Posted by D J Lancaster on March 28, 1999 at 10:17:52:
In Reply to: Myths posted by Gunnar on March 27, 1999 at 23:58:35:
"its just that I think Velikovski may have stretched some these analogies and connections beyond the breaking point."
I don't think anybody would disagree with you that Velikovski stretched more than a few things, but at the time when Velikovski wrote, nobody was attempting to draw a new conclusion or give another explanation of past events as recorded in ancient writings or oral traditions. Velikovski was very much alone in trying to sketch out the real provocation for many graphic writings appearing in almost every culture of the world.
It is also important to note that at the time Velikovski wrote, the geological academic community did not accept the theory of 'impact'.
The geological community at the time believed that craters on the earth and on the moon were obsolete volcanos (that is only 3 decades behind us-). So Velikovski was butting heads with some real bulls by even introducing an idea of even near comet collision. They may have laughed at his conjecture, but he definately turned a few heads around for the reconsideration of earth's cataclysmic history.
It was not until 1957 (Velikovski's book was published in 1956) that a young geology graduate student named Eugene Shoemaker convinced scientists that the iron fragments, the layer of broken rock, and the shock-melted glass tektites could only have formed as a result of a meteorite impact. And if you've read anything about Shoemaker, then you know how lonely it can be when trying to break new ground.
Here are a few samples of the kinds of things you will find in Velikovski's book, World's in Collision:
"The philosoper Plato recorded a story told by Solon, who lived two generations before Plato. Solon, had heard a story describing a world conflageration from the Learned Priest's in Egypt. "At a later time there occurred portentous earthquakes and floods, and one greivous day and night befell them, when the whole body of your (Greek) warriors was swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner was swallowed up by the sea and vanished; wherefore also the ocean at that spot has now beome impassable and unsearchable, being clogged up by the shoal mud which the island created as it settled down".
The Egyptian priest, described by Plato as conversing with Solon, supposed that the memory of the catastrophes of fire and flood had been lost to the Greeks because literate men perished in them, together with all the achievements of their culture, and these upheavals escaped notice because for many generations the survivors died with no power to express themselves in writing."
"Japanese mythology says, "The source of light disappeared, the whole world beame dark," and the storm god caused monstorous destruction, Gods made terrible noise so that the sun should reappear."
"Carried foreward in the American Indian oral traditions and recoded in the manuscripts of Avila and Molina is described this account, "Scarcely had they reached there when the sea, breaking out of bounds following a terrifying shock, began to rise on the Pacific coast. But as the sea rose, filling the valleys and the plains around, the mountain of Ancasmarca rose, too, like a ship on the waves. During the five days that this cataclysm lasted, the sun did not show its face and the earth remained in darkness."
"Numerous rabbinical sources describe the calamity of darkness: "The darkness was of such a nature hat it could not be dispelled by artificial means. The light of the fire was either extinguished by the violence of storm, or else it was made invisible and swallowed up the density of the darkness...Nothing could be discerned...None was able to speak or to hear, nor could anyone venture to take food, but they lay themselves down...their outward senses in a trance. They remained, overwhelmed by the affliction. The darkness was of such kind that "their eyes were blinded by it and their breath choked:" it was not of ordinary earthly kind."
I wish I had time to write more about what is between the covers of Velikovski's book World's in Collision. It isn't just a absurd comet theory, its loaded with pieces of cultural literature that speak of a great Cataclysmic event.
To be honest about the whole thing, I don't think it was just the scientific community reeling over an absurd theory, I think the Religious community was jittery too. If there was even the remote chance that Velikovsky's idea of somekind of Comet activity at the time of Moses/Egypt occurred this idea of a 'natural reason'and not a 'miracle of God', for "the water turning red" had to shake Religous leaders to the core.
dj