Joseph, why do you have to lie to support your view?
WORLDS IN COLLISION
By Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
Copyright 1950, All Rights Reserved
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD
The Book of Joshua, compiled from the more ancient Book of Jasher, related the order of events. "Joshua ... went up from Gilgal all night." In the early morning he fell upon his enemies unawares at Gibeon, and "chased them along the way that goes up to Beth-horon". As they fled, great stones were cast from the sky. That same day ("in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites") the sun stood still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Ajalon. It has been noted that this description of the position of the luminaries implies that the sun was in the forenoon position. The Book of Joshua says that the luminaries stood in the midst of the sky.
Allowing for the difference in longitude, it must have been early morning or night in the Western Hemisphere.
We go to the shelf where stand books with the historical traditions of the aborigines of Central America.
The sailors of Columbus and Cortes, arriving in America, found there literate peoples who had books of their own. Most of these books were burned in the sixteenth century by the Dominican monks. Very few of the ancient manuscripts survived, and these are preserved in the libraries of Paris, the Vatican, the Prado, and Dresden; they are called codici, and their texts have been studied and partly read. However, among the Indians of the days of the conquest and also of the following century there were literary men who had access to the knowledge written in pictographic script by their forefathers.
[The Mayan tongue is still spoken by about 300,000 people, but of the Mayan hieroglyphics only the characters employed in the calendar are known for certain.]
In the Mexican ANNALS OF CUAUHTITLAN -- the history of the empire of Culhuacan and Mexico, written in Nahua-Indian in the sixteenth century -- it is related that during a cosmic catastrophe that occurred in the remote past, the night did not end for a long time.(Bold added)
The biblical narrative describes the sun as remaining in the sky for an additional day ("about a whole day"). The Midrashim, the books of ancient traditions not embodied in the Scriptures, relate that the sun and the moon stood still for thirty-six ITIM, or eighteen hours, and thus from sunrise to sunset the day lasted about thirty hours.
In the Mexican annals it is stated that the world was deprived of light and the sun did not appear for a fourfold night. In a prolonged day or night, time could not be measured by the usual means at the disposal of the ancients.
[With the exception of the water clock.]
Sahagun, the Spanish savant who came to America a generation after Columbus and gathered the traditions of the aborigines, wrote that at the time of one cosmic catastrophe the sun rose only a little way over the horizon and remained there without moving; the moon also stood still.
I am dealing with the Western Hemisphere first, because the biblical stories were not known to its aborigines when it was discovered. Also, the tradition preserved by Sahagun bears no trace of having been introduced by the missionaries: in his version there is nothing to suggest Joshua ben Nun and his war against the Canaanite kings; and the position of the sun, only a very little above the eastern horizon, differs from the biblical text, though it does not contradict it.
In the manuscripts of Avila and Molina, who collected the traditions of the Indians of the New World, it is related that the sun did not appear for five days; a cosmic collision of stars preceded the cataclysm; people and animals tried to escape to mountain caves. "Scarcely had they reached there when the sea, breaking out of bounds following a terrifying shock, began to rise on the Pacific coast. But as the sea rose, filling the valleys and the plains around, the mountain of Ancasmarca rose, too, like a ship on the waves. During the five days that this cataclysm lasted, the sun did not show its face and the earth remained in darkness."
Thus the traditions of the Peruvians describe a time when the sun did not appear for five days. In the upheaval, the earth changed its profile, and the sea fell upon the land.
East of Egypt, in Babylonia, the eleventh tablet of the EPIC OF GILGAMESH [Gilgamesh] refers to the same events. From out the horizon rose a dark cloud and it rushed against the earth; the land was shriveled by the heat of the flames. "Desolation ... stretched to heaven; all that was bright was turned into darkness. ... Nor could a brother distinguish his brother. ... Six days ... the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land ... and all human back to its clay was returned."
The Iranian book ANUGITA reveals that a threefold day and threefold night concluded a world age, and the book BUNDAHIS, in a context that I shall quote later and that shows a close relation to the events of the cataclysm I describe here, tells of the world being dark at midday as though it were in deepest night: it was caused, according to the BUNDAHIS, by a war between the stars and the planets.
A protracted night, deepened by the onrushing dust sweeping in from interplanetary space, enveloped Europe, Africa, and America, the valleys of the Euphrates and the Indus also. If the earth did not stop rotating but slowed down or was tilted, there must have been a longitude where a prolonged day was followed by a prolonged night. Iran is so situated that, if one is to believe the Iranian tradition, the sun was absent for a threefold day, and then it shone for a threefold day. Farther to the east there must have been a protracted day corresponding to the protracted night in the west.
According to "Bahman Yast", at the end of a world age in eastern Iran or in India the sun remained ten days visible in the sky.
In China, during the reign of the Emperor Yahou, a great catastrophe brought a world age to a close. For ten days the sun did not set. The events of the time of the Emperor Yahou deserve close examination; I shall return to the subject shortly.
You have contempt for people with faith in the Bible. I have contempt for lies.
