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to be left fallow, but had to be returned to its original proprietors. According to the law, one could not convey his land for ever; the deed of sale was but a lease for whatever number of years remained until the jubilee year. The year was proclaimed by the blowing of horns on the Day of Atonement. "In the Day of Atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.
And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family." 1
Ever since, exegetes have labored over the biblical statement that the jubilee year was to be observed every fiftieth year. The seventh sabbatical year is the forty-ninth year: "And the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. . . . And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year." 2 To leave the land fallow for two consecutive years was too great a demand and cannot be explained by the need of the soil under cultivation for rest. The festival of the jubilee, with the return of land to its original owners and the release of slaves, bears the character of an atonement, and its proclamation on the Day of Atonement emphasizes this still further. Was there any special reason why fear returned every fifty years? The jubilee of the Mayas must have had a genesis similar to that of the jubilee of the Israelites. The difference lies in the human character of the festival of the Jews and its inhuman character among the Mayas; but with both peoples it was a year of atonement, repeating itself every fiftieth year in the one case and every fifty-second year in the other.
Comets do not return at exact periods because of perturbations caused by larger planets.3 The Mayas expected the return of a catastrophe every fifty-second year because that was the interval between two cataclysms that had taken place. It may be that the comet was actually seen again at such intervals. The Jews fasted and prepared
robin-bobin
1 Leviticus 25 : 9 ff. 2 Leviticus 25 : 8-10.
3 Halley's comet has an average period of 77 years, with single periods as short as 74/3 years or as long as 79K years.
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themselves for the Day of Judgment on the earliest possible date of its return; the Mayas had their festival when the dreaded time had passed without harm.
. On the Day of Atonement the Israelites used to send a scapegoat to "Azazel" in the desert.4 It was a ceremony of propitiation of Satan. In Egypt tne goat was an animal dedicated to Seth-Typhon.5 Azazel was a fallen star or Lucifer. It was also called Azzael, Azza, or Uzza.8
According to the rabbinical legend, Uzza was the star angel of Egypt: it was thrown into the Red Sea when the Israelites made their passage.7 The Arab name of the planet Venus is al-Uzza.8
Arabs used to bring human sacrifices to al-Uzza; Mohammed, too, in his early days, worshiped it, and even today the Arabs seek its help.9
On the day on which the jubilee year was proclaimed, the Israelites dispatched a placating offering of a scapegoat to Lucifer. But what had Venus to do with the jubilee and the atonement?
The Birth of Venus
A planet turns and revolves on a quite circular orbit around a greater body, the sun; it makes contact with another body, a comet, that travels on a stretched out ellipse. The planet slips from its axis, runs in disorder off its orbit, wanders rather erratically, and in the end is freed from the embrace of the comet.
The body on the long ellipse experiences similar disturbances. Drawn off its path, it glides to some new orbit; its long train of gaseous substances and stones is torn away by the sun or by the planet, or runs away and revolves as a smaller comet along its own
?Leviticus 16 : 8-26. The priests used to cast lots for two goats: one goat for the Lord and the other as the scapegoat for Azazel.
5 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 73; cf. Herodotus ii. 46, Diodorus i. 84.4, and Strabo xvii. 1.19.
« Ginzberg, Legends, V, 152, 170.
7 Ibid., VI, 293. According to another legend, the fallen angel Uzza is chained to the Mountains of Darkness (ibid., V, l70), the Caucasus.
8 See "al-Uzza," Encylopaedia of Islam (1913-1934), Vol. IV.
9 J. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums (2nd ed., 1897), pp. 40-44; C. M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta (new ed., 1921), II, 516; P. K. Hitti, History of the Arabs (1937), pp.
98 ff.
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ellipse; a part of the tail is retained by the parent comet on its new orbit.
Ancient Mexican records give the order of the occurrences. The sun was attacked by Quetzal-cohuatl; after the disappearance of this serpent-shaped heavenly body, the sun refused to shine, and during four days the world was deprived of its light; a great many people died at that time.
Thereafter, the snakelike body transformed itself into a great star. The star retained the name of Quetzal-cohuatl [Quetzal-coatl]. This great and brilliant star appeared for the first time in the east.1 Quetzal-cohuatl is the well-known name of the planet Venus.2
Thus we read that "the sun refused to show itself and during four days the world was deprived of light. Then a great star . . . appeared; it was given the name Quetzal-cohuatl . . . the sky, to show its anger . . . caused to perish a great number of people who died of famine and pestilence." 3
The sequence of seasons and the duration of days and nights became disarranged. "It was then . .
. that the people [of Mexico] regulated anew the reckoning of days, nights, and hours, according to the difference in time." 4
"It is a remarkable thing, moreover, that time is measured from the moment of its [Morning Star's] appearance. . . . Tlahuizcal-panteuctli or the Morning Star appeared for the first time following the convulsions of the earth overwhelmed by a deluge." It looked like a monstrous serpent. "This serpent is adorned with feathers: that is why it is called Quetzal-cohuatl, Gukumatz or Kukulcan. Just as the world is about to emerge from the chaos of the great robin-bobin
catastrophe, it is seen to appear." 5 The feather arrangement of Quetzal-cohuatl "represented flames of fire." 6
Again, the old texts speak "of the change that took place, at the moment of the great catastrophe of the deluge, in the condition of
1 Brasseur, Histoire des nations civilisees du Mexique, I, 181.
2 Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, I, 625.
3 Brasseur, Histoire des nations civilisees du Mexique, I, 311. * Ibid., I, 120.
5 Brasseur, Sources de I'histoire ¦primitive du Mexique, p. 82.
6 Sahagun, A History of Ancient Mexico (transl. F. R. Bandelier, 1932), p. 26.
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many constellations, principal among them being precisely Tlahuiz-calpanteuctli or the star of Venus."7
v. The cataclysm, accompanied by a prolonged darkness, appears to have been that of the days of the Exodus, when a tempest of cinders darkened the world disturbed in its rotation. Some of the references may allude to the subsequent catastrophe of the time of the conquest by Joshua, when the sun remained for more than a day in the sky of the old world. Since it was the same comet that on both occasions made contact with the earth, and at each of the contacts the comet changed its own orbit, the relevant question is not, "On which occasion did the comet change its orbit?" but first of all, "Which comet changed to a planet?" or "Which planet was a comet in historical times?" The transformation of the comet into a planet began on contact with the earth in the middle of the second millennium before the present era and was carried a step further one jubilee period later. "After the dramatic events of the time of Exodus, the earth was shrouded in dense clouds for decades, and observation of stars was not possible; after the second contact, Venus, the new and splendid member of the solar family, was seen moving along its orbit. It was in the days of Joshua, a time designation meaningful to the reader of the sixth book of the Scriptures; but for the ancients it was "the time of Agog." As I explained above, he was the king by whose name the cataclysm (the Deluge of Ogyges) was known, and who, according to Greek tradition, laid the foundations of Thebes in Egypt.