New evidence and interpretation at the intersection of planetary science and religion can help us better understand the history of the Ancient Near East and of the origins of Islam.
A Revised Venus Theory corrects Immanuel Velikovsky’s original theory that the planet Venus first entered the inner solar system as a comet with a bifurcated tail around 1500 BC (new evidence indicates around 2525 BC). Now we have a much better explanation of the origin of Venus (rather than fissioning off of Jupiter, it was pulled from the outer solar system by Jupiter’s gravity and, via tidal heating, became a comet with a long tail). Venus interacted with the Earth on a 52-year cycle during the Late Bronze Age, causing catastrophes worldwide. And we now have a framework theory of the terrestrial planets into which these phenomena neatly fit and for which there is telling evidence. For Comet Venus, there is also newly interpreted, compelling iconographic and linguistic evidence. The names of both Athena (A Fena, the Phoenician) and Poseidon (Bos eidon, the Bull of Heaven), for instance, referred to the double-tailed Venus.
So with new-found confidence that the Ancients and Velikovsky were right about Venus, we can ask how can we use this to decipher aspects of the culture of the Ancient Near East and of the background of Islam.