7-3-06 Divine Encounters

A little over a month ago, I began reading Zecharia Sitchin's "Earth Chronicles" series of six books, starting with "The 12th Planet", which was published in 1976. In addition to the six book series, he's published four additional books, two of which I've read, and two of which I may not bother with, at this point. The most recently read was "Divine Encounters", published in 1995, which was the most laborious of all to force myself to finish reading.

I've posted on this month-long odyssey at some length in three previous posts, "5-25-06 Further Out", "6-9-06 The Creation Story", and "6-18-06 Genealogical Pantheon", so I won't re-state any of those impressions.

The final blow to any semblance of rationality in Sitchin's work comes with "Divine Encounters", however. In the years leading up to this, his books tended to be adventurous and lent insight into the evolution of mythical themes in our civilization. However unscholarly (and only marginally ethno-centric) those earlier books may have been, they were still inoffensive forays that had a flavor somewhat like the TV series "Connections". His 1995 journey into absurdity tends to seem more like a plea for mercy from religious quarters than anything else, however. By elevating the status of the Judaic God right back out of the ten year quagmire he had apparently gotten himself into with "The Earth Chronicles", Sitchin merely promotes the religion he was born into.

I much prefered his somewhat objective blasphemy to the bizarre validations of Judaism that he espouses in "Divine Encounters". Sitchin has come full circle from questioning his religious roots, to making a desperate attempt to elevate that blind religious faith far beyond the mess that he made of it between 1976 and 1995.

It is, without doubt, one of the strangest journeys one can find in print.