In the Beginning

Emmanuel Velikovsky (June 10, 1895 - November 17, 1979) was an independent Russian scholar who wrote a number of books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, notably the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950. He previously contributed to the founding of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in Palestine, and was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Velikovsky's work is often cited as a typical example of pseudoscience and has been used as an example of a delimitation problem. His books use comparative myths and ancient literary sources (including the Old Testament) to say that the Earth suffered from disastrous close contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient history. When placing Velikovsky among catastrophic theorists including Hans Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly and Johann Gottlieb Radloff noted British astronomers Victor Klopp and Bill Napier. “Velikovsky is not the first of the new catastrophic theorists. Rather, he is the last in a series of traditional catastrophic theorists going back to the Middle Ages and possibly even further back.” Velikovsky has argued that electromagnetic effects play an important role in planetary mechanics. He also proposed a revised chronology of ancient Egypt, Greece, Palestine, and other cultures of the ancient Near East. The revised chronology aims to explain the so-called "dark age" of the eastern Mediterranean (1100–750 BC) and reconcile biblical history with mainstream archeology and Egyptian chronology. Velikovsky's theories were generally ignored or strongly rejected by the academic community. Nevertheless, his books often sold well and gained enthusiastic support in the general public, often accompanied by allegations of unfair treatment of Velikovsky by the traditional university community. The controversy surrounding his work and its reception is often referred to as the "Velikovsky Affair".