Ever since 1950 when he published his first best seller called Worlds in Collision Immanuel Velikovsky has created a furor in the astronomical community. Many of the ancient myths of devastation, Velikovsky asserted, had a literal reality in cataclysmic cosmic events. The battles of the gods reflected the perambulations of the celestial objects for which they were named. In 1450 BC Jupiter spewed out Venus as a comet which, amongst other things, helped part the Red Sea and turned the Arabian penninsula into a desert. The tail of the comet provided the fleeing Hebrews of the Exodus carbohydrate sustenance in the form of manna. A second approach in the time of Joshua (1400 BC according to Velikovsky's unique chronology) caused a tilting of the earth's axis, hurricanes and earthquakes. Thus the Biblical account of Joshua stopping the sun in the sky.
"Mars, he says, was also disturbed by the erratic path of Venus in the eighth century BC, and as a result, Mars also passed dangerously close to the earth in 721 BC. A second near miss in 687 BC was responsible, he adds, for the destruction of Sennacherib's army."
Velikovsky admittedly used "a synchronical scale of Egyptian and Hebrew histories which is not orthodox" in order to establish correspondences between events in the Bible and contemporary historical accounts. His overriding intention was to redeem the Old Testament as an accurate record of the unique covenant and past greatness of the Jewish people.
"Dr. Velikovksky's views are not based on any first hand knowledge of the Egyptian language. Rather, they result from his acceptance of old and outdated translation, archaeologist's mistakes and an inadequate knowledge of Egyptological bibliograpy."
Although Velikovsky has been thoroughly refuted by orthodox historians and astronomers, he did bring to light some otherwise obscure documents, such as the Papyrus of Ipuwer.
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