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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."