Zecharia Sitchin’s 12^th planet

Go on the Internet and do a search for Sitchin’s book and you will find a lot of sites that are very critical along with sites that are disciples of his. The anti Sitchin sites criticize everything he says, they state that he does not reference where he gets his information and they state that he does not translate the Sumerian text accurately. It is true that Sitchin does not write like a collage professor with foot notes that give the exact location of his sources but he does mention the authors and books he cites almost every time and no one can say the man can not read many languages including ancient Sumerian.

The beginning of the book proves that the Hebrews used earlier sources for their stories in Genesis. They had lived in Babylon and Egypt so they knew about their stories. But Sitchin does even better than that. He starts with the Hebrews and takes us back from them to the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Akkadians. He proves that they all took their stories from the civilization that preceded them all the way back to the very earliest written word that started around 4000BC with the Sumerians. The Sumerians in 4000BC had stories of the gods creating man, that man being cast out of paradise, a snake, a tree of life, a flood, stories that echo the story of Cain and Abel, Job, and Noah, even how one god and his group was chased off for rebelling against the head god, how gods have children with humans, etc. The early Hebrews had more than one god; they even had goddesses so they clearly took all their early beliefs from other earlier civilizations.

Sitchin is a Jew born in Azerbaijan, lived in Israel, worked as a writer and is obviously very smart. The ‘12^th planet’ is the first book in a series about how ancient man became civilized. We all want to know why after millions of years of evolution primitive man suddenly around 4000BC built cities and developed writing, mathematics, engineering, the wheel, and many other things all in one small area. The Sumerians tell us in their writings that the Gods gave it all to them; Sitchin is convinced that the gods where really beings from another planet.

He tells us that as a boy in Bible class he developed an interested in the Biblical story of the flood that contained references to the "Nefilim". His teacher said the word meant ‘giants’ and that is what we are still told today. However Sitchin knew his Hebrew and told his teacher he thought it meant "Those Who Were Cast Down" his teacher told him to sit down and shut up. Now Sitchin has spent his life to prove that beings from another planet had come to earth and made man in their image so that man could do work for them, to "serve them".

When I read about beings that where "cast down" I am reminded of the biblical story of Satan and his Angelic assistants that were "cast down" to earth for his rebellion. So perhaps the Sumerians where more correct than Sitchin and the Nefilim where beings that where chased out of some otherworldly place and retreated to earth and took over. When I read about the "Nefilim" having sex with the human girls I think about all the stupid girls that get pregnant by the handsome men who immediately disappear and leave some other fool to raise their blue eyed sons.

All the ancient civilizations had religions that told of families of gods, a father, mother, children, and other relatives. We can thank the Hebrews for simplifying our religion by insisting that there is only one god. That relived us of a lot of the problems that families of gods present like our fate being tied to conflicts between gods. The Greeks believed that a god might like you but if his wife was mad at him she might take it out on you; you did nothing wrong but you where made to suffer because you where liked by a god that she was mad at, oh Vey! Now if you’re an Agnostic you do not care because nothing can be proved and religions are superstitious and have been and are currently being used to do evil so lets just cut it all out.

Now the Sumerians do not say that the gods where still around in 4000BC so their stories where probably very old and had been handed down for a long time orally, perhaps even from some earlier group.

What Sitchin does is translate the Sumerian myths to say that the planets we know today where created by a 12^th planet that moves like a comet; coming close to the sun and then swinging far out into space on an elliptical obit every 3600 years. On one of these passes it, or one of its moons, collided with another planet and the aftermath was that half became Earth and the other half became the asteroid belt and the comets. I also believe that the asteroids and comets are a remnant of a collision that destroyed a planet. Then Sitchin goes on to interpret the Sumerian texts to say that the planets and the gods shared the same names. He states that this 12^th planet on one of its trips through the inner solar system about 450,000 years ago sent to earth space travelers who later genetically altered the early humans by mixing their genes with the ape-men so that we, the humans, could be trained to work in their gold mines. He goes on to say that the spacemen taught us everything we know and that we thought of them as gods, thus our current religious beliefs. This passing planet caused the Antarctic ice cover to slip into the sea ending the last ice-age with tidal waves that gave rise to the stories of a flood some 14,000 years ago while the spacemen (gods) watched from space. The last time this planet came by was around 200BC so we can expect it to return around 3400AD. Sitchin also touches on the ridiculous concept of royalty by stating that kings where setup by the gods to be in charge to better serve the gods. No one is better than I am only luckier (born rich). If the gods taught man everything after the flood Sitchin does not say where the gods have been since then.

I think that Sitchin’s critics biggest problem is that they are very troubled by the fact that their belief systems, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, are being questioned in a way that is factual. They do not want to give up what they believe in and want the whole world to go on believing that everything revolves around the Old Testament Hebrew story and that every word of it is absolutely true. Get over it boys and girls it is time to grow up and move on. All religions are about the human struggle between good and evil, the Ying and the Yang, the dark side Vs the light, mans struggle to do the right thing; we are losing that battle, we are doomed.

Sitchin’s book might not be perfect however the so-called "scientists" do not know it all; remember when the world was flat. Sitchin’s work is masterful; he brings together all the information from various disciplines and makes sense of our past in a way that can get us into the future. Mankind seems to desperately need religion and until one can be invented that can not be used for evil we will suffer.