Venus on the Loose

The serenely beautiful evening star, the planet Venus, was not always a well-behaved heavenly body. According to "Universal Scholar" Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, in his forthcoming book Worlds in Collision (soon to be published by Macmillan), Venus was once the bad girl of the solar system. She frightened the whole human race into a "collective amnesia" which kept her misbehavior from being recorded.

But Dr. Velikovsky is correcting the human race's forgetfulness. Born in Vitebsk, Russia, in 1895, Dr. Velikovsky studied "a little zoology and botany" in Edinburgh in 1914. Later he got an M.D. from Moscow Imperial University, and practiced medicine in Palestine from 1923 to 1939. His only other employment has been a job as editor of Scripta Universitatis, a Palestinian magazine subsidized by his father. His knowledge of many sciences is self-taught. Says Dr. Velikovsky: "I still need learning myself. One lifetime is not enough to learn all that must be known." His book is causing as much advance excitement as if it had been co-authored by Einstein and Toynbee.

By the Velikovsky account, Venus was once a monstrous comet. About 1500 B.C., it swept in from space surrounded by a retinue of meteors. On its first pass, it missed the earth by a comet's eyelash, showering the surface with "stones from the sky." Dreadful things happened, of course. The rivers ran red as blood. The oceans slopped around. Mountain ranges rose or fell, and lots of people were killed.

Right in the thick of things were the Children of Israel, who were trying to escape from persecutions in Egypt. On the night of the Passover, the Lord (acting through the invading comet) shattered Egyptian temples by stirring up earthquakes. When the fleeing Children of Israel reached the Red Sea, Velikovsky points out, the comet was very close, tearing the sea apart. A gigantic electric spark passed between it and the earth, and "pushed down the mile-high billows."-

The Sun Stood Still. When the comet passed by, it left destruction and famine. Fortunately, however, says Velikovsky, its nutritious tail condensed into edible manna and nourished the Children of Israel.

For 52 years the comet kept the solar system in an uproar, charging among the peaceful planets like *a bull at a Sunday-school picnic. It zoomed past the earth again when the Children of Israel, commanded by Joshua, were tangling with the Amorites. Said Joshua: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies." (Joshua 10:12, 13.)

Joshua, says Velikovsky, should get no credit for this neat bit of military strategy. The comet was grazing the earth at that time, and had stopped the earth's rotation. The Israelites were so absorbed in polishing off the Amorites that they did not notice this astronomical cataclysm.

The period between the two Visitations of the comet was a tough time for humans and other inhabitants of the earth. The Chinese, he says, called this era the "Valley of Obscurity" and the "Somber Residence"; the Nordics called it the "Twilight of the Gods"; the Hebrews the "Shadow of Death."

Comet Tanned. After leaving the earth for the second time, the comet bore down on the planet Mars (the Greeks recorded a love affair between the god Mars and the goddess Venus). This encounter settled and domesticated the comet, which accepted a regular orbit. Now, as the planet Venus, it revolves around the sun.

Dr. Velikovsky does not derive much of his theory from geological evidence. He depends mostly upon the mythologies of the world's ancient and not-so-ancient peoples, quoting Hindus, Greeks, Babylonians, Peruvians, Aztecs, Mayas, Chinese and Polynesians. None of these sources speak clearly to back him up. No myth, for instance, describes an object nearly as big as the earth which came close enough to graze it. The myths speak cryptically, and Dr. Velikovsky thinks that that is probably because folks were gagged by "collective amnesia."

But obscurity in the records does not bother Dr. Velikovsky, who spins his theory out of threads snipped out of the ancient tangle of folklore. Myths and popular legends are full of catastrophes. Many ancient peoples, for instance, lived in fertile river valleys. They suffered from floods, and were apt to magnify big ones into widespread deluges. They usually worshiped the sun in some form, and were therefore apt to spin myths about times when their god or gods' behaved oddly. Velikovsky makes a large collection of these catastrophe myths and insists that they refer to the visits of the Venus-comet.

Even before publication, Dr. Velikovsky's book has attracted wide comment and admiration. Harper's Magazine gave it a solemn preview entitled "The Day the Sun Stood Still." Collier's ran a he-man's version called "The Heavens' Burst." In the latest Reader's Digest, Fulton Oursler hailed Velikovsky as the starter of a back-to-the-Bible movement. Connoisseurs of pressagentry will credit Macmillan Co. with skilled use of an up-to-date technique: getting widest publicity for a doubtful article before critics have been allowed to see it.

Toward the East. Some scientists have a sneaking suspicion that Velikovsky is pulling their legs. No object, however large, that barely grazed the earth could materially affect its period of revolution. And if the sun did literally "stand still upon Gibeon"--i.e., if the earth suddenly stopped turning--no human being would have lived to tell about it. Every loose object on earth, including Joshua, the oceans and the atmosphere, would have continued the normal rotating movement, and thus taken off toward the east faster than the speed of sound. Velikovsky seems to be aware of some of these difficulties. His reply: the laws of physics may have to be changed to fit his mythological theory.

In spite of the high-sounding advance testimonials that Worlds in Collision has picked up, few experts cared to waste much time on the Velikovsky theory. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin of the Harvard College Observatory pointed out that there are records of detailed observations of Venus from at least 500 years before the Exodus. Said Dr. David Delo, executive director of the American Geological Institute: "Velikovsky appears to be bypassing all the sound, scientific observations of a multitude of geologists."

Biblical scholars were inclined to agree with the scientists. Said President Nelson Glueck of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati: "Dr. Velikovsky can get absolutely nowhere by referring to Biblical material . . . You can prove almost anything by the Bible." Said Historian Carl Kraeling, director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago: "There is nothing we as historians can do about Dr. Velikovsky's work other than smile and go about our business."

*The Bible mentions no such comet or spark. "And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided." (Exodus 14:21.)

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