Attos' Magazine

Volume #91, January/2010

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Immanuel Velikovsky

Worlds In Collision

By Immanuel Velikovsky

Mount Sinai

Along the eastern shore of the Red Sea there stretches a mountainous crest with a number of volcanic craters, at present extinguished; some, however, were active not many centuries ago. One of these volcanoes is usually described as the Mount of the Lawgiving: In the seventies of the last century a scholar, Charles Beke, suggested that Mount Sinai was a volcano in the Arabian Desert, The Book of Deuteronomy (4 : 11) says “the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.” Beke’s idea was rejected by his contemporaries and ultimately by himself. Modern scholars, however, agree with his original theory, and for this reason they look for the Mount of the Lawgiving among the volcanoes of Mount Seir and not on the traditional Sinai Peninsula where there are no volcanoes. Thus the claims of the rival peaks of the Sinai Peninsula for the honor of being the Mount of the Lawgiving are silenced by new contestants.

It is true that it is stated “the mountains melted. . . even that Sinai,” but this melting of summits does not necessarily mean opening up of craters. Rocks turned into a flowing mass.

The plateau of the Sinai Peninsula is covered with formations ot basalt lava; wide stretches of the Arabian Desert also glisten with lava. Lava formations, interspersed with extinguished volcanoes, stretch from the vicinity of Palmyra southward into Arabia as far as Mecca. Only a few thousand years ago the deserts glowed with the beacons of many volcanoes, mountains melted, and lava flowed over the ground from numerous fissures.

The celestial body that the great Architect of nature sent close to the earth, made contact with it in electrical discharges, retreated, and approached again. If we are to believe the Scriptural data, there elapsed seven weeks, or by another computation, about two months from the day of the Exodus to the day of the revelation at Mount Sinai.

“There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. . . . And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke . . . and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.”

The Talmud and Midrashim describe the Mountain of the Lawgiving as quaking so greatly that it appeared as if it were lifted up and shaken above the heads of the people; and the people felt as if they were no longer standing securely on the ground, but were held up by some invisible force. The presence of a heavenly body overhead caused this phenomenon and this feeling.

“Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. . . . He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under his feet. . . . At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hail stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens. . . hail stones and coals of fire. . . . He shot out lightnings. . . . Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered.”

Earth and heaven participated in the cosmic convulsion. In the Fourth Book of Ezra the occurrences witnessed at Mount Sinai are described in these words: “Thou didst bow down the heavens, didst make the earth quake, and convulsed the world. Thou didst cause the deeps to tremble and didst alarm the spheres.”

The approach of a star toward the earth in the days of the revelation at Sinai is implied by the text of the Tractate Shabbat: Although the ancestors of the later proselytes were not present at the Mountain of the Lawgiving, their star was there close by.

An author of the first century of the present era, whose work on biblical antiquities has been ascribed to Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher, thus describes the commotion on the earth below and in the sky above: “The mountain [Sinai] burned with fire and the earth shook and the hills were removed and the mountains overthrown; the depths boiled, and all the inhabitable places were shaken. . . and flames of fire shone forth and thunderings and lightnings were multiplied, and winds and tempests made a roaring: the stars were gathered together [collided].” Referring to the verse, “He bowed heavens also, and came down” (Psalms 18), Pseudo-Philo describes the events of Mount Sinai and says that the Lord “impeded the course of the stars.” “The earth was stirred from her foundation and the mountains and the rocks trembled in their fastenings, the clouds lifted up their waves against the flame of the fire that should not consume the world . . . and all the waves of the sea came together.”

The Hindus depict the cosmic catastrophe at the end of a world age: “The whole world breaks into flames. So also a hundred thousand times ten million worlds. All the peaks of Mount Sineru, those which are hundreds of leagues in height, crumble and disappear in the sky. The flames of fire rise up and envelop the heaven.” The sixth sun or sun age ended. Similarly, in the Jewish tradition, the revelation at Sinai the sixth world age was terminated and the seventh began.

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