Santorini Eruption Much larger Than Originally Believed

University Rhode Island ^ | 8-23-2006 | Todd McLeish

[SunkenCiv]

The high temperature is exactly what Velikovsky predicted; Venera 4 found 95 per cent CO2 in the atmosphere; sulfuric acid was conjured out of spectral data gathered from Earth in the early 1970s.

[RobbyS]

Or maybe historical memory goes back further than most people allow. IAC, scientific theories tend to have the self life of bananas when they deal with events earlier than last week.

[SunkenCiv]

Both the Exodus and Atlantis stories suggest otherwise.

Which Atlantis story? The only ancient one (and therefore, the only actual surviving source) is Plato, and he doesn't say anything about any eruption in the Aegean. The modern myth of Thera-was-Atlantis was invented for the tourist trade and to sell some books. Also, there is absolutely nothing in the Exodus account about the Israelites following a volcanic column far to the north -- they were headed east. In addition, there's nothing a Thera volcano could have done to produce the parted seas.

[RockinRight]

Oh. Thought this was a Rick Santorum thread. My bad.

[SunkenCiv]

There are some extinct volcanoes in the Sinai, but they've been extinct for a very long time. There's an ancient account ("Periplus of Hanno") that apparently describes the eruption of Mt Cameroun (a volcano which is still active) and of course Pliny the Younger's account of the eruption of Vesuvius and death of Pliny the Elder. By and large, the reaction to an eruption has been the same throughout history -- run for your lives, in the opposite direction.

[RightWhale]

Velikovski wanted oil, which is lacking.

[SunkenCiv]

Or maybe historical memory goes back further than most people allow. IAC, scientific theories tend to have the self life of bananas when they deal with events earlier than last week.

That's the approach taken by Ryan and Pitman in "Noah's Flood" -- but they screw that up by taking the one tale from the Aegean basin which explicitly refers to a flood and tell us that it doesn't really say what it says. :') The reason Herodotus (who discusses Thera) and Plato (who doesn't) don't record a notable eruption on the island is, it didn't happen until Herodotus and Plato had been dead for centuries.

[RightWhale]

There was the Burning Bush, which is kind of puny for a volcano even if Moses came down half blind and badly scarred.

[SunkenCiv]

Yelikovsky said that hydrocarbons and carbohydrates exist in the clouds; while its possible that the high temperature has broken down the C-H bonds, there hasn't been any effort to look for them, and the spectral data actually suggests that they are there. Problem is, finding either or both could easily mean the end of a promising career.

[SunkenCiv]

There was the Burning Bush, which is kind of puny for a volcano even if Moses came down half blind and badly scarred.

That sounds more like a natural burning well, a case where naphtha or natural gas seeps out and burns, an apparent eternal flame. It was commonplace in the Near East (and maybe elsewhere?) to see such phenomena as sacred spots and the like. Burning offerings is pretty Biblical.

[steve-b]

the Venera series of Venus landers found no oil on Venus

[ DU ] If there were oil on Venus, BushCo would have invaded it by now. [ /DU ]

[RightWhale]

It is possible life can exist high in the atmosphere where it is cooler. Doesn't mean it does, but it can't be ruled out.

[RobbyS]

Unless you dismiss the Exodus account entirely, the plagues suggest a natural catastrophe of some magnitude.

[RightWhale]

There was also a voice. A burning gas jet might make a sound like a voice.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! But no action. ;')

[COEXERJ145]

Well, I'll get in touch with Karl Rove and see if he can do something about that with the Bush-Rove Earthquake & Volcano Generator^tm.

[RightWhale]

Halliburton and Sclumberger are both represented in this town, no surprise. Halliburton gear looks dingy, dented, old and used. Schlumber has a new trailer that is shinier than any oilfield gear I have ever seen. If they put it in orbit it would outshine the ISS I am sure. I would expect BushCo to invest in SLB rather than HAL.

[RobbyS]

Regarding timelines, there is a tendency to confine human history to the last ten thousand years when the fossil and other evidence suggests that modern humans have been around for much longer than that, 100,000 years or more. We have become open to a less static view of the history of the globe, what with the awareness that asteroids have bashed into us in a regular basis. But scientists tend to be as blinkered.near-sighted as the rest of us. We tend not to see what we do not see.

[RobbyS]

Or maybe he had a vision. You are assuming that spiritual beings do not exist.

[SunkenCiv]

Unless you dismiss the Exodus account entirely, the plagues suggest a natural catastrophe of some magnitude.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree, but I doubt that a single volcano would do it.

The idea that a Sinai volcano (or for those into it, a volcano in Arabia) would produce a pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night, makes sense. For it to be really impressive, it would probably have to be close by. I think the figure for curvature of the Earth (on sea) is 50 feet gets you twenty miles. But the width of the column would get smaller in a hurry, so one would be stuck with a massive volcano which isn't in evidence in the region.

The Biblical account has the seas being parted. This could be a sign of tectonic activity, such that the ground rose, and the water rushed away to either side. When the ground sank again, not long after, the waters to either side would rush back in. There's a surviving comment in Jewish literature on the Sea of Passage, cited by V, which is that the Israelites rejoiced that the Egyptian host was drowned, but also mourned their friends and relatives who perished with the Egyptians.

The old Cecil B. DeMille film (1950s version, not the silent film version) "The Ten Commandments" has the pharaoh (Yul Brynner, a Mongolian guy from Brooklyn I think) attributing the bloody Nile waters to a mud eruption far upriver, and attributing the insect horde to that disturbance, and the plague of frogs to the sudden increase in the insect food supply. :')

So, it's possible that widescale tectonic activity could account for some of the experience underlying the Exodus account; but I would wonder how that happened without some kind of external cause, either natural (but rare) phenomena, or a deity.