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."