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Immanuel Velikovsky

There’s nothing like a massive and profound reconstruction of ancient history to really upset Egyptologists, archeologists, and other members of the “old guard of this is the way we’ve always done it so take your evidence and go away”.  This was particularly the case when Immanuel Velikovsky, who after years of study, informed the world that:  

vEarth, Mars, and Venus had suffered catastrophic near-collisions in historic times,  

vSun Stand Thou Still in Joshua’s time was a reality,  

vThe history of ancient Egypt contains 580 imaginary years, and among other things,  

vThe Earth was without the Moon in historical times.  

Immanuel Velikovsky is the author of Worlds in Collision, Ages in Chaos, Ramses II and His Time, Peoples of the Sea, Earth in Upheaval, and Oedipus and Akhnaton.  Today, many scholars are calling Immanuel Velikovsky a scientific genius, maintaining an archive of his work at www.varchive.org, while others are acknowledging or vindicating his work on numerous critical points.  But this has not always been the case.

Upon the publication of Worlds in Collision in 1950, Velikovsky was nearly laughed out of science, the publisher of his book was forced (because of its large number of academic textbooks) to sell the best-selling publishing rights to another non-academic publisher, and since then, the old guard has done everything in its power to discredit the very idea of Near-Earth Objects (and thus the possibility of collisions) and even the remote possibility of any reconstruction of history.  In the latter vein, one history student, Kelly Kincaid, wrote her senior thesis on the idea that if new evidence was found which contradicted history, could the “official” history then be changed -- only to find her history professor so incensed by her example (one from Velikovsky) that he, by example, proved her thesis that indeed history could not be changed from mere evidence.  

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In Velikovsky’s own words < http://www.varchive.org/itb/ecintro.htm>:  

“When the manuscript of Worlds in Collision was first offered to the publisher (Macmillan Company, New York) it contained a brief story of the Deluge and of the cataclysm that terminated the Old Kingdom in Egypt.  But after one of the publisher’s readers suggested that the book should concentrate on one event, we compromised in presenting in the published volume two series of cataclysms -- those that took place in the fifteenth century before the present era and were caused by the near-approaches of Venus, and those that occurred in the eighth century before this era and were caused by the near-approaches of Mars.  The unused material was left for elaboration in a separate work on “Saturn and the Flood” and “Jupiter of the Thunderbolt.”  The reception of Worlds in Collision, however, made me understand that I had already offered more than was palatable. And so I did not hurry with what I consider to be the heritage of our common ancestors, an inheritance of which my contemporaries in the scientific circles preferred not to partake.  

“Researching and writing this book, I would sit at the feet of the sages of many ancient civilizations -- one day of the Egyptian learned scribes, another of the Hebrew ancient rabbis, the next of the Hindus, Chinese, or the Pythagoreans.  But then, rising to my feet, I would confer with present-day scientific knowledge.  At times I came to understand what perplexed the ancients, and at other times I found answers to what perplexes the moderns. This shuttle back and forth was a daily occupation for a decade or more, and it became a way to understand the phenomena: to listen to those who lived close to the events of the past, even to witnesses, and to try to understand them in the light of the theoretical and experimental knowledge of the last few centuries, in this manner confronting witnesses and experts.  

“I realized very soon that the ancient sages lived in a frightened state of mind, justified by the events they or their close ancestors had witnessed. The ancients’ message was an anguished effort to communicate the awe engendered at seeing nature with its elements unchained.  The moderns, however, denied their ancestors’ wisdom, even their integrity, because of an all-embracing fear of facing the past, even the historically documented experiences of our progenitors, as recent as four score generations ago.  

“I have deliberately described the catastrophes of the second and first millennia before this era before I describe the catastrophes of the previous ages.  The reason is obvious: the history of catastrophes is extremely unsettling to the historians, evolutionists, geologists, astronomers, and physicists.  Therefore it is preferable to start from the better known and then proceed to the less known.  For the last catastrophe caused by the contact of Mars and the Earth I could establish the year, the month, and even the day; not so for the catastrophes in which Venus and the Earth participated, when only the approximate time in the space of a definite century could be established.  Still, I found it advisable to narrate the story of the second millennium first: it was possible to write the story of the contacts with Venus with a fair amount of detail.  But each cataclysm is not only more remote in time from us, it is also obscured by the catastrophes that followed. As we seek to penetrate ever deeper into the past, we can see the foregoing periods through the veil of the catastrophes; dimmer and dimmer is the light behind every veil, till our eye can distinguish no more behind the veil that hangs over the period When the Earth was Moonless, though already inhabited by human life [Lunatics?]. We do not know the beginning; we can only enter the theater at what may have been the third or fourth act.”  

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Velikovsky’s second major book was Ages in Chaos, in which he offended that small group of Egyptologists whom he had missed with Worlds in Collision.  Ages in Chaos is nothing less than a reconstruction of ancient history -- one which has curious attribute of making sense.  In other words, ancient Egyptian Prehistory and its later dynastic histories must somehow correlate with the histories of nations and cultures which abound in the same time and space as the ancient Egyptians.  [Otherwise, we’d have the classic solution to the current Middle East Conflicts:  Simply place the opposing sides in different time eras so that they can no longer interact!  Just don’t tell anyone Who’s on First!]  

Other fascinating books of Velikovsky include: Ramses II and His Time, Peoples of the Sea, Oedipus and Akhnaton, Mankind in Amnesia, and Earth in Upheaval.  The latter is a “documentation of global catastrophes in prehistorical, [prehysterical], and in historical times -- the clear, unequivocal testimony of bones and stones.”  In this fascinating volume, Velikovsky demonstrates that Catastrophism is fundamentally a part of Evolution, and that the generally accepted, agonizingly slow, gradualism of Evolution is only a portion of the total picture.  Sometimes, something dramatic happens -- e.g. Adam and Eve, Deluge, The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Science and Religion (as in a compromise between Evolution and Creationism).  

Quite obviously, as one encounters questions of When the Earth was Moonless -- as well as other topics, i.e. Deification of the Planets, The Planetary Initiation of Ages, or  Hebrew Cosmogony -- one begins to realize the immensity of history, archaeology, and virtually every other relevant subject which is not even touched upon in our public schools (nor the vast majority of private schools)!  These grotesque failings of our system of Communications, Media, Education, Compulsory Education, and The Public School Nightmare become ever more evident.  

Think about it.  

Meanwhile, you might look up The Velikovsky Affair [Alfred de Grazia, Ed. University Books, New Hyde Park, NY, 1966] for an exercise in the irrationalities of mainstream science when confronted with uncomfortable new science.  

 

Night Falls on the Gods         The Tower of Babel

Laurence Gardner         Zecharia Sitchin         Homo sapiens sapiens

Forward to:

Ages in Chaos         Lunatics         When the Earth was Moonless

Deification of the Planets         Planetary Initiation of the Ages

Egyptian Prehistory         600 B.C.E.         History 009

               

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