We live in a time scrubbed clean of myths—one reason why,
for most of us (not least our soldiers engaged all over the Middle East), the
name “Prester John” produces, at best, a vague sensation of having heard it
before but little else; and for those born after the 1950s, probably nothing at
all. The myth of Prester John is perhaps the most thoroughly forgotten among
others. Among the others are the Lost City of Atlantis, El Dorado, The Flying
Dutchman, and the Wandering Jew.
To take these going backwards, the Wandering Jew was a man
who, having taunted Jesus, was condemned to live until the Second Coming—and
therefore still wanders the earth. The Flying Dutchman is a sailing ship condemned
to sail the oceans until some crime has been atoned for—sometimes (at least
until the satellites came) still seen by sailors in storms. El Dorado was a
mythological chief among the tribes of present-day Columbia who covered himself
in gold dust as an initiation rite; the conquistadores transmuted the man,
originally El Hombre Dorado, into a kingdom, eventually into a hidden empire
where gold was more common than dirt. And Atlantis was a great island and city somewhere
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean which, after long dominance, fell out of
the favor with the Greek gods; they caused it to sink; it has now disappeared. Until
it did Atlantis, much like El Dorado and Prester John’s kingdom, was the object
of endless, if mostly literary, voyages of discovery.
Let me now tackle Prester John; that Prester was originally
Presbyter. That word can mean “priest” or “elder” being derived from the Greek
word for “old man”—thus Old Man John. The myth is that John had been a
missionary of the Nestorian version of Christianity (dated to the fifth century
(link))
and that he had established a wealthy kingdom in the Middle East somewhere. The
myth arose in the twelfth century, thus toward the end of the time of the
Crusades. It was evidently started by Crusaders. Those people, of course,
operated over much the same area as our troops are now operating in various
capacities—thus Syria,Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. By contrast with our troops, the
Crusaders had no satellites, had only a sketchy knowledge of distant cultures,
but great ambition to strike it rich somehow. Therefore to find Prester John
and his domain was a kind of ambition that produces enduring myths.
The old myths are gone. We have modern varieties, of course.
There is ET; and the little green men; there are flying saucers; the satellites
can’t see them either—but people driving by night are not so blind. As for the
ancient and the older legends, they are fading in proportion to the spread of
tiny smart-phones. That great, powerful island in the Atlantic? Since
the Crusades that island has risen from the Ocean; why didn’t anybody notice?
We call it the United States of America. El Dorado is now on Wall Street but,
despite hedge funds and their kin, it is still refusing to yield great wealth
to ordinary veterans. The Flying Dutchman hasn’t been seen in recent times, but
we have yet to find Flight 370 of the Malaysian Airlines; that plane’s absence suggests
that a modern version of the old myth is now in
the making. Let me give it a start. I would suggest that that famous
Boeing 777-200ER may still be flying up there—but hidden from sight by a
Romulan cloaking device. As for the Wandering Jew, he disappeared even more
effectively behind a cloak of political correctness. Maybe he will reappear
again if Donald Trump is elected president.
