Scientia Press

Based on his interpretation of ancient sources, Immanuel Velikovsky argued famously that Venus had emerged from Jupiter as a comet; interacted with the Earth and Mars in the second and first millennia BC, causing the Bronze Age catastrophes; and then finally settled into a nearly circular orbit of the Sun.

Three lines of reasoning support a Revised Venus Theory.

First, instead of the various unpersuasive suggestions that Velikovsky and others have made for how a cometary Venus could have emerged from Jupiter, we should consider the possible consequences of the immense gravitational field of Jupiter, which pulls toward it a stream of asteroids and comets, as with Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994.

Once a leading theory of the origin of the Earth-Moon system, the Capture Theory is simple and intuitively plausible.  The numerous instances of moons with retrograde orbits show that capture is fairly common.  The lunar orbit’s three moments of inertia are consistent with a past very eccentric orbit, suggestive of capture1.  However, the Moon would have to come from a different part of the solar system to account for its very depleted iron compared to the Earth’s iron, which means that it would approach the Earth at a high velocity that would prevent capture.  Researchers have searched in vain for a braking mechanism that would slow it down so it could be captured.  Still, the accumulated evidence and arguments make the Capture Theory a viable one.

But

There’s no shortage of candidates for the cause of the mass extinctions of prehistory. But experts have found flaws in every one.

There are good reasons to think that Earth and Mars originally formed a single planet outside the orbit of Jupiter.  Early in Solar System history, Jupiter’s powerful gravitational field pulled this planet past the gas giant.  As the planet neared Jupiter, tidal friction heated it to the melting point, and Jupiter tore Mars away from Earth, leaving the Pacific Basin and an array of evidence on both planets.  Earth and Mars then sped off into the inner solar system.

How Do We Know This?

The famous Snake Goddess of ancient Crete has long attracted students of history and art. Elegant, risquée, enigmatic, she embodies the mystery and allure of Minoan civilization.

411-meter long Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is the world’s longest effigy monument.  Archaeological investigations have yielded conflicting results about its initial construction date, and various theories regarding its meaning have failed to gain traction.  But a Revised Venus Theory–one that modifies Immanuel Velikovsky’s theory that the planet Venus was originally a comet that approached the Earth and caused great devastation–neatly matches key characteristics of the Great Serpent Mound.

Recently, this Revised Venus Theory has gained additional credibility from a commonsensical explanation of how a comet-like Venus could have seemed to emerge from Jupiter as in ancient Hindu and Greek myths (Jupiter’s gravity pulled it from the outer solar system), including a simple, obvious reinterpretation of the Metis myth.  Much new evidence has also emerged.  And the theory has found powerful substantiation from a reinterpretation of the headdress of Queen Nefertari of Egypt, consort of Pharaoh Ramses II, in this image from Abu Simbel (Ramses II’s headdress appears to contain Mars with two moons and a tail, either borrowed from Venus in an encounter or from Martian dust stirred up by an encounter).

When Venus first appeared in the skies around 2525 BC, ancient peoples worldwide strove to come to terms with this brilliant and awesome new comet-planet (the best account is in Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, though it has been corrected in a Revised Venus Theory).  That meant assigning the deity a gender and a name.

In the Near East, they tried both genders.  In its masculine incarnation, Venus became the Bull of Heaven (as Velikovsky pointed out, the comet-planet’s body blocked the sun’s rays from the central portion of its tail and thus it was seen as having two horns).  In its feminine version, Venus was called Ishtar or Astarte; and in the Levant Astarte was depicted with serpents in her hands—the twin tails of the comet.

In Greece, according to Velikovsky, planet Venus was originally named Athena.

New evidence and interpretation at the intersection of planetary science and religion can help us better understand the history of the Ancient Near East and of the origins of Islam.

A Revised Venus Theory corrects Immanuel Velikovsky’s original theory that the planet Venus first entered the inner solar system as a comet with a bifurcated tail around 1500 BC (new evidence indicates around 2525 BC).  Now we have a much better explanation of the origin of Venus (rather than fissioning off of Jupiter, it was pulled from the outer solar system by Jupiter’s gravity and, via tidal heating, became a comet with a long tail).  Venus interacted with the Earth on a 52-year cycle during the Late Bronze Age, causing catastrophes worldwide.  And we now have a framework theory of the terrestrial planets into which these phenomena neatly fit and for which there is telling evidence.  For Comet Venus, there is also newly interpreted, compelling iconographic and linguistic evidence.  The names of both Athena (A Fena, the Phoenician) and Poseidon (Bos eidon, the Bull of Heaven), for instance, referred to the double-tailed Venus.

So with new-found confidence that the Ancients and Velikovsky were right about Venus, we can ask how can we use this to decipher aspects of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of the background of Islam.

If we can interpret certain ancient myths correctly, they could lead us to more accurate and penetrating views of the history of the Earth and the solar system.  They might teach us about the forces at work and explain anomalies bequeathed to us by a long-hidden past.  But how can we interpret these myths, the products of minds so far removed from ours?  How do we know which interpretation is correct, if any?  Are we doomed to speculate without ever achieving certainty?

Here we will interpret two Bronze Age myths to illustrate the high scientific value such myths might contain.  We will also see how easy it can be to understand a myth once the right interpretation becomes available.

In his Worlds in Collision (New York:  Macmillan, 1950), Immanuel Velikovsky argued that Venus emerged as a red-hot comet from Jupiter and passed Earth every 52 years, causing the Bronze Age catastrophes, before settling into its current orbit.  His claim set off a controversy in which his theory was rejected and stigmatized.  But over the years, new findings have changed the picture.  Here are eight new reasons to accept a Revised Venus Theory.

Worlds in Collision (1950) and Earth in Upheaval (1955) set forth the evidence and arguments for Immanuel Velikovsky’s pioneering, controversial theory that Venus emerged from Jupiter as a comet and repeatedly approached Earth, causing the Bronze Age catastrophes.  Kenneth J. Dillon and Stephen J. Dillon discuss these books and the Scientific Rejectionism that stigmatized Velikovsky, thwarting a full, balanced assessment of his theories ever since.  See also https://www.scientiapress.com/revised-venus-theory.

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