of Spain) by ironically resurrecting an obscure colonial history. Perhaps like the Hebrew scribes in exile, a Benjaminian concept of history shrouds the relationship between Israel and the Philippines, whereby a largely imagined ancient kingdom, held at best by coincidental parallelisms, is able to form enduring diplomatic bonds.

We can see how the process of fabrication inheres in the details of seemingly matter-of-fact annals of the House of David. Pending further textual analysis, I can argue that fabrications in the Bible are not entirely mythological but may have come in the form of embellishments that make the telling of the story set in present or have features that can resonate and gain universal applicability for all time. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. Such is the nature of historical imagination which we learn from the Biblical studies. The course has allowed me to first see the fate of all postwar nations in Israel and second, reflect back on my country’s relationship with the modern state of Israel. Through the Ophir, Filipinos have created a path of solidarity with Jewish people. Analyzing how myth gains cogency allows us to witness how the past and the terms by which we identify its constituent events, personages and settings are malleable even in the Biblical account.

We can compare the fabrication of nationhood to the Benjaminian automaton which we encountered in the beginning of his Theses on the concept of history. Considering diplomatic ties as an outgrowth of economic activity, it emerges as a historical idea which is bigger than the sum of individual events. What if the Philippines didn’t see itself in solidarity with the plight of European Jews? What if colonial Spain did not ingrain to Filipinos that they were the Biblical Ophir? To paraphrase Benjamin: history is rarely transparent, rather it is like a room of mirrors concealing the little hunchback, (The scribe?) who was an expert chess player and sat inside and guided the puppet’s hand by means of strings. It seems to me now that Benjamin has always been clear about what this first passage in the thesis means. “One can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.”^[16] Israel-Philippine relations have been reified almost retroactively via the belief exploited by both nations that the Philippines is the Biblical Ophir. Nothing can be stronger than history and theology combined. We see and feel its effects everyday but most crucially in 1947 at the United Nations General Assembly when the entrenchment of belief in the Ophir in the minds of Filipino diplomats had determined the single vote that had quite literally altered the course of history.

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^[1]Britannica, T. Information Architects of Encyclopaedia. “Ophir.” Encyclopedia Britannica, December 2, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/facts/Ophir.

^[2] 1 Kings 10:22

^[3] Job 22:24

^[4] Psalm 45:9

^[5] Isaiah 13:12

^[6] Britannica, T. Information Architects of Encyclopaedia. “Ophir.” Encyclopedia Britannica, December 2, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/facts/Ophir.

^[7] “Gold” Harold Kirkemo, William L. Newman, and Roger P. Ashley, Accessed: November 30, 2023. https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/prospect1/goldgip.html; W. H. Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travels and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century A.D., trans. and annotated by W. H. Schoff (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.; Philadelphia: Commercial Museum, 1912), 161–170. Schoff discusses the various identifications of “the land of Ophir,” noting earlier claims for Sofala and Zimbabwe, and supporting an Arabian location near El Katan as “the probable ‘land of Ophir’ of Solomon’s trading-voyages.”

^[8] Colección General de Documentos relativos a las Islas Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla. Publicada por La Compañía General de de Filipinos, Tabacos. Tomo IV (1522-1524). (Barcelona: Imprenta de la Viuda de Luis Tasso, 1921. Pp.  viii,  380, (3). Paper15 pesetas.)

^[9] Archivo General de Indias, Colección general de documentos relativos a las Islas Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, vol. 3 (Barcelona: Imprenta de la Viuda de Luis Tasso, for the Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas, 1920), Documento núm. 98, esp. pp. 112-138. (Full scan available via Google Books.); See United Royal Houses of the Philippines. 2019. “Chapter 9: Datu Iberein, the Hebrew-blooded hereditary leader of the Lequios (Waray-Hadlok) in the Vicinity of the Lakanate of Lawan, One of the Wealthiest Pre-Hispanic Rulers of the Philippines.” The House of Dula: Lakan Dula, the King of Tondo. Accessed October 5, 2023. for an account of the alleged existence of the Lequios tribe in the Philippines.

^[10] Scott, William Henry (1985). Cracks in the parchment curtain and other essays in Philippine history. New Day Publishers. p. 93. ISBN 978-971-10-0073-8.

^[11] Veyne, Paul. Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination. United Kingdom: University of Chicago Press, 1988.x

^[12]  Ira Pedrasa, “The Philippines’ Israel Connection”, ABS-CBNnews.com, Feb 06 2015.

^[13] Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, 2nd edn. 1991, London: Verso. P. 181

^[14] Veyne, Paul. Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination. United Kingdom: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

^[15] Finkelstein would later dismiss this in his writings as a small tribal chiefdom in Judah.

^[16] Benjamin, Walter. On the Concept of History. N.p.: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.