SIS REVIEWVol. IV:1 Click here for cost
The Birth of Planets, by Peter Warlow
The original submission of the paper ‘Geomagnetic Reversals?’, republished in the last SIS Review [SISR III:4] from Journal of Physics: A. October 1978, contained two items that did not appear in the final version. One of these was a section dealing with the problem of the source of the disturbances in the solar system which led to the various catastrophes that have occurred on Earth throughout its life. The other was an acknowledgement to Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky. …..as follows: –
In his concluding remarks to a joint Royal Society and British Academy symposium – The Place of Astronomy in the Ancient World – King-Hele (1974) stated: ‘This meeting was intended to help in building bridges between science and history … In the past many academic disciplines tended to become intellectual islands …. This divisive insularity is still quite strong … but a major advance in science most often comes when a bright scientist crosses a bridge to another island and applies what may be old skills to throw new light on a new area.’ The bright scientist in question would appear to be Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, who wrote three books against considerable oppostion and, by his stubborn conviction, provided the wherewithal to recognise the key (the tippe-top). Some will question the mere mention of his name in what I trust will be taken as a serious scientific paper. Some will question the appellation ‘scientist’ applied to Velikovsky, but it would be more appropropriate to question King-Hele’s remanent insularity. A bridge can be crossed both ways.
It will be noted that the editors and referees of the Institute of Physics saw this acknowledgement (and the only reference to it by them was by the referee who strongly favoured publication of the paper as it stood). I do not hide the fact that my own ideas stem from the work of Velikovsky ……. but the omission of the acknowledgement in the final version of the paper was by my own deliberate choice. What I wish to ensure is that the ideas – both his and mine – be taken seriously and that they enter the forum of scientific discussion, instead of the situation we have at present where people such as King-Hele profess to seek enlightenment whilst at the same time ignoring the bright scientist standing clearly before them. …………
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A Chronology for the Middle Kingdom and Israel’s Egyptian Bondage – II: Israel in Egypt, by Dr. John Bimson
The second and concluding part of this paper examines biblical and Egyptian evidence in support of Velikovsky’s synchronism of the Exodus and the Hyksos invasion.
In Part I of this essay [SISR III:3] I presented arguments for dating Joseph and the Hebrew migration into Egypt in the reign of Sesostris III, 5th ruler of the XIIth Dynasty. I also argued that the Hebrew tribes remained in Egypt for about 400 years. …………..Accepting Velikovsky’s synchronism of the Exodus with the collapse of the following dynasty and the Hyksos invasion [2], we must show that Dynasty XIII can be extended beyond the period currently allowed for it, to fill the gap of over three centuries between c. 1770 and c. 1450 BC. Part II will demonstrate this, and will also show that the XIIIth Dynasty was the time of the Hebrews’ enslavement. ……………..
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Some Notes on the ‘Assuruballit Problem’, by Peter James
A perennial problem for Velikovsky’s chronological revision has been the apparent synchronism between Assuruballit I of Assyria and the Amarna pharaohs. Can this be resolved?
………….Two letters ascribed to the el-Amarna collection (EA 15 and 16) are signed by an ‘Assuruballit, king of Assyria’ [1], and one of these is addressed to a Pharaoh Naphuria, believed to be a cuneiform transcription of Akhnaton’s prenomen Neferkheprure. Velikovsky dates Akhnaton to the mid-9th century BC, yet, as Gulbekian stresses, Assuruballit I is usually dated to the 14th century BC and: ‘As far as I am aware, the basic chronology of Assyria in this period has not been questioned. ………………..the problem remains, as Burgstahler put it, ‘ … in the eyes of many … an insurmountable impediment to Velikovsky’s proposed revision of the chronology of Egypt and the other parts of the ancient civilised world’. [3] ……….. This article will not attempt to define a detailed solution to the problems pointed out …. I simply wish to review the answers that have been suggested already, in the hope of clarifying the problems and suggesting avenues of approach for further research. ……………….
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Venus Hothouse – The Other Theory, by Frederick B. Jueneman
………. there are two diametrically competing theories to explain the seemingly anomalous high heat of the planet Venus. The most touted, and hence the most accepted, is the greenhouse theory first promulgated by Rupert Wildt 40 years ago, and since elevated to an enhanced, or runaway, greenhouse by Carl E. Sagan about 1960. ………….. The other theory, which demonstrates the power and simplicity of straightforward thermodynamics, was first qualitatively outlined in 1950 by Immanuel Velikovsky, who suggested an extraordinary recent high thermal history for Venus through a series of cosmological events, and from which it is still recovering. ………….
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SIS REVIEWVol. IV:2/3 (double issue) Click here for cost
The Genesis of the Jerusalem Scripta (An Autobiographical Chapter), by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky
When in April 1974, I passed through the Hague, Holland, I visited the patrician building in which the old publishing house of Martinus Nijhoff is housed and took a few copies of the parchment edition of the two volumes of Scripta Universitatis * (‘Mathematica et Physica’ and ‘Orientalia et Judaica’), that they had stored for me by then for a full fifty years. In the fall of 1923, before leaving Europe to settle for the next fifteen and a half years in Palestine, ………. Over fifty years have already passed since the publication of these volumes, a milestone in the history of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and in my life as well. Although the volumes were published under the imprint of the National Library and the University of Jerusalem, the University was then only a piece of land on Mount Scopus, with a foundation stone on it from before World War I and nothing else. ……..
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The Ramesside Star Tables, by Michael G. Reade
Information recorded on astronomical tables in the Ramesside tombs can be charted to show the movements of stars across the sky over the course of a year. From the consistent variation of the resultant star-tracks from the expected vertical lines, it must be concluded that the year of the tables’ compilation – provisionally, ca. 700 BC – was marked by considerable disruption of the orderly motions of the skies.
The ‘Ramesside Star Tables’ comprise sets of 24 tables of stars, each table naming 13 stars. Each table is headed by a date, the dates being spaced at 15-day intervals through the year, a set of 24 tables thus making up a year of 360 days – …………. Four sets of such tables have been found – two in the tomb of Ramesses VI, one in the tomb of Ramesses VII and one in the tomb of Ramesses IX ……………
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‘Extra-Scientific’ Dimensions of Science, by Dr. R. A. McAulay
If the controversy which began with Worlds in Collision has spawned a wealth of publications dealing with various implications of Immanuel Velikovsky’s work and with the merits of his catastrophism vis-à-vis prevailing scientific notions, there is as well a growing assortment of efforts which attempt to explain the social dynamics of that dispute. Readers of SISR are likely to be particularly familiar with a number ….. which have been printed, reprinted, discussed or otherwise reviewed in these pages [2]. Whatever useful insights may emerge from these sometimes varied, sometimes overlapping accounts, the so-called Velikovsky ‘affair’ cannot be adequately understood unless that case is placed in a larger socio-cultural context. ………….
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An Eighth-Century Date for Merenptah? A Colloquium on Dr John Bimson’s Proposals, by Dr. John Day, Dr. John Bimson and Peter James
John Day – 1. Merenptah’s ‘Israel Stele’; II. More General Points About the 8th Century Dating of the XIXth Dynasty …………
John Bimson and Peter James: I. John Bimson replies on the ‘Israel Stele’; II. Concerning Day’s ‘More General Points’. ………
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Reversals of the Earth? A Colloquium on Peter Warlow’s Mechanism, by C. Leroy Ellenberger, Eric Crew and Peter Warlow’
Leroy Ellenberger: The [SIS] Review may be justifiably proud of both (a) having been in the forefront of the archaeology media in reviewing John Dayton’s book and (b) reprinting Peter Warlow’s paper in the Spring 1979 issue. Warlow’s paper is a tour de force, almost surreptitiously covering the corpus of Worlds in Collision. His presentation prompts questions in two areas and caution in a third. ……….; Eric Crew: The paper ‘Geomagnetic Reversals?’ by Peter Warlow in SIS Review III:4, reproduced from Journal of Physics A, shows further support of Velikovsky by the scientific establishment. His paper will, I feel sure, represent a landmark in geophysics for stating a case for the physical reversal of the poles as viewed by an observer from space, corresponding with the reversals of the Earth’s magnetic field as viewed by a terrestrial observer. The claim that the direction of rotation after inversion remains the same to the external observer is also convincing, but closer study of the proposed explanation raises some doubts. ………… Peter Warlow replies: Eric Crew and Leroy Ellenberger and, I gather from the latter, a number of PhD physicists, seem to have found the concept of the non-reversal of the magnetic field during a tippe-top inversion somewhat difficult to grasp. The difficulty may stem, in part, from a failure to appreciate the important but subtle difference in the two possible ways of turning a spinning Earth upside-down. ………… A second reason for the difficulty seems to be that the analogy of the Earth’s field to that of a bar magnet has been taken too literally. ……………. The analogy of the Earth with a bar magnet is purely for the purpose of illustrating the shape of the magnetic field ……………….
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Evidence for the Marine Deposition of Coal – by Dr. Harold G. Coffin
Velikovsky proposed a catastrophist theory of rapid coal formation, graphically described in Earth in Upheaval (1956), chapter xiii, ‘Coal’. ……… Velikovsky’s theory was cited approvingly by Dr. Wilfred Francis, an expert on fuel technology, in his work, Coal: It’s formation and Composition (London, 1956) ……… In this paper, Dr Coffin, a palaeozoologist, produces evidence from the study of fossil tube-worms in support of a catastrophist model, involving marine floods, apparently of considerably duration. – Peter J. James.
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SIS REVIEWVol. IV:4 Click here for cost
Venus – An Interim Report, by Wal Thornhill
In an introductory chapter to his most recent book, New Worlds for Old (Newton Abbot, 1979), Duncan Lunan writes: ‘With the beginning of physical exploration by spacecraft, new and previously unsuspected facts came pouring in. Explorer I ……… Luna 2 ………… Luna 3 ……….. Mariner 2 discovered the Solar wind, …………. before going on to scan a Venus stranger than anyone had forseen. ……….Venus alone has presented scientists with its fair share of surprises ……………
……….”We conjecture that the comet Venus originated in the planet Jupiter….” (W in C, p. 379). ………… The current theory of the formation of the solar system has the Sun and planets forming by accretion from a rotating, discoid nebula. This theory and all variations upon it assume a similar age for the inner planets ……… The space probes of Mercury, Venus and Mars have, however, shown none of the smooth gradation in properties to be expected from the nebular hypothesis. Venus in particular is anomalous. …………
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The Queen of Sheba and the Song of Songs, by Hyam Maccoby
Velikovsky’s identification of Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt as none other than the Queen of Sheba is worked out in great and convincing detail in Ages in Chaos. Yet there are still some aspects of the matter which repay reflection. One of these aspects relates to the Song of Songs, the beautiful and enigmatic love-song whose authorship is ascribed to King Solomon. …………. there are also several puzzles that can be better solved by the ‘Queen of Sheba/Hatshepsut’ hypothesis than by any other theory. ………….
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A Possible Reference to King David in Ugaritic Literature, by Tom Chetwynd
The literature of the ancient centre of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) on the coast of Syria provides a rich field of investigation for the student of the Revised Chronology. The close similarities between the language and poetry of Ugarit and that of some of the Old Testament books furnished Velikovsky with some of his most impressive evidence for lowering the chronology of the Egyptian XVIIIth Dynasty and the contemporary Late Bronze civilisation of Syria/Palestine. …………. [I]n the Revised Chronology the library of King Niqmad of Ugarit, a contemporary of Akhnaton usually placed in the 14th century BC, dates from the 9th century BC, the time of Elijah and Elisha and shortly before the major Old Testament prophets [1] …………- Peter J. James
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Bronze Age Destructions in the Near East, by Geoffrey Gammon
The extensive work of the eminent French archaeologist Claude Schaeffer, correlating the chronology and stratigraphy of Bronze Age sites in the Near East, led him to conclude that many of the phases of Bronze Age civilisation were ended by catastrophes ‘not caused by the action of man’. This paper summarises Schaeffer’s conclusions and their implications for both Worlds in Collision and the Revised Chronology.
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Jupiter’s Magnetic Field and Io’s Volcanoes, by Brian Moore and Peter James
One of the best known of Velikovsky’s successful ‘advance claims’ regarding the solar system concerns the planet Jupiter. In a lecture delivered in October 1953 he stated: ‘In Jupiter and its moons we have a system not unlike the solar family. The planet is cold, yet its gases are in motion. It appears probable to me that it sends out radio noises as do the sun and the stars.’ (Earth in Upheaval, Supplement: ‘Recent Finds in Astronomy’.) In correspondence with Albert Einstein, Velikovsky (June 1954) repeated his view that Jupiter is not an inert gravitational body and that it would be found to emit radio noises of electromagnetic (non-thermal) origin; …………. Einstein reacted scepticallly, yet nine days before his death the accidental discovery of strong radio noises coming from Jupiter was announced (5th April 1955) …………
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The Electrical Origin of the Outbursts on Io, by Thomas Gold
The outbursts seen on Jupiter’s satellite Io have been described as volcanic eruptions. They may instead be the result of large electric currents flowing through hot spots on Io and causing the evaporation of surface materials. A strictly periodic behaviour would then be expected.
In the course of the Voyager I mission [and the] photography of Jupiter’s satellite Io, at least seven violent eruptions were identified, apparently throwing material to heights up to 270 km and emanating from caldera-like markings. …………
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The Magnetic Field of Jupiter and the Volcanism and Rotation of the Galilean Satellites, by E. M. Drobyshevski
The volcanic activity observed on Io and Europa may have its origin in electromagnetic effects deriving from satellites’ movement through the magnetic field of Jupiter. The energetics and consequences of this are here discussed in detail.
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