"We have found the lost book!"
Autumn 2016 Newsletter
In Altai historical epics, we frequently come across the following plot: people who have been enslaved and are being driven into a foreign land hang a cradle with a baby on a tree branch in the hope that someone will find and raise their child. Does this sound similar to a well-known story from the Bible? We do not know whether the ancient Altai ever heard about Moses, but the earthly life of their national hero Kogudey-Mergen begins exactly like this in the epic tale “Maadai Kara”. Later, in his mature years, Kogudey-Mergen descends into the underworld to fight Erlik (the Altai version of the devil), and defeats him. Freed from the bondage of the underworld, people thank the hero for rescuing them from death. What is this? Is it just a random piece of ancient folklore, or is it an intuitive perception of the kingdom of heaven that had already come into the world by the time this epic tale appeared (the 6-8th centuries A.D., according to scholars)? Could it be that echoes of Christian preaching had somehow reached the Altai Mountains and were reinterpreted by folk storytellers? “Here we have a story which is very similar to the Gospel. The idea of the Messiah is quite obvious in it,” says the young Altai woman who has recently started developing a biblical website in her mother tongue. She was inspired to create this website when her heart started burning with the desire to share the newly translated New Testament with other Altai young people. “What should we start with?” she wondered. The new edition of the text was fully ready, the audio recording was completed… but the potential audience remained completely unprepared for the Bible message. The Bible is not easy to understand, and many Altai people who are seeking for spiritual truth would rather turn to their ancestors’ traditional faith, Burkhanism, a.k.a. “the white faith”. Shamanism and Tengrism are alternative spiritual paths that many Altai are also willing to follow, as one can see by the large number of webpages devoted to these religions on the Internet. There is a large choice indeed.
