TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Foreword

  1

  1

  The Host of Heaven

  3

  2

  It Came from Outer Space

  23

  3

  In the Beginning

  40

  4

  The Messengers of Genesis

  62

  5

  Gaia: The Cleaved Planet

  89

  6

  Witness to Genesis

  108

  7

  The Seed of Life

  133

  8

  The Adam: A Slave Made to Order

  157

  9

  The Mother Called Eve

  183

  10

  When Wisdom Was Lowered from Heaven

  203

  11

  A Space Base on Mars

  228

  12

  Phobos: Malfunction or Star Wars

  268

  13

  In Secret Anticipation

  296

  Index

  331

  FOREWORD

  The last decades of the twentieth century have witnessed an

  upsurge of human knowledge that boggles the mind. Our ad-

  vances in every field of science and technology are no longer

  measured in centuries or even decades but in years and even

  months, and they seem to surpass in attainments and scope

  anything that Man has achieved in the past.

  But is it possible that Mankind has come out of the Dark

  Ages and the Middle Ages; reached the Age of Enlightenment;

  experienced the Industrial Revolution; and entered the era of

  high-tech, genetic engineering, and space flight—only to catch

  up with ancient knowledge?

  For many generations the Bible and its teachings have served

  as an anchor for a searching Mankind, but modern science

  appeared to have cast us ail adrift, especially in the confron-

  tation between Evolution and Creationism. In this volume it

  will be shown that the conflict is baseless; that the Book of

  Genesis and its sources reflect the highest levels of scientific

  knowledge.

  Is it possible, then, that what our civilization is discovering

  today about our planet Earth and about our corner of the uni-

  verse, the heavens, is only a drama that can be called "Genesis

  Revisited"—only a rediscovery of what had been known to a

  much earlier civilization, on Earth and on another planet?

  The question is not one of mere scientific curiosity; it goes

  to the core of Mankind's existence, its origin, and its destiny.

  It involves the Earth's future as a viable planet because it

  concerns events in Earth's past; it deals with where we are

  going because it reveals where we have come from. And the

  answers, as we shall see, lead to inevitable conclusions that

  some consider too incredible to accept and others too awesome

  to face.

  1

  1

  The Host of Heaven

  In the beginning

  God created the Heaven and the Earth.

  The very concept of a beginning of all things is basic to modern

  astronomy and astrophysics. The statement that there was a

  void and chaos before there was order conforms to the very

  latest theories that chaos, not permanent stability, rules the

  universe. And then there is the statement about the bolt of light

  that began the process of creation.

  Was this a reference to the Big Bang, the theory according

  to which the universe was created from a primordial explosion,

  a burst of energy in the form of light, that sent the matter from

  which stars and planets and rocks and human beings are formed

  flying in all directions and creating the wonders we see in the

  heavens and on Earth? Some scientists, inspired by the insights

  of our most inspiring source, have thought so. But then, how

  did ancient Man know the Big Bang theory so long ago? Or

  was this biblical tale the description of matters closer to home,

  of how our own little planet Earth and the heavenly zone called

  the Firmament, or "hammered-out bracelet," were formed?

  Indeed, how did ancient Man come to have a cosmogony at

  all? How much did he really know, and how did he know it?

  It is only appropriate that we begin the quest for answers

  where the events began to unfold—in the heavens; where also,

  from time immemorial, Man has felt that his origins, higher

  values—God, if you will—are to be found. As thrilling as

  discoveries made by the use of microscopes are, it is what

  telescopes enable us to see that fills us with the realization of

  the grandeur of nature and the universe. Of all recent advances,

  the most impressive have undoubtedly been the discoveries in

  the heavens surrounding our planet. And what staggering ad-

  3

  4

  GENESIS REVISITED

  Figure I

  vances they have been! In a mere few decades we Earthlings

  have soared off the face of our planet; roamed Earth's skies

  hundreds of miles above its surface; landed on its solitary

  satellite, the Moon; and sent an array of unmanned spacecraft

  to probe our celestial neighbors, discovering vibrant and active

  worlds dazzling in their colors, features, makeup, satellites,

  rings. For the first time, perhaps, we can grasp the meaning

  and feel the scope of the Psalmist's words:

  The heavens bespeak the glory of the Lord

  and the vault of heaven reveals His handiwork.

  A fantastic era of planetary exploration came to a magnificent

  climax when, in August 1989, the unmanned spacecraft des-

  ignated Voyager 2 flew by distant Neptune and sent back to

  Earth pictures and other data. Weighing just about a ton but

  ingeniously packed with television cameras, sensing and meas-

  uring equipment, a power source based on nuclear decay, trans-

  mitting antennas, and tiny computers (Fig. 1), it sent back

  whisperlike pulses that required more than four hours to reach

  Earth even at the speed of light. On Earth the pulses were

  captured by an array of radiotelescopes that form the Deep

  Space Network of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space

  Administration (NASA); then the faint signals were translated

  by electronic wizardry into photographs, charts, and other

  forms of data at the sophisticated facilities of the Jet Propulsion

  The Host of Heaven

  5

  Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which managed the

  project for NASA.

  Launched in August 1977, twelve years before this final

  mission—the visit to Neptune—was accomplished. Voyager

  2 and its companion. Voyager I, were originally intended to

  reach and scan only Jupiter and Saturn and augment data ob-

  tained earlier about those two gaseous giants by the Pioneer

  10 and Pioneer 11 unmanned spacecraft. But with remarkable

  ingenuity and skill, the JPL scientists and technicians took

  advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets and, using

  the gravitational forces of these planets as "slingshots," man-

  aged to thrust Voyager 2 first from Saturn to Uranus and then

  from Uranus to Neptune (Fig. 2).

  Figure 2

  Thus it was that for several days at the end of August 1989,

  headlines concerning another world pushed aside the usual

  news of armed conflicts, political upheavals, sports results,

  and market reports that make up Mankind's daily fare. For a

  few days the world we call Earth took time out to watch another

  world; we, Earthlings, were glued to our television sets, thrilled

  by closeup pictures of another planet, the one we call Neptune.

  6

  GENESIS REVISITED

  As the dazzling images of an aquamarine globe appeared on

  our television screens, the commentators stressed repeatedly

  that this was the first time that Man on Earth had ever really

  been able to see this planet, which even with the best Earth-

  based telescopes is visible only as a dimly lit spot in the dark-

  ness of space almost three billion miles from us. They reminded

  the viewers that Neptune was discovered only in 1846, after

  perturbations in the orbit of the somewhat nearer planet Uranus

  indicated the existence of another celestial body beyond it.

  They reminded us that no one before that—neither Sir Isaac

  Newton nor Johannes Kepler, who between them discovered

  and laid down the laws of celestial motion in the seventeenth

  and eighteenth centuries; neither Copernicus, who in the six-

  teenth century determined that the Sun, not the Earth, was in

  the center of our planetary system, nor Galileo, who a century

  later used a telescope to announce that Jupiter had four

  moons—no great astronomer until the mid-nineteenth century

  and certainly no one in earlier times knew of Neptune. And

  thus not only the average TV viewer but the astronomers them-

  selves were about to see what had been unseen before—it

  would be the first time we would learn the true hues and makeup

  of Neptune.

  But two months before the August encounter, I had written

  an article for a number of U. S., European, and South American

  monthlies contradicting these long-held notions: Neptune was

  known in antiquity, I wrote; and the discoveries that were about

  to be made would only confirm ancient knowledge. Neptune,

  I predicted, would be blue-green, watery, and have patches

  the color of "swamplike vegetation"!

  The electronic signals from Voyager 2 confirmed all that

  and more. They revealed a beautiful blue-green, aquamarine

  planet embraced by an atmosphere of helium, hydrogen, and

  methane gases, swept by swirling, high-velocity winds that

  make Earth's hurricanes look timid. Below this atmosphere

  there appear mysterious giant "smudges" whose coloration is

  sometimes darker blue and sometimes greenish yellow, perhaps

  depending on the angle at which sunlight strikes them. As

  expected, the atmospheric and surface temperatures are below

  freezing, but unexpectedly Neptune was found to emit heat

  that emanates from within the planet. Contrary to the previous

  The Host of Heaven

  7

  consideration of Neptune as being a "gaseous" planet, it was

  determined by Voyager 2 to have a rocky core above which

  there floats, in the words of the JPL scientists, "a slurry mixture

  of water ice." This watery layer, circling the rocky core as

  the planet revolves in its sixteen-hour day, acts as a dynamo

  that creates a sizable magnetic field.

  This beautiful planet (see Neptune, back cover) was found to

  be encircled by several rings made up of boulders, rocks, and

  dust and is orbited by at least eight satellites, or moons. Of

  the latter, the largest, Triton, proved no less spectacular than

  its planetary master. Voyager 2 confirmed the retrograde mo-

  tion of this small celestial body (almost the size of Earth's

  Moon): it orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to that of the

  coursing of Neptune and all other known planets in our Solar

  System, not anticlockwise as they do but clockwise. Besides

  its very existence, its approximate size, and its retrograde mo-

  tion, astronomers knew nothing else of Triton. Voyager 2 re-

  vealed it to be a "blue moon," an appearance resulting from

  methane in Triton's atmosphere. The surface of Triton showed

  through the thin atmosphere—a pinkish gray surface with rug-

  ged, mountainous features on one side and smooth, almost

  craterless features on the other side. Close-up pictures sug-

  gested recent volcanic activity but of a very odd kind: what

  the active, hot interior of this celestial body spews out is not

  molten lava but jets of slushy ice. Even preliminary assess-

  ments indicated that Triton had flowing water in its past, quite

  possibly even lakes that may have existed on the surface until

  relatively recent times, in geological terms. The astronomers

  had no immediate explanation for "double-tracked ridge lines"

  that run straight for hundreds of miles and, at one or even two

  points, intersect at what appears to be right angles, suggesting

  rectangular areas (Fig. 3).

  The discoveries thus fully confirmed my prediction: Neptune

  is indeed blue-green; it is made up in great part of water; and

  it does have patches whose coloration looks like "swamplike

  vegetation." This last tantalizing aspect may bespeak more

  than a color code if the full implication of the discoveries on

  Triton is taken into consideration: there, "darker patches with

  brighter halos" have suggested to the scientists of NASA the

  existence of "deep pools of organic sludge." Bob Davis re-

  8

  GENESIS REVISITED

  Figure 3

  The Host of Heaven

  9

  ported from Pasadena to The Wall Street Journal that Triton,

  whose atmosphere contains as much nitrogen as Earth's, may

  be spewing out from its active volcanoes not only gases and

  water ice but also '"organic material, carbon-based compounds

  which apparently coat parts of Triton."

  Such gratifying and overwhelming corroboration of my pre-

  diction was not the result of a mere lucky guess. It goes back

  to 1976 when The 12th Planet, my first book in The Earth

  Chronicles series, was published. Basing my conclusions on

  millennia-old Sumerian texts, I had asked rhetorically: "When

  we probe Neptune someday, will we discover that its persistent

  association with waters is due to the watery swamps" that had

  once been seen there?

  This was published, and obviously written, a year before

  Voyager 2 was even launched and was restated by me in an

  article two months before the Neptune encounter.

  How could I be so sure, on the eve of Voyager's encounter

  with Neptune, that my 1976 prediction would be corrobo-

  rated—how dared I take the chance that my predictions would

  be disproved within weeks after submitting my article? My

  certainty was based on what happened in January 1986, when

  Voyager 2 flew by the planet Uranus.

  Although somewhat closer to us—Uranus is "only" about

  two billion miles away—it lies so far beyond Saturn that it

  cannot be seen from Earth with the naked eye. It was discovered

  in 1781 by Frederick Wilhelm Herschel, a musician turned

  amateur astronomer, only after the telescope was perfected.

  At the time of its discovery and to this day, Uranus has been

  hailed as the first planet w/iknown in antiquity to be discovered

  in modern times; for, it has been held, the ancient peoples

  knew of and venerated the Sun, the Moon, and only five planets

  (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), which they be-

  lieved moved around the Earth in the "vault of heaven"; noth-

  ing could be seen or known beyond Saturn.

  But the very evidence gathered by Voyager 2 at Uranus

  proved the opposite: that at one time a certain ancient people

  did know about Uranus, and about Neptune, and even about

  the more-distant Pluto!

  Scientists are still analyzing the photographs and data from

  Uranus and its amazing moons, seeking answers to endless

  10

  GENESIS REVISITED

  Plate A

  puzzles. Why does Uranus lie on its side, as though it was hit

  by another large celestial object in a collision? Why do its

  winds blow in a retrograde direction, contrary to what is normal

  in the Solar System? Why is its temperature on the side that

  is hidden from the Sun the same as on the side facing the Sun?

  And what shaped the unusual features and formations on some

  of the Uranian moons? Especially intriguing is the moon called

  Miranda, "one of the most enigmatic objects in the Solar Sys-

  The Host of Heaven

  11

  Figure 4

  tern," in the words of NASA's astronomers, where an elevated,

  flattened-out plateau is delineated by 100-mile-long escarp-

  ments that form a right angle (a feature nicknamed "the Chev-

  ron" by the astronomers), and where, on both sides of this

  plateau, there appear elliptical features that look like racetracks

  ploughed over by concentric furrows (Plate A and Fig. 4).

  Two phenomena, however, stand out as the major discov-

 

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