Podcast # 10: The Works of Velikovsky
Scott: My name is Scott Paton. I am talking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. This is a book dealing with prophecy.
For those listeners who may be new to this topic, today’s podcast is the tenth in the series, and is titled “The Works of Velikovsky”. Hello Allan and welcome.
Thanks Scott. It’s a pleasure to be with you again.
Scott: So Allan, in our last Podcast you talked about the life of Velikovsky. You then went on to explain that he was treated as an outcast by the scientific community in America. Why did they react the way they did?
Well Scott, as I explained in my previous Podcast, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Velikovsky and his wife moved to New York. And it was while he was there that something happened that was to change the course of his life.
Scott: What happened?
He was researching early Israelite history in the Bible, when he came across the following passage in the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua.
“Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel: ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.”
“And the sun stood and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to go down for about a whole day.”
It was while he was reading this passage that the thought occurred to Velikovsky: What if Joshua was describing something that had actually happened at the time? Because If this was the case, it would suggest that either the earth’s rotation had stopped briefly, or else the earth had tilted on its axis.
Either way, Velikovsky reasoned, if this event had actually happened, there should be similar legends elsewhere. And on the other side of the earth there would have been an extended period of darkness, when the sun failed to rise at its regular time.
So he set about looking to see if other cultures had similar stories in the past. And the more he looked, the more stories he found. He found them in ancient documents from pre-Columbian America, from China, India, Persia, Babylon, Iceland, Finland, Greece and Rome.
He was helped in this effort by his talent for languages, and his brilliant academic career. For he was able to delve into records that were not only written in English, but also in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French, Italian and Spanish.
In fact it was his vast intellectual capacity that was so daunting to his critics, for most of them lacked the ability to read his sources in their original languages, and the hierarchy of American scientists at the time ignored anything that wasn’t written in English.
And so began a ten year period of research, that culminated in the publication of his great trilogy. His first book was published in 1950, and was called “Worlds in Collision”. This was followed in 1952 by “Ages in Chaos”, and in 1955 by “Earth in Upheaval”.
Scott: What did these books have to say?
As I mentioned previously, to do justice to his work would need vastly more time than I have here, and to do so would take us away from the subject of prophecy. But I can give you a very brief summary.
According to Velikovsky, sometime within the last 4,000 years, an enormous convulsion took place on the planet Jupiter. As a result of this convulsion, a proto-planet the size of earth was ejected from Jupiter.
And although Velikovsky never said this himself, I am happy to go on record as saying that the most prominent feature associated with the planet Jupiter, its giant red spot, is actually a remnant of that primordial explosion that still persists to this day.
According to the legends that Velikovsky discovered in the course of his research, the object that was ejected from Jupiter ended up as the planet Venus.
So, according to Velikovsky, Venus is a very young planet, less than 4,000 years old. And in the course of its erratic orbit around the sun, it began to have close encounters with other planets, particularly Mars and the earth.
In his book “Worlds in Collision”, Velikovsky provides a vast amount of evidence indicating that Venus had a close encounter with the earth around the 15th century BC, and that it threatened the earth again some 52 years later.
The gravitational effects of these encounters forced Venus into a new orbit which then brought it into a collision path with Mars. These close encounters led to Mars being thrown into a new orbit, where it began to threaten the earth.
A series of disastrous encounters then took place between earth and Mars, after which Mars settled into its present orbit around the sun. Venus, meanwhile, had become an inner planet with a new orbit between Mercury and the earth.
So to summarise, “Worlds in Collision” dealt with the encounters between Venus and the earth, and then between the earth and Mars.
His book “Ages in Chaos” dealt with the problems of ancient chronology as a result of these catastrophes, and provided a reconciliation between Biblical history and mainstream archeology.
In his third book titled “Earth in Upheaval”, Velikovsky dealt with the geological evidence for these global catastrophes that can be found on the earth today.
So you can imagine Scott, these three books created an enormous furore within the scientific community at the time.
Scott: I certainly can Allan. I was taught that all the planets in our solar system are in stable orbits, and have never collided with one another in the past.
Naturally Scott. I was taught that too. And that’s because we live in a society still dominated by the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is that civilization began some five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia.
Our scientists don’t have any connection with ancient prehistory like other cultures do. They believe that our solar system has remained unchanged for eons, and that the planets we see in the sky today are the same as those that were set in place at the beginning.
As I mentioned in our last Podcast, the science of today is founded upon the theory of uniformitarianism, which is the idea that the agents of change that we see in the world today, are the same as those that have existed in the past.
There is no room in this theory for catastrophic events that could have wiped out humanity in ages past, because the scientists of today don’t believe that humanity was around in ages past.
Scott: How do the ideas of Velikovsky compare with the works of Zecharia Sitchin and his Planet X?
I’m glad you brought that up Scott. First of all there is no comparison between Velikovsky and Sitchin when it comes to their academic credentials. Velikovsky was a graduate of Moscow University who was trained in a variety of scientific disciplines, and was conversant with multiple languages.
Sitchin on the other hand was a self-taught amateur. And it shows in their books. Whereas Sitchin simply presented his ideas without reference to any other scholars, Velikovsky’s books included detailed references from thousands of literary sources.
The amount of evidence presented by Velikovsky in support of his central thesis is quite mind-boggling, and it is no surprise that his critics never took up the challenge of trying to invalidate all of this material.
And along the way, Velikovsky gave fascinating insights on a host of different topics, from the nature of the food called manna in the Bible, to the reason why the Israelites had to wander in darkness for forty years after being led out of Egypt by Moses.
He even explained how the Red Sea got its name, and how all the oil and gas that can be found under the ground as well as under the sea, came to be there in such vast quantities.
Scott: So how do the works of Velikovsky tie in with prophecy?
Why I consider Velikovsky to be the key to understanding prophecy, is because he was the first scholar to study the legends of the past, and then interpret them from a scientific point of view.
What the books written by Velikovsky tell us is this:
• The earth has suffered natural catastrophes on a global scale both before, as well as during historical times, and that these will likely happen again in the future
• The evidence of the geological and fossil record indicates that the extinction of many species has occurred catastrophically, rather than in a gradual way as Darwin would have us believe
• The catastrophes that have occurred within the memory of humanity, have been preserved in myths, legends and written history, in all the ancient cultures and civilizations of the world
• The causes of these natural catastrophes were the result of intervention from space, in the form of comets, asteroids and other bodies within our solar system
Furthermore, as Velikovsky points out, we need to understand what is meant by the word collision. This doesn’t mean one planet literally colliding with another, as in the case of an asteroid slamming into the earth.
Velikovsky went to great pains to point out that the existing science of orbital mechanics was deficient. Which means in essence that it was wrong.
In the classical world of science, space was regarded as empty, and the planets were simply blobs of matter orbiting the sun according to the laws of motion set out by Isaac Newton, and the law of gravity as explained by Albert Einstein.
Velikovsky was the first to realize that electromagnetic forces were essential to understanding the true nature of orbital mechanics. Every object in space had an electro-magnetic component, and close encounters between these bodies invariably led to electro-magnetic discharges.
So planets never actually collided with one another. Instead they became temporarily locked together in an electro-magnetic embrace, before parting and continuing their separate ways.
Scott: And how does this tie in with different earth ages?
The idea that the earth has undergone a succession of catastrophic upheavals as a result of cosmic events can be found throughout the ancient world, and Velikovsky quoted from these sources at great length in his books.
The Chinese recorded that ten different world ages had passed up to the time of Confucius. The Hindus called these past ages Kalpas or Yugas, and referred to four previous ages that had ended in catastrophe.
Similar references can be found in Buddhist scriptures, as well as in the Zend-Avesta, the sacred book of the Persians. The early Greek philosophers also referred to past world ages in their writings. For example, the Greek poet Hesiod vividly described the end of one of these ages in his book titled Theogony.
But perhaps the best example of this can be found in Timaeus, an essay written by Plato. In this piece Plato refers to a conversation between the great Athenian lawgiver Solon and an old Egyptian priest:
“Oh Solon, Solon” said the priest. “You Greeks are all children, and there is no such thing as an old Greek.” “What do you mean by that?” asked Solon. The priest replied:
“You are all young in mind. You have no belief rooted in old tradition, and no knowledge hoary with age. And the reason is this. There have been, and will be, many different calamities to destroy mankind. The greatest of them by fire and water, and lesser ones by countless other means.”
“Your own story of Phaeton, child of the sun, harnessed his father’s chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father’s course, and so burnt up things on earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is, at long intervals, a variation in the course of the heavenly bodies, and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on the earth.”
So here we have an indisputable source pointing out that there have been many different catastrophes in the past history of the earth, and that these have been caused by “a variation in the course of heavenly bodies“.
This is pretty graphic stuff, Scott. But sadly this truth has been lost on those who claim to be in the vanguard of science today.
Instead, we are fed the same old dogma, that these accounts of past destruction taken from ancient cultures are exactly that, simple stories, myths and legends designed to entertain, but not to enlighten people today about what really happened in the past.
Well, the prophets of old tell a different story. They say that what has happened in the past, is about to happen again. And we are the generation that will live to experience this for ourselves.
In the final instalment in this series, I want to talk about the impact that Velikovsky has had upon prophecy, by helping us to understand the meaning of the words of these ancient prophets.
And just a reminder for those people who would like to read my book, it can be reached here
Scott: Thanks Allan. You have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. Do join us for our next Podcast in this series, titled “Velikovsky: His Impact on Prophecy”
