Cassandane
Padawan Learner
I finally got around to reading Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" and "Ages in Chaos". I read the whole of "Worlds in Collision" first, and it took me quite a bit to wrap my mind around ideas like the sun standing still in the sky for days, and the seasons changing when they occurred, not to mention problems the ancients apparently had with keeping up with changes to the length of the day and the length of the year.
These ideas explained a lot of things, though, so when I started on "Ages in Chaos", I was expecting more exciting ideas about history's more incomprehensible events. However, a couple of chapters into "Ages in Chaos", it occurred to me that Velikovsky may have written "Worlds in Collision" for the express purpose of explaining the history of the Jews and some of the more unlikely events in the Old Testament.
According to him, the Exodus occurred right after Venus came close to the Earth and caused a worldwide cataclysm. Egypt was in ruins after suffering the effects of the cataclysm, which was described as plagues in the Bible. The last plague was apparently a darkness so black people couldn't see one another and fires wouldn't light. According to Velikovsky, the Israelites chose this moment to leave Egypt, even though he quotes a source that said "slave girls were being adorned with costly jewels" (end-of-the-world reparations?).
If it was pitch dark, lots of people had died, and there was no food or water because of the plagues of vermin, insects, and blood rain, how did the pharaoh manage to muster his army to chase the Israelites? And, unless one is a Jew with a giant ego, it is hard to imagine that retrieving rats leaving a sinking ship would be the pharaoh's first priority at such a time. I can believe, however, that he might have got wind of an invasion force entering Egypt from the Arabian desert. However, it seems odd that armies would be fighting in the dark.
Then Velikovsky goes to great lengths to prove that the "Amalekites" who invaded Egypt right at that moment were in no way the Jews. He says the "Amalekites" were successful in their invasion because of the chaos in Egypt, became the Hyksos kings and that they ruled a large chunk of the Levant and Syria at the same time. Considering how powerful that must have made these "Amalekites", it's odd that other peoples of that region make no mention of "Amalekite" rulers in their histories of that time. They are mentioned only in the Bible.
Manetho, writing 1000 years later, says that after the Hyksos kings were finally thrown out of Egypt, they went off and founded "the great city of Jerusalem", which Velikovksy says was a miss-hearing of Sharuhen, which was never a "great city". According to Velikovsky, this confusion of the "Amalekites" with the Jews is the root of anti-Semitism.
In "Stranger in the Valley of the Kings", Ahmed Osman says the reason for Akhnaten's little trip down a river in a reed boat as a newborn was because his grandfather, an Israelite named Yuya (Joseph), had held a powerful position in Egypt for a long time and the Egyptians wanted to kill any boys his daughter bore to the pharaoh's son to avoid an Israelite becoming pharaoh. Perhaps they had good reason to want to avoid a repetition of a most unpleasant past.
There might be some value in the ideas and descriptions set forth in "Worlds in Collision", and, to a certain extent they are validated by the electric universe theory, but I think I'd be wasting my time reading the rest of "Ages in Chaos".
Has anyone else read it and had different thoughts or found any value in it?
These ideas explained a lot of things, though, so when I started on "Ages in Chaos", I was expecting more exciting ideas about history's more incomprehensible events. However, a couple of chapters into "Ages in Chaos", it occurred to me that Velikovsky may have written "Worlds in Collision" for the express purpose of explaining the history of the Jews and some of the more unlikely events in the Old Testament.
According to him, the Exodus occurred right after Venus came close to the Earth and caused a worldwide cataclysm. Egypt was in ruins after suffering the effects of the cataclysm, which was described as plagues in the Bible. The last plague was apparently a darkness so black people couldn't see one another and fires wouldn't light. According to Velikovsky, the Israelites chose this moment to leave Egypt, even though he quotes a source that said "slave girls were being adorned with costly jewels" (end-of-the-world reparations?).
If it was pitch dark, lots of people had died, and there was no food or water because of the plagues of vermin, insects, and blood rain, how did the pharaoh manage to muster his army to chase the Israelites? And, unless one is a Jew with a giant ego, it is hard to imagine that retrieving rats leaving a sinking ship would be the pharaoh's first priority at such a time. I can believe, however, that he might have got wind of an invasion force entering Egypt from the Arabian desert. However, it seems odd that armies would be fighting in the dark.
Then Velikovsky goes to great lengths to prove that the "Amalekites" who invaded Egypt right at that moment were in no way the Jews. He says the "Amalekites" were successful in their invasion because of the chaos in Egypt, became the Hyksos kings and that they ruled a large chunk of the Levant and Syria at the same time. Considering how powerful that must have made these "Amalekites", it's odd that other peoples of that region make no mention of "Amalekite" rulers in their histories of that time. They are mentioned only in the Bible.
Manetho, writing 1000 years later, says that after the Hyksos kings were finally thrown out of Egypt, they went off and founded "the great city of Jerusalem", which Velikovksy says was a miss-hearing of Sharuhen, which was never a "great city". According to Velikovsky, this confusion of the "Amalekites" with the Jews is the root of anti-Semitism.
In "Stranger in the Valley of the Kings", Ahmed Osman says the reason for Akhnaten's little trip down a river in a reed boat as a newborn was because his grandfather, an Israelite named Yuya (Joseph), had held a powerful position in Egypt for a long time and the Egyptians wanted to kill any boys his daughter bore to the pharaoh's son to avoid an Israelite becoming pharaoh. Perhaps they had good reason to want to avoid a repetition of a most unpleasant past.
There might be some value in the ideas and descriptions set forth in "Worlds in Collision", and, to a certain extent they are validated by the electric universe theory, but I think I'd be wasting my time reading the rest of "Ages in Chaos".
Has anyone else read it and had different thoughts or found any value in it?