In The Beginning
Saturn &
The Flood - Part I
VArchive.org
Deluge
The
scriptural deluge is regarded by historians and critical exegetes as a
legendary product. “The legend of a universal deluge is in itself a myth and
cannot be anything else.” It is “most nakedly and unreservedly mythological.”
The tradition of a universal deluge is told
by all ancient civilizations, and also by races that never reached the
ability to express themselves in the written symbols of a language. It is
found all over the world, on all continents, on the islands of the Pacific
and Atlantic, everywhere. Usually it is
explained as a local experience carried from race to race by word of mouth.
The work of collating such material has repeatedly been done, and it would
only fatigue the reader were I to repeat these stories as told in all parts
of the world, even in places never visited by missionaries.
The rest of the collected traditions are also
not identical in detail, and are sometimes very different in their setting
from the Noah story, but all agree that the earth was covered to the mountain
tops by the water of the deluge coming from above, and that only a few human
beings escaped death in the flood. The stories are often accompanied by
details about a simultaneous cleavage of the earth.
In pre-Columbian America the story of a universal
flood was very persistent; the first world-age was called Atonatiuh,
or the age that was brought to its end by a universal deluge. This is written
and illustrated in the ancient codices of the Mexicans and was narrated to
the Spaniards who came to the New Continent. The natives of
Australia, Polynesia, and Tasmania, discovered
in the seventeenth century, related almost identical traditions.
Clay tablets with inscriptions concerning the
early ages and the deluge were found in Mesopotamia.
Their similarity to the biblical account, and to the story of the Chaldean priest Berosus who lived in the Hellenistic age, caused a great sensation at
the end of the last century and the beginning of the current one. On this
sensational discovery was based the sensational pamphlet Babel und Bibel by Friedrich Delitsch
(1902) who tried to show in it that the Hebrews had simply borrowed this
story, along with many others, from the Babylonian store of legends.
But if here and there the story of the flood
could be said to have been borrowed by the scriptural writer from the
Babylonians, and by some natives from the missionaries, in other cases no
such explanation could be offered. The indigenous character of the stories in
many regions of the world makes the borrowing theory seem very fragile.
Geologists see vestiges of diluvial rains all over the world; folklorists hear the
story of a universal flood wherever folklore is collected; historians read of
a universal flood in American manuscripts, in Babylonian clay tablets and in
the annals of practically all cultured peoples. But the climatologists make
it very clear that even should the entire water content of the atmosphere
pour down as rain, the resulting flood could not have covered even the
lowland slopes, far less the peaks of the mountains, as all accounts insist
that this deluge did.
William Whiston & The
Deluge
The years 1680 and 1682 were years of
unusually bright comets. Many pamphlets were printed, especially in Germany, on the
imminent end of the world; at the very least, great catastrophes were
expected. There was nothing new in such prognostications. In earlier
centuries and also earlier in the seventeenth century, comets were regarded
with awe and every possible evil effect was ascribed to them. Thus a
scholarly author, David Herlicius, published in
1619 a discourse on a comet that had appeared shortly before, in 1618, and
enumerated the calamities that this comet, and comets in general, bring with
them or presage:
Desiccation of the crops and barrenness,
pestilence, great stormy winds, great inundations, shipwrecks, defeat of
armies or destruction of kingdoms . . . decease of great potentates and
scholars, schisms and rifts in religion, etc. The portents of comets are threefold—in
part natural, in part political, and in part theological.
David Herlicius
also quoted Cicero:
“From the remotest remembrance of antiquity it is known that comets have
always presaged disasters.”
The fear and even horror caused by the comet
of 1680 was just beginning to calm down when in 1682 another great comet
appeared.
Edmund Halley was twenty-six years old when
this comet of 1682 appeared. He had experience in astronomical observations
and calculations, having spent time on the island of St. Helena,
cataloguing there 341 southern stars; he had observed the transit of Mercury,
and made pendulum observations. Now he calculated the orbit of the comet of
1682, and predicted its return in 1759. Actually, the periodicity of comets
was not first discovered by Halley. The ancient authors knew that comets have
their time of revolution. Seneca wrote in his treatise De Cometis—in some respects still the most advanced
discussion of this subject—that the Chaldeans
counted the comets among the planets. A comet with a periodicity of about 70
years was known to the rabbis.
Nevertheless, only little aware of the works
of the ancients, the modern world acclaimed Halley to be the discoverer of
the periodicity of comets; however, this acclaim came only after his prognostication
realized itself. The comet of 1682, or Halley’s comet, returned in 1759. It
came somewhat retarded on account of its passage near the planets Jupiter and
Saturn. This delay had been calculated, though not quite accurately, by
Halley. On the grave of Halley these words are engraved: “Under this marble
peacefully rests . . . Edmundus Halleius,
LL.D., unquestionably the greatest astronomer of his age.”
But when Halley offered his theory of the
periodicity of comets, and of the return of the observed comet after
seventy-five years, this theory was not received immediately with enthusiasm.
Yet in the mind of a contemporary mathematician the idea of a periodic return
of comets was the beginning of a broadly-developed theory of the origin of
the world and of the nature of the deluge.
William Whiston,
born in 1667, published in 1696 his New Theory of the Earth. In this
book he claimed that the comet of 1682 was of a 575&half year
periodicity; that the same comet had appeared in February of 1106, in +531 in
the consulate of Lampadius and Orestes, and in
September of -44, the year of Caesar’s assassination. Whiston
further asserted that this comet had met the earth in -2346, and caused the
Deluge.
Whiston found in
classical literature references to the change in inclination of the
terrestrial axis and, ascribing it to a displacement of the poles by the
comet of the Deluge, concluded that before this catastrophe the planes of
daily rotation and yearly revolution coincided and that, therefore, there had
been no seasons. He also found references to a year consisting of 360 days
only, and although the Greek authors referred the change to the time of Atreus and Thyestes, and the
Romans to the time of Numa, ca. -700, Whiston ascribed these changes to the effect of the
Earth’s encounter with the comet of the Deluge. Whiston
thought that the Earth itself was once a comet.
Whiston was chosen by
Isaac Newton to take over his chair of mathematics at Trinity
College in Cambridge
when Newton,
after many years, retired in order to dedicate himself to the duties of the
president of the Royal Society. Whiston, like Newton, was a
Unitarian. He was also close to being a fundamentalist. He was certain that
only one global catastrophe was described in the Scripture—that of the
Deluge. Of the phenomenon described in the book of Joshua, he wrote: “The
Scripture did not intend to teach men philosophy, or accomodate
itself to the true and Pythagoric system of the
world.”
It is difficult to say what caused Newton, who selected Whiston as his successor, to oppose Whiston’s
election to the membership of the Royal Society. We have another similar
instance a century later, when Sir Humphry Davy,
the mentor of Michael Faraday, conducted a strenuous campaign to keep Faraday
from being admitted to the Royal Society, of which Davy was president.
But the very idea of a periodicity of comets,
gleaned by Whiston from Halley, was not yet
accepted. In 1744 a German author wrote: “It is well known that Whiston and others like him who wish to predict the
comings and goings of comets, deceive themselves, and have become an object
of ridicule by the entire world.”
Still later Whiston
was ridiculed by Georges Cuvier, himself a
proponent of a catastrophist theory:
Whiston fancied that the
earth was created from the atmosphere of one comet, and that it was deluged
by the tail of another. The heat which remained from its first origin, in his
opinion, excited the whole antediluvian population, men and animals, to sin,
for which they were all drowned in the deluge, excepting the fish, whose
passions were apparently less violent.”
Deluge & Comet
The idea that a comet heralded the Deluge was
not new with William Whiston: it is found in
several earlier authors, the so-called cometographers
and chronologists of the seventeenth century. But they only described the
appearance of the comet at the time of the Deluge as a matter of fact, and
did not deduce any theory from it. No causal relation was seen: it was more
in the nature of a coincidence. New in Whiston was
the identification of the comet of 1680 as the comet of the Deluge, and the perturbatory effects on the position and motion of our
planet, ascribed by him to the activities of the comet; finally, his general
theory that the Earth itself was once a comet.
The author whom Whiston
names as his source was J. Hevelius, whose Cometographia was
published in 1668. Apparently Whiston did not go
further back to the sources of Hevelius: to Abraham
Rockenbach (15 -16 ), Seth
Calvisius (1556-1615), Henricus
Ecstormius, Christopher Helvicus
(1581-1617) and David Herlicius (1557-1636).
Abraham Rockenbach was a scholar of the late
Renaissance, a man of broad interests, already evident from that fact that he
occupied both, the chair of Greek and of Mathematics at the University of Frankfurt,
and later taught law and became Dean of the Philosophical College
at that University. In 1602 he published a short treatise in Latin, De cometis tractatus novus methodicus, and in it
he had the following entry concerning the Deluge:
In the year of the creation of the world
1656, after Noah had attained the age of 600 years, three days before the
death of Methusalem, a comet appeared in the
constellation Pisces, was seen by the entire world as it traversed the twelve
signs of the zodiac in the space of a month; on the sixteenth of April it
again disappeared. After this the Deluge immediately followed, in which all
creatures which live on earth and creep on the ground were drowned, with the
exception of Noah and the rest of the creatures that had gone with him into
the ark. About these things is written in Genesis, chapter 7.
Rockenbach lived and wrote
nearly a hundred years before Whiston. What were Rockenbach’s sources? He did not let us know. He referred
to them at the beginning of his treatise, claiming that it was based on
information ex probatissimis & antiquissimis veterum scriptoribus—"from the most trustworthy and the
most ancient of the early writers.” We have already had occasion to quote
from Rockenbach in connection with the comet that
shone during the Exodus. There he refers only to Pliny, although he probably
used other sources besides: Lydus, Servius, Hephaestion, and Junctinus wrote about comets, and Servius
mentions also the writings of Campester and Petosiris.
Although we may never be certain of the
sources on which Abraham Rockenbach and other cometographers drew in mentioning a comet in connection
with the Deluge, the great medieval rabbinical authority Rashi
was probably among them. Rashi wrote concerning Khima, a celestial body mentioned in Job
9:9 and 38:31, and in Amos 5:8, that it is “a star with a tail,” or a comet.
In the Talmud, Khima is associated with the Deluge,
and this seems to have been the source of the cometographers’
assertion that a comet appeared in conjunction with that event.
The question now is,
what was Khima, and what was its role in the
Deluge? Was it really a comet as Rashi thought?
Khima
In the Tractate Brakhot
of the Babylonian Talmud it is said that the Deluge was caused by two
stars that fell from Khima toward the earth. The
statement reads:
When the Holy One . . . wanted to bring a
flood upon the world, He took two stars from Khima
and brought a flood upon the world.
I have already mentioned that Rashi, the medieval exegete whose authority is
unsurpassed among the rabbis, says that in the quoted sentence Khima means a star with a tail, or a comet. This
explanation found its way into the works of several gentile theologians.
Should it be understood so that two large meteorites fell from a comet and
falling on Earth caused tidal waves? Instances when meteorites fell while a
comet was glowing in the sky are known, and the classic case is found in
Aristotle. Should a meteorite equal in mass to the one which by its impact
formed the Arizona crater fall into the ocean, tidal waves of a wide spread
would result, possibly circling the globe. Then are we to understand the
Deluge as a huge tidal wave rushing across the continents? This picture
differs widely from the story in Genesis, according to which water was
falling for a long period from the sky and the waters of the depths rose,
covering the surface of the earth.
The Tractate Brakhot
so explicitly points to the cause of the Deluge that before classifying the
narrative in Genesis in its entirety as folkloristic imagery (which in part
it most certainly is), and also before following Rashi’s
idea any further, we ought to inquire: Which celestial body is Khima? Is it correctly explained as a comet?
In the Old Testament Khima
is mentioned in several instances. In Job, Chapter 9, the Lord is He who
“removes the mountains . . . and overturns them . . . and shakes the earth
out of her place . . . which commands the sun and it rises not . . . which
alone spreads the heaven . . . which makes Aish and
Kesil, and Khima, and the
chambers of the south . . . .” In the King James Version these names are
translated as Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades.
Chambers of the South are usually explained as constellations of the south.
Khima and Kesil are also named in Job, chapter 38, here again in a
text that deals with the violent acts to which the Earth was once subjected:
“. . . Who shut up the sea with doors [barriers], when it brake
forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? . . . [Who] might take hold of
the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? . . .” The
Lord asks Job: “Canst thou bind the chains [fetters] of Khima
and loosen the reins of Kesil? Canst thou lead
forth the Mazzaroth in its season? . . .” Davidson and
Lanchester wonder at the meaning of this passage:
like the King James Version they translate Pleiades for Khima
and Orion for Kesil. Mazzaroth
is left untranslated.
In Amos, chapter 5, once more, Khima and Kesil are mentioned
in a verse that reveals the great acts of the Lord who “makes Khima and Kesil, and turns the
shadow of death into morning, and makes the day dark with night: that calls
for the waters of the sea, and pours them upon the face of the earth. . . .”
Hieronymus, also known as St. Jerome, the
fourth century author of the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Old
Testament, translates Khima as Arcturus
in one instance (Amos 5), as Pleiades in another (Job 38), and as Hyades in the third (Job 9):
KHIMA KESIL AISH ____________________________________________________________ Job 9:9 Hyades Orion Arcturus ____________________________________________________________ Job 38:31 Pleiades Arcturus ____________________________________________________________ Amos 5:8 Arcturus Orion
Similarly Kesil was translated by the Septuagint, the Greek
version of the Old Testament that dates back to third century before the
present era, as Hesperus, or the Evening Star, and in another instance as
Orion. Aish, translated as Arcturus
in the Vulgate, is rendered as Pleiades by the Septuagint:
KHIMA KESIL AISH ____________________________________________________________ Job 9:9 Arcturus Hesperus Pleiades ____________________________________________________________ Job 38:31 Pleiades Orion ____________________________________________________________ Amos 5:8 not given not given
Obviously the
true meaning of these names was lost, because one and the same authority in
various instances used different star constellations or planets for each of
them: Kesil, Khima, Mazzaroth, Aish.
Later interpreters groped in the dark; so Calmet,
the eminent French commentator and exegete of the early eighteenth century
translated Khima as Great Bear. Others rendered it
as Sirius (Canis Major).
The interpreters
were especially intrigued by the description in Job 38. The Lord asks Job whether
he can bind the chains of Khima or loosen the reins
of Kesil. “The word in the second clause is from a
root always meaning to draw . . .” Which star is in chains? And which
star is drawn by reins, as if by horses?
The identities of
Khima and Kesil, Aish and Mazzaroth, were of
lesser importance when it amounted to finding their meaning for their own
sake in the poetical sentences of Amos and Job. But such identification,
especially of Khima, grows in importance if the
quoted sentence from the Tractate Brakhot may
contribute to an understanding of the etiology of
the Deluge, as the ancients knew or thought to know it.
In Worlds in
Collision I have already explained that Mazzaroth
signifies the Morning (Evening) star; the Vulgate has Lucifer for Mazzaroth and the Septuagint reads: “Canst thou bring
forth Mazzaroth in his season and guide the Evening
Star by his long hair?” I have already shown why the Morning-Evening star was
described as having hair or coma, and why Venus did not appear in its
seasons.
Apparently the
other members of the group were planets, too. And actually we could have
started by the disclosure that in the rabbinical literature Khima is referred to as Mazal Khima. In Hebrew mazal
means “planet.” Then which planet is Khima? If
we can find out which of the planets is Khima, then
we may know also to which planet the Talmud assigned the physical cause of
the world inundation. As we have seen, the Biblical texts by themselves do
not contain the means to determine which of the planets Khima
and Kesil are.
“Were it not for
the heat of Kesil the world could not endure the
cold of Khima; and were it not for the cold of Khima, the world could not endure the heat of Kesil.” This sentence is found, too, in the Babylonian
Talmud, in the Tractate Brakhot.
Kesil means in Hebrew
“fool.” From the biblical texts it is not apparent why one of the planets
received this adverse name, or, why, more probably, the word “fool” was
derived from the name of the planet.
In the Iliad
Ares-Mars is called “fool.” Pallas Athena said to him: “Fool, not even yet
hast thou learned how much mightier than thou I avow me to be, that thou matchest thy strength with mine.” These words explain
also why Mars was called fool: it clashed repeatedly with the planet-comet
Venus, much more massive and stronger than itself. To the peoples of the
world this prolonged combat must have appeared either as a very valiant
action on the part of Mars, not resting but coming up again and again to
attack the stupendous Venus, or it must have appeared as a foolish action of
going again and again against the stronger planet. Homer described the
celestial battles as actions of foolishness on the part of Mars. Thus Kesil, or “fool,” among the planets named in the Old
Testament, is most probably Mars.
In Pliny we find
a sentence which reads: “The star Mars has a fiery glow . . . owing to its
excessive heat and Saturn’s frost, Jupiter being situated between them
combines the influence of each and renders it healthy.” The heating effect
ascribed in the Talmud to Kesil is ascribed by
Pliny to Mars, and the cooling effect of Khima to
Saturn. By this sentence of Pliny we are strengthened in our identification
of Kesil as the planet Mars; it corroborates the
conclusion we just made with the help of the Iliad. But what is even
more important, Pliny helps to identify the “planet Khima” : it is Saturn.
Cicero also wrote that
“Saturn has a cooling influence,” whereas Mars “imparts heat.” Porphyry, an
author of the third century, wrote similarly with Pliny and Cicero: “The
power of Kronos [Saturn] they perceive to be
sluggish and slow and cold. The power of Ares [Mars] they perceive to be
fiery.”
Porphyry’s
contemporary Plotinus wrote: “When the cold planet
[Saturn] is in opposition to the warm planet [Mars], both become harmful.”
Other statements to the same effect are found in Vitruvius, and Proclus. In
these sentences, as in those of Pliny and of the Talmud, Mars is regarded as
being a fiery planet, Saturn as being a cold planet.
The passage in
the Book of Job (38:31) can now be read: “Canst thou bind the bonds of Saturn
and loosen the reins of Mars?” The bonds of Saturn can be seen even today
with a small telescope. The reins of Kesil I
discussed in Worlds in Collision, section “The Steeds of Mars.” The
two small moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were known to Homer and are
mentioned by Vergil. They were
regarded by the peoples of antiquity as steeds yoked to Mars’ chariot.
The passage in
the Talmud that makes the planet Khima responsible
for the Deluge means: “Two stars erupted from the planet Saturn and caused
the Deluge.”
Saturnian Comets
Before searching
ancient traditions for any possible association of Saturn with the Deluge,
let us notice that the idea that Saturn may have anything to do with the
origin of some of the comets of the solar system is not without a theoretical
foundation. A group of short-period comets carries the name of “Saturnian family of comets”; they revolve on ellipses
that approach closely the orbit of Saturn. A larger family of short-period
comets carries the name “Jovian” and Jupiter is
regarded as having something to do with their origin: their orbits come close
to the orbit of Jupiter.
The usual
explanation for the Saturnian and Jovian families of comets is that they had originally traveled on extremely elongated or even parabolic orbits
and, passing close to one of the large planets, were changed into
short-period comets, traveling on ellipses—it is
usual to say that they were “captured.” However, the Russian astronomer K. Vshekhsviatsky of the Kiev Observatory, one of the
leading authorities on comets, has brought strong arguments to show that the
comets of the solar system are very youthful bodies—only a few thousand years
old—and that they originated in explosions from the planets, especially from
the major planets Saturn and Jupiter or their moons. By comparing the
observed luminosity of the periodic comets on their subsequent returns, he
found it failing and their masses rapidly diminishing by loss of matter to
the space through which they travel; the head of the comet emits tails on
each passage close to the sun and then dissipates the matter of the tails
without recovery. Thus Vshekhsviatsky concluded that
comets of short duration originated in the solar system, were not captured
from outside of that system—a point to which the majority of astronomers
still adhere—and that they came into existence by explosion from Jupiter and
Saturn, and to a smaller extent by explosion from the smaller planets, like
Venus and Mars.
In order to
originate in this manner from a planet the exploded mass must overcome the
gravitational pull of the parent body; the larger the mass of the planet, the
greater must be the initial velocity of the exploding matter, the velocity of
escape. For this reason the idea of explosion of comets from the planets is
preferred to the idea of their explosion from the sun. Due to the great mass
of the sun the velocity of escape from there must be in the approximation of
xxx kilometers in the first second, and from Saturn
only 35 km. But even these velocities are rather high, so that Professor Vshekhsviatsky acknowledged that there must have been
unusual circumstances which he did not try to determine, but the existence of
which he claimed on the basis of the effects produced, namely the short-lived
comets reaching to the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn every time these comets
recede from the sun to their farthest points (aphelia).
The sentence in
the Tractate Brakhot that ascribes the cause of the
Deluge to the cometary bodies that erupted from the
planet Saturn no longer appears as fantastic as when we first understood the
meaning of Khima in that sentence.
The explosion of cometary bodies from Saturn and Jupiter is claimed on the
basis of purely astronomical observations and calculations; the circumstances
of such explosions must have been admittedly extraordinary; the time when
this happened must be measured in thousands of years, not tens of thousands
or millions. Will we also be able to establish with the help of collective
human memory what were the extraordinary conditions?
But should we not
first, as intended, place ourselves on firmer ground by showing that the
statement in the Tractate Brakhot is not a lone
testimony unsupported in the traditions and beliefs of the ancient races of
the world?
Saturn & the
Deluge
Following the
rabbinical sources which declare that the Deluge was caused by two comets
ejected by the planet Khima, and our interpretation
of the planet Khima as Saturn, we begin to
understand the astrological texts, such as certain passages in the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy, which attribute to
the planet Saturn floods and all catastrophes caused by high water.
The planet’s
presence in Aquarius especially brought expectations of heavy rains and
flooding as is attested, among others, by the first-century Roman author Lucan. Many of the ancient astrologers were in agreement
on this point. In a work entitled Speculum astrologiae,
Junctinus ascribes inundations to the action of
Saturn’s comets. Cuneiform texts contain prophecies of a deluge taking place
when a comet assumes a direction with its head towards the Earth.
Philosophers of
antiquity who were not astrologers also expressed their belief that Saturn is
in some way related to moisture—among them the pre-Socratics Philolaus and Philodemus, and,
somewhat later, Plato. The elder Pliny wrote in his Natural History
that it is well known that heavy rains follow transitions of Saturn. Servius asserted that “Saturn is a god of rains . . . .
When in the sign of Capricorn, he causes very heavy rains, especially in Italy” and
again: “Saturn is the god of all that is humid and cold.” Proclus
recorded the beliefs of the Pythagoreans: “Again, in the heavens, Ares is
fire, Jupiter air, Kronos water.” Nonnos referred to “ancient Kronos,
heavy-kneed, pouring rain.” Hippolytus wrote of the
beliefs of a member of the Peratae sect: “But
water, he says, is destruction; nor did the world,
he says, perish by any other thing quicker than by water. Water, however . .
. they assert (it to be) Cronus.” We recognize that
the astrological connection between Saturn and catastrophes created by high
water has a very ancient origin.
In the Chaldean story of the Deluge, as told by Berossos, Kronos (Saturn)
disclosed to the king Xisuthros that a universal
flood would begin on the 15th of the month Dasios. Abydenos
says: “Kronos announced to Sisithros
that a flood would pour from above.”
The Light Of The
Seven days
Isaiah in
describing the days to come, when great changes in nature will take place,
says that the earth will give its increase in abundance, and “the light of
the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be
sevenfold, as the light of the seven days. . . .”
One could think
that “the light of the seven days” refers to the seven days of
creation—however, the actual explanation appears to me to be different: the
expression “the light of the seven days” refers, in my view, to the seven days
preceding the Flood that are referred to in the verse: “For yet seven days,
and I will cause it to rain upon the earth. . . . And it came to pass after
seven days, that the waters of the Flood were upon
the earth.” (Genesis 7: 4, 10) It is not explained in the text—after seven
days of what? But the rabbinical tradition relates that for seven days before
the Deluge “the people heard a great commotion in the heaven,” that signified
“the end of the age.”
The Talmudic
tradition that often reaches much farther into the past than better known
sources, like the books of the Scriptures, reveals in this instance a memory
not suspected at the reading of the seventh chapter of Genesis. But in view
of what we have brought out until now, and what we intend to illuminate on
the following pages, the blinding light preceding the Deluge by seven days is
an interesting and important detail. The world was in a dazzling light,
sevenfold stronger than the light of the sun; the light was so strong and so
brilliant day and night alike, that the sun was entirely overpowered by it;
and in the days of Isaiah, thousands of years later, the memory of the light
of the seven days was vivid in tradition, so that the prophet could refer to
it in desiring to describe the solar light of the messianic age.
Numerous Sanscrit texts assert that seven or even twelve suns
shone just before the Deluge. “Being ignited, all of a sudden, the entire
terrestrial sphere blazed forth.” Twelve suns shone with “dazzling radiance”
and consumed the world. (The Skanda Purana in Shastri, The
Flood Legend in Sanscrit Literature, p. 86).
Cf. similar accounts in the Matsya Purana, ch. ii, the Padma Purana, ch. xxxvi, the Vishnu Purana,
ch. iii, the Kalika Purana, ch. xxv, and in the
Mahabharata, chapter “Matsyopakhyana.” ].
The light of the
seven days was not of solar origin. Of what origin was it? Was it caused by
brightly illuminated clouds of ionized hydrogen, or protons, hurled
throughout the solar system and poured on earth? In the latter case they
could have arrived from the present distance of Saturn in about a week,
considering that the proton particles—ionized hydrogen—arrive from the sun in
the space of twenty-five hours. This is the time which elapses from a
flare-up on the sun (protuberance) to the display of the polar lights—the
aurora borealis.
The light of the
seven days served the population of the world as a warning of some
extraordinary events.
Nova
From time to
time, once in a decade or once in a century, a dimly shining or invisible
star flares with brilliant light; it may become brighter than any of the
fixed stars, or any of the planets in the sky; it may be seen not only in the
nocturnal sky, but in some cases in full daylight; it burns for weeks or
months, then loses its brilliance, and finally becomes once more a hardly
visible star. Such a blazing star is called a nova. The stella
nova seen in 1572 in the days of Tycho de Brahe belonged actually to the supernova category. De Brahe observed that the nova did not belong to the solar
system but was one of the fixed stars. It was brighter than Jupiter and Venus
and was seen at midday—for months it remained visible to the naked eye.
Another supernova was observed by Johannes Kepler
in 1604. An earlier such event, recorded in the Chinese annals for the year
1054, gave rise to the Crab Nebula. Other observations indicate that a
supernova also occurred in 1006.
Isaac Newton
suggested a collision between two stars as the cause of the formation of a
nova. The prevalent view is that a nova results from the interaction of two
stars in a binary system when the two members disrupt one another on close
approach. In such a case filaments of the disrupted star are torn out of its
body and hurled in great spurts, to be absorbed by the companion star. The
sudden transfer of matter is thought to set off the star’s cataclysmic
explosion
With the
development of spectroscopy in the nineteenth century it was found by the
displacement of the spectral lines that the gases of a nova move rapidly
toward the observer, as also in all other directions; the star’s atmosphere
expands with a velocity reaching at times over three thousand kilometers per second.
While the star’s
outer gases are hurled into space, much of the inner core remains.
“Star Of The Sun”
Saturn is not a
conspicuous planet in the sky. Were it not for its sluggish movement, an
unaided eye would hardly distinguish it from the surrounding stars. In many
ancient sources Saturn is called “sun.” The usual name for Saturn in Chaldean astronomy was Alap-Shamas,
meaning “Star of the Sun.” Diodorus of Sicily
reported that the Chaldeans called Cronos (Saturn) by the name Helios, or the sun, and he
explained that this was because Saturn was the most conspicuous of the
planets; Hyginus also wrote that Saturn was called
“Sol.” In the Babylonian astrological texts the word Shamash (Sun) was used
to designate Saturn: “We learn from the notes written by the astrologers that
by the word ‘sun’ we must understand the ‘star of the sun,’ i.e., Saturn.” Ninib was the Babylonian name for Saturn: “Ninib in various places is said to shine like the sun.”
He was known as UT-GAL-LU, the “great sun of storms.” The Greeks used to call
Saturn Phaenon, “the shining one.”
If Saturn was
always as inconspicuous as it is at present, what could have caused the races
of antiquity, as if by common consent, to give to Saturn the appellative
“sun” or “the shining one” ? “The astrologers
certainly must have found it increasingly contrary to reason to associate the
star that gives us light and life with one of the palest,
and the slowest of the planets.”
The folk
etymology of the Hebrews explained the name Khima
as meaning “about a hundred (ke’me-ah) stars.”
The Bhagavat Gita contains the
following description of a deity: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to
burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one . . . the shatterer
of worlds.”
All that we have
considered up to now indicates that Saturn once exploded in a nova-like burst
of light. The date of this event I would be hard-put to specify, even
approximately, but possibly it took place about ten thousand years ago. The
solar system and reaches beyond it were illuminated by the exploded star, and
in a matter of a week the Earth was enveloped in waters of Saturnian origin.
Arrival Of The
Waters
Following the
“seven days” when the world appeared to be ablaze in “the radiance of a
thousand suns” the Deluge started.
First, according to
the Hindu account, vast clouds gathered which “overshadowed the entire
world.”
“These ominous
clouds . . . rumbling and shooting lightning, overspread the sky.” They were
“as vast as mountains.” “Some were dusky, some crimson, some white, some
brilliant (in hue). Other sources describe them as yellow, or azure, or red.
“Loud in roar and mighty in size they fill the entire sky.” They were
“fringed with lightning, meteors and thunderbolts.” Then, “rumbling aloud
with lightning [they] poured torrential streams thick like chariot wheels.”
They “rained with a sullen roar, inundating the three worlds with ceaseless
downpour of torrents. . . .” “And then there were seen on all sides the four
oceans engulfing with tempestuous waves the whole surface of the earth.” All
creation was “smitten by the luminous dense floods.”
In the beginning
of the deluge the nova in the sky shone through the splendor
of the illuminated skies and through the sheets of rain, ever increasing in
intensity. The Biblical expression “the Lord sitteth upon the flood” was an apt description of the
blazing nova above the waters of the Deluge. It has a Babylonian counterpart
in the title of Tammuz as bel girsu: “lord of the flood.” The nova blazed
terrifically, but soon the light became diffused, the shadows grew ever
dimmer, the world that was all splendor and light
turned gloomier and gloomier; the outpouring waters grew ever thicker; the
clouds of dust darkened ever more the sky, and finally the drama of what was
taking place on earth went on in darkness.
The Deluge was
not a peaceful though abundant rain filling the earth with water, rising ever
higher. Ancient sources give a description of the Deluge that differs greatly
from the pageant of showers pouring from above on a peaceful land and
peaceful sea.
The Deluge In
Rabbinical Sources
During the “seven
days” when the world was flooded by sheets of light, and terrifying signs and
commotion filled the heavens, “the Holy One . . . reversed the order of
nature, the sun rising in the west and setting in the east.”
But during the
Deluge “the sun and the moon shed no light” and for an entire year the
planets did not follow their regular courses. It may be that because of dust
discharged by volcanoes the sky remained veiled for a long period, and this
veil made any celestial orientation impossible for the few survivors; but
quite possibly the statement refers to a change in the celestial orbits. The
rabbinical sources add that the earth was quaking, and the sun was darkened,
and the foundations of the cosmos were dislodged. The entire world was in
volcanic activity; “amidst lightnings and thunders
a very loud sound was heard in the entire world, never heard before.”
The Flood was
caused by waters pouring from above, but also by waters drawn up from the
ground. “All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and all the
windows of heaven were opened.” The waters that came from the sky were
heated. Many passages in the rabbinical literature refer to the heated water.
The rabbinical
literature also refers to great tides and surges of water that covered the
face of the earth. “The flood began to toss the ark from side to side. All
inside of it were shaken up like lentils in a pot.” It is also said that not one, but many arks
or vessels were used as a means of escape, but they were ruined or capsized
one after the other in the surging water. Judged by this, one would think
that there were ample signs of the impending catastrophe, and attempts to
organize rescue by preparing boats or ships, all probably destined to fail.
The Biblical account, in order to explain the survival of the human species
and some land animals, made the ark of Noah the central theme of the story.
There must have been many Noahs, and the Midrashim also say so—but probably none of them escaped
with his boat the outrages of nature. Possibly, in some caves high in the
mountains, in far separated regions of the earth, human beings survived the
Deluge; but hardly any vessel or ark. The attempt to find
the remains of an ark on Mount Ararat are
probably as futile as looking for the ribs of Adam. Yet such attempts are
made even in our time.
The duration of
the flood is described differently—forty days, and also much longer. Like the
former catastrophe of the fall of man, this catastrophe of the Deluge,
according to the Hebrew cosmogony, changed the nature of herb, animal and
man. The prosperity of the time before the great flood was gone, never to
return; the world lay in ruins. The earth was changed; even the sky was not
the same.
The continents
changed their places in the former catastrophes, and once again in the
catastrophe of the Deluge. The areas which are now the shores of the Mediterranean were the shores of an open ocean—or so
one may conclude from the following statement: “Before the birth of Noah, the
sea was in the habit of transgressing its bounds twice daily, morning and
evening. Afterwards it kept within its confines.”
As volcanoes
erupted, the sky was darkened, and the ocean swelled and rolled on a helpless
planet that fluttered when caught in hydrogen clouds of cosmic origin.
Saturn & The
Flood - Part II
2005 - St.Clair
Foundation Online
|
