Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and GravelDonnelly, Ignatius
Science
Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel
Donnelly, Ignatius
Atlantis (Legendary place); Comets; Drift
119. When I made a _cloud the garment thereof_, and wrapped it in
_mists_ as in swaddling-bands,
"10. I set my bounds around it, and made it bars and doors." . . .
"22. Hast thou entered into _the storehouses of the snow_, or hast
thou beheld the treasures of the _hail?_" . . .
"29. Out of whose womb came the _ice_? and the _frost_ from heaven,
who hath gendered it?
"30. The waters are hardened like a _stone_, and _the surface of the
deep is frozen_."
What has this Arabian poem to do with so many allusions to clouds,
rain, ice, snow, hail, frost, and _frozen oceans_?
"36. Who hath put wisdom in the inward part? Or who hath given
understanding to the heart? "
Umbreit says that this word "heart" means literally "a shining
phenomenon--a meteor." Who hath given understanding to the comet to
do this work?
"38. When was _the dust poured on the earth_, and the _clods hardened
together_?"
{p. 309}
One version makes this read:
"Poured itself into a mass by the rain, like molten metal."
And another translates it--
"_Is caked into a mass by heat, like molten metal_, BEFORE THE RAIN
FALLS."
This is precisely in accordance with my theory that the "till" or
"hard-pan," next the earth, was caked and baked by the heat into its
present pottery-like and impenetrable condition, long before the work
of cooling and condensation set loose the floods to rearrange and
form secondary Drift out of the upper portion of the _débris_.
But again I ask, when in the natural order of events was dust poured
on the earth and hardened into clods, like molten metal?
And in this book of Job I think we have a description of the
veritable comets that struck the earth, in the Drift Age, transmitted
even from the generations that beheld them blazing in the sky, in the
words of those who looked upon the awful sight.
In the Norse legends we read of three destructive objects which
appeared in the heavens one of these was shaped like a serpent; it
was called "the Midgard-serpent"; then there was "the Fenris wolf";
and, lastly, "the dog Garm." In Hesiod we read, also, of three
monsters: first, Echidna, "a serpent huge and terrible and vast";
second, Chimæra, a lion-like creature; and, thirdly, Typhœus,
worst of all, a fierce, fiery dragon. And in Job, in like manner, we
have three mighty objects alluded to or described: first the
"winding" or "twisting" serpent with which God has "adorned the
heavens"; then "behemoth," monstrous enough to "drink up rivers,"
"the chief of the ways of God"; and lastly,
{p. 310}
and most terrible of all, "leviathan"; the name meaning, the twisting
animal, gathering itself into folds."
God, speaking to Job, and reminding him of the weakness and
littleness of man, says (chap. xl, v. 20):
"Canst thou draw out the leviathan with a book, or canst thou tie his
tongue with a cord? "
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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