In The Beginning
The Early Ages
Part II
VArchive.org
The
Brighter Moon
Many
traditions persist that at some time in the past the Moon was much brighter
than it is now, and larger in appearance than the Sun. In many rabbinical
sources it is stated that the Sun and the Moon were equally bright at first. The same statement was made to de Sahagun
by the aborigines of the New World: “the Sun
and the moon had equal light in the past.” At the other end of the world the
Japanese asserted the same: the Nihongi Chronicle
says that in the past “the radiance of the moon was next to that of the sun
in splendor.”
Traditions of many peoples maintain that the
Moon lost a large part of its light and became much dimmer than it had been
in earlier ages.
In order that the Sun and the Moon should
give off comparable light, the Moon must have had an atmosphere with a high albedo (refracting power) or it must
have been much closer to the earth. In the latter case the Moon would have
appeared larger than the Sun. In fact, the Babylonian astronomers computed
the visible diameter of the Sun as only two-thirds of the visible diameter of
the Moon, which makes a relation of four to nine for the illuminating
surfaces. This measure surprised modern scholars, who are aware of the
exactness of the measurements made by the Babylonian astronomers and who
reason that during the eclipses one can easily observe the approximate
equality of the visible disks.
The
Worship Of The Moon
Because of its size and also because of the
events which accompanied the first appearance of the Moon, many ancient peoples
regarded the Moon as the chief of the two luminaries. “The sun was of smaller
importance than the moon in the eyes of the Babylonian astrologers.”
The Assyrians and the Chaldeans
referred to the time of the Moon-god as the oldest period in the memory of
the people: before other planetary gods came to dominate the world ages, the
Moon was the supreme deity. Such references are found in the inscriptions of
Sargon II (ca. -720) and Nabonidus
(ca. -550). The Babylonian Sin—the Moon—was a very ancient deity:
Mount Sinai owes its name to Sin.
The Moon, appearing as a body larger than the
Sun, was endowed by the imagination of the peoples with a masculine role,
while the Sun was assigned a feminine role. Many languages reserved a
masculine name for the Moon. It was probably when the Moon was removed to a
greater distance from the earth and became smaller to observers on the earth,
that another name, usually feminine, came to designate the Moon in most
languages.
The
Pre-Adamite Age
An ancient tradition ascribed the
establishment of Moon worship to Adam, the first man. The medieval Arab
scholar Abubacer wrote:
They [the Sabaeans]
say that Adam was born from male and female, just like the rest of mankind,
but they honored him greatly, and said that he had come
from the Moon, that he was the prophet and apostle of the Moon, and that he
had exhorted the nations that they should serve the Moon. . . . They also
related about Adam that when he had left the Moon and proceeded from the area
of India towards Babylonia, that he brought many wonders with him.
The Adamites, the
ante-diluvial men, were most probably not the first
human beings on the planet. Even admitting that by “expulsion from the Garden
of Eden” is allegorized a catastrophe which quite destroyed mankind prior to
the Deluge, it is impossible to declare that it was the first catastrophe. It
depends on the memory of the peoples which catastrophe they consider as the
act of creation. Human beings, rising from some catastrophe, bereft of memory
of what had happened, regarded themselves as created from the dust of the
earth. All knowledge about the ancestors, who they were and in what
interstellar space they lived, was wiped away from the memory of the few
survivors. The talmudic-rabbinical tradition believes
that before Adam was created, the world was more than once inhabited and more
than once destroyed.
It was at the end of the first age,
symbolized by the expulsion of man from the blessed Garden of Eden, that the
moon lost its brightness. It was not just a single human pair—the tradition
ascribes to Adam the invention of seventy languages.
Hebrew mythology assigns to the period
preceding Adam’s expulsion different geophysical and biological conditions.
The sun shone permanently on the Earth, and the Garden of Eden, placed in the
East, was, it must be conceived, under perpetual rays of the Dawn. The earth
was not watered by rain, but mist ascending from the ground condensed as dew
upon the leaves. “The plants looked only to the earth for nourishment.” Man
was of exceedingly great stature: “The dimensions of man’s body were
gigantic.” His appearance was unlike that of later men: “His body was
overlaid with a horny skin.” But a day came and the celestial illumination
ceased: “The sun . . . had grown dark the instant Adam became guilty of
disobedience.” The flames of the ever-turning sword terrified Adam (Genesis
3:24). In another legend it is told that the celestial light shone a little
in the darkness. And then “the celestial light ceased, to the consternation
of Adam.” The illumination of the first period never returned. The sky that
man was used to see never appeared before him again: “The firmament is not
the same as the heavens of the first day.” The “day” of Genesis, as I have
already noted, is said to be equal to a thousand years.
It was after the fall of man, according to
Hebrew tradition, that the sun set for the first time: “The first time Adam
witnessed the sinking of the sun, he was seized with anxious fears. All the
night he spent in tears. When day began to dawn, he understood that what he
had deplored was but the course of nature.” It was also then that the seasons
began. This is told in the following story: “Adam noticed that the days were
growing shorter and feared lest the world be darkened . . . but after the
winter solstice he saw that the days grew longer again.”
The earth also underwent changes:
“Independent before, she was hereafter to wait to be watered by the rain from
above.” The variety of species
diminished. Man, according to Hebrew legends, decreased in size; there was a
“vast difference between his later and his former state—between his
supernatural size then, and his shrunken size now.” He also lost his horny
skin. The whole of nature altered its ways.
Giants
The traditions of peoples all over the world
are quite unanimous in asserting that an an earlier
time a race of giants lived on the earth, that most of the race were
destroyed in great catastrophes; that they were of cruel nature and were
furiously fighting among themselves; that the last of them were exterminated
when after a cataclysm a migration of peoples brought the forebears of the
peoples of today to their new homelands.
The Japanese narrate that when their
forefathers after a great catastrophe about two and a half or three thousand
years ago, came from the continent and invaded the isles, they found there
long-legged, furry giants. These giants were called Ainu. The forefathers of
the Japanese were defeated in the first encounter, but in the second
encounter they were victorious.
Ixtlilxochitl described the
wandering of peoples of the western hemisphere in the four ages of the world.
The first age came to its end in the Flood. In the second age, called “the
sun of the earthquake,” there lived the generation of the giants, which was
destroyed in the cataclysm that terminated this age. The third peiord was “the sun of the wind,” called so because at
the end of this period terrible hurricanes annihilated everything. The new
inhabitants of the new world were Ulme and Xicalauca who came from the east to find a foothold at Potouchan: here they met a number of giants, the last
survivors of the second catastrophe. The fourth age was called “the fire
sun,” because of the great fire that put an end to this epoch. At that time
the Toltecs arrived in the land of Anahuac,
put to flight by the catastrophe: they wandered for 104 years before they
settled in their new home.
Also F. L. Gomara
in his Conquista de Mexico, in the
chapter about “cinco soles que
son edades,” wrote:
The second sun perished when the sky fell
upon the earth; the collapse killed all the people and every living thing;
and they say that giants lived in those days, and that to them belong the
bones that our Spaniards have found while digging mines and tombs. From their
measure and proportion it seems that those men were twenty hands tall—a very
great stature, but quite certain.
The Hebrew scriptures as preserved in the Old
Testament and in the Talmud and Midrashim, narrate that among the races of the world in a previous
age were races of giants, “men of great size and tremendous strength and
ferocity,” who were destroying other races, but also were turning upon each
other and destroying themselves.
The Book of Genesis (6: 4) narrates that in
the antediluvial time “there were giants in the
earth in those days.” The Greek Book of Baruch narrates that over four
hundred thousand of the race of giants were destroyed by the Flood. After the
Flood there were only a few districts where some of them remained alive.
When after a number of centuries another
catastrophe ruined the world and the Israelites left Egypt and sent a few men
to explore Palestine, those reported that the people of the land were
generally of tall stature, and that besides “there we saw the giants, the
sons of Anak, which came of the giants, and we were
in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so were we in their sight.”
This description clearly differentiates
between the people of a tall stature and the giants, and the supposition that
the Israelites found in Palestine
a normal race only taller than themselves, and thought them to be giants, is
not supported by the text.
A similar distinction is made in Deuteronomy
(1: 28): “The people is greater and taller than we . . . and moreover we have
seen the sons of the Anakim [giants] there.” they—a
few families—lived in Hebron
(Numbers 13: 22).
At the time when the Israelites approached
the fields of Bashan in the Transjordan,
“only Og king of Bashan” remained of the remnant of the
giants (Joshua 13:12 and Deut. 3:11). The other individuals of monstrous size
had been annihilated in the meantime. “Behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of
iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits is the length
thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.” The
text implies that at the time the book of Deuteronomy was written the
bedstead of Og was still in existence and was a
wonder for the onlookers.
The giants were the remnant of a race close
to extinction. Og was “of the remnant of the giants
that dwelt in Ashtaroth and Edrel”
(Joshua 12: 4). They were also called Emim, or the
furious ones. “The Emim dwelt therein [in Moab of the Transjordan]
in times past, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim,
which also were accounted giants, as the Anakim;
but Moab
calls them Emim” ( ). This branch of the giants was
already extinct; but two cosmic ages earlier, in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, and
Abraham the Patriarch, Eimim flourished in the Transjordan (Genesis 14: 5).
Nefilim
The present state of the Moon and of Mars and
other celestial bodies does not imply that in the past they were equally
desolate. Concerning Mars and Moon we have the testimony of our ancestors,
supported by modern observations, that these bodies were engaged in
near-collisions only a few thousand years ago. It is not excluded that under
conditions prevailing on their surfaces prior to these events, life could
have developed there or elsewhere in the solar system to an advanced stage.
Working in the early 1940’s on Worlds in
Collision, which in its original form covered also the cataclysmic events
preceding the Exodus, I wondered at a certain description that sounded like a
visit from space.
The sixth chapter of the book of Genesis
starts this way:
And it came to pass, when men began to
multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that
the sons of God [bnei Elim]
saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all
which they chose.
The story told in Genesis VI about the sons
of God (bnei Elim) coming
to the daughters of men is usually explained as referring to an advanced
priesthood that mingled with backward tribesmen. When Columbus
discovered America,
the natives, according to the diary of his first voyage, regarded him and his
crew as having arrived from the sky. A similar occurrence could have taken
place in prediluvial times, when some invaders from
a remote part of the world came and were regarded as “sons of God.”
But if we are today on the eve of
interplanetary travel, we must not declare as absolutely impossible the
thought that this Earth was visited, ages ago, by some people from another
planet. Or was this earth alone populated by intelligent beings? In my
understanding this passage from the book of Genesis is a literary relic
dealing with a visit of intelligent beings from another planet.
It appears that the extraterrestrial visitors
made their landing as if in advance knowledge of the impending catastrophe of
the Deluge. It could be that Jupiter and Saturn were approaching each other
ever closer on their orbits and that a disruption of one of them was
expected.
Possibly many centuries, or even millennia,
passed between the landing and the Deluge. The mission could have been
undertaken to ascertain the conditions on Earth. If it was an escape it could
also have been from another catastrophe in the solar system, one of those
that preceded the Deluge, like the one described as the dethronement and
emasculation of Uranus by Kronos. If the ancient
legends of a battle between the gods and titans, so persistent in the Greek
world, but also in the mythologies of other civilizations, have any
historical value, we may try to find what may have been the substratum of
this fantasy. It seems that following great convulsions of nature observable
in the celestial sphere, giant bodies were hurled on the earth. They arrived
burned and were crushed by impact. But at least one group
of escapees suceeded in
safely reaching the earth. They descended on Mount Hermon or Anti-Lebanon. Of the extra-biblical traditions dealing with the subject
some reach hoary antiquity, antecedent to the composition of the Biblical
texts. The Book of Enoch narrates that the group was composed of males only,
two hundred in number, under the leadership of one by the name of Shemhazai. The Aggadic
literature says that the “sons of God” tried to return to heaven from where
they had come, but could not.
The new arrivals were probably of gigantic
stature—their progeny with women of the earth were giants:
The Nephilim were
on earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to
the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty
men that were of old, the men of renown.
Having fathered giants, they themselves must
have been not of human size.
The planet from which they came I would not
know to determine. El would refer to Saturn. The great size
of the visitors would suggest a smaller body where the gravitational
influence would be less.
Ten thousand years is only an instant in the
life of the cosmos; ten thousand years ago man was only in a rude stone age;
today he contemplates to visit other planets. If such progress is made in a
time as short as this, who knows what secrets are concealed in the past or in
the future?
Astronomical
Knowledge Before The deluge
In the Deluge a civilization was destroyed
the real value of which is incalculable. Hebrew tradition estimates that the
population of the ante-diluvian world “amounted to
millions.” Adam is said to have invented seventy languages; Cain, his son,
built cities and monuments and ruled over kings. They were representatives of
generations. According to Hebrew legends the Deluge and its time had already
been predicted by Enoch, and even more ancient generations were said to have
erected tablets with calendric and astronomical
calculations predicting the catastrophe. This might have been the knowledge
of months, of years, and of the periods of comets that the remote generations
had acquired.
It was in the celestial harmony and
disharmony that the secrets of the upheavals were conceived to lie. The
science about the times in which calamity could return and fall on our Earth was
cultivated among populations that had a vivid remembrance of days of
misfortune or of lucky escape.
It is told about the children of Seth, the
son of Adam, that
they were the
inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly
bodies and their order.
And that their inventions might not be lost
before they were sufficiently known, they made two pillars upon Adam’s
prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of
fire and at another time by the violence and quantity of water.
The one was of brick, the other of stone, and
they inscribed their discoveries on both, that in case the pillar of brick
should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and
exhibit these discoveries to mankind and also inform them that there was
another pillar, of brick, erected by them.
This means that stelae
with calendric and astronomical calculations were
made public knowledge in that early age. According to the Aggada
it was the pious Enoch (the seventh generation) who achieved the deepest
knowledge of the celestial secret. He was the man who “walked with God: and
he was not; for God took him.” In this ascension to heaven was taken away the
man who more than any other knew the plan of the world and of its creation.
Enoch was a great man of his generation.
Kings and princes, not less than one hundred
and thirty in number, assembled about him, and submitted themselves to his
dominion, to be taught and guided by him. Peace reigned thus over the whole
world for all the two hundred and forty three years during which the
influence of Enoch prevailed.
In the story of Enoch’s ascension it is said
that he predicted the disaster.
Enoch was carried into the heavens in a fiery
chariot drawn by fiery chargers. The day thereafter the kings who had turned
back in good time sent messengers to inquire into the fate of the men who had
refused to separate themselves from Enoch, for they had noted the number of
them. They found snow and great hailstones upon the spot whence Enoch had
risen, and, when they searched beneath, they discovered the bodies of all who
had remained behind with Enoch; he alone was not among them: he was high in
heaven.
What the Aggada
means to tell is that a human being—and one gifted with the greatest “wisdom
concerning the heavenly bodies and their order,” was brought away in a fiery
storm which killed many, brought snow and meteorites, and which had been
predicted by the one who disappeared.
Some exact knowledge of the revolution of the
bodies in the sky is ascribed here to the antediluvian generations.
Saturn & The
Flood - Part I
2005 - St.Clair
Foundation Online
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