The sources of his ideas: ancient writings, including the Bible; archeology; science, etc. Sitchin appears quite expert at reading and interpreting ancient pictographic languages.
His core idea: that extraterrestrial beings who live on a planet named "Nabiru" have come to earth for periods of time in the past, and are actually the objects of many ancient stories of "the gods". Sitchin names these beings, "Anunnaki". The Anunnaki have ruled various parts of earth for long periods of ancient history. They have argued and fought with each other, often using humans as instruments and certainly victims of their wars. They came and went between Nabiru and Earth via space travel, and used some type of aircraft to travel around on the Earth.
The planet Nabiru is in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The apogee of its orbit is way beyond the orbits of the planets we know about, and one orbit takes several thousand Earth-years. It is when it nears the Sun (perigee) that its orbit comes close to that of Earth, and is the period of time when most of the coming and going of the Anunnaki takes place.
Zecharia Sitchin's ideas throw light on a lot of the unexplained events of ancient history, including the connections between Mayan and Egyptian cultures, a puzzle I have long wondered about. The Anunnaki are the ones who built the great structures, such as the pyramids.
Sitchin finds a lot of clues to the existence of the Anunnaki in the Bible as well as other Ancient Near East writings. He often treats these ancient "myths" as real, factually true. Generally, when scholars come across events that they can't explain, they chalk it up as "myth", pure story or allegory, but certainly not factual. Sitchin's treatment is quite refreshing.
A bit of literalism which I found really intriguing is from the Hebrew scriptures. The Hebrew word translated "God" in English, is Elohim. The im ending in Hebrew denotes plural. And yet nowhere do you find Elohim translated "gods". It is always "god". This is something I have wondered about ever since my own study of the Biblical languages. It seems so inconsistent. Every other Hebrew word with an im ending is plural except for that one word. Why?
Sitchin treats it as it is written, plural! And I like that.
The one complaint I had reading this book is that there is way too much information. In order to make his points, Sitchin takes an absolutely massive amount of information and condenses it down. I often had to wade through pages of obscure writing to come to some fascinating conclusion. Obviously the author has done a tremendous amount of research and knows what he is talking about. But being relatively new to the subject if was often a bit much for me. But he is convincing!
His conclusion: that the end of days will be the return of the Anunnaki to Earth. Sitchin does not agree with the current speculation of this happening in the year 2012. He points out some inconsistencies with the mathematics of how scholars have arrived at this date. But he does believe it is coming in the next century or two.
My conclusion: the book is certainly worth reading. Zecharia Sitchin takes seriously the ancient writings. He in no way discounts the Bible. Everything he says is consistent with the Biblical writings. And he does not treat the Bible in a vacuum; he looks at it in the context of other Ancient Near East writings and archeology. He also does not use the other information to try and "prove" the Bible. He simply uses the Bible as equally valid stories of events. His assumption is that what we read in the Bible happened. It tells a certain story of certain peoples and events in history. Putting that alongside the stories from other sources of other events and peoples gives us a more full picture of ancient history.
Sitchin has written a whole series of books, and I had the impression several times while reading this one that he has taken information gleaned from a life-time of research and writing and put it together around this one topic, the end of days. It has certainly made me think and question some of my own interpretations of prophecies and knowledge about the end-times.
Check it out!
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