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Post by justjohn on Oct 26, 2010 5:36:39 GMT -7
Subject: Sitchin Update - Sad Note.... www.sitchin.com/Dear friends and fans of Zecharia Sitchin, It is with deep regret to inform you that Zecharia passed away on the morning of October 9th. A small, private family funeral was held the next day. The family asks that you respect its privacy during this difficult time and refrain from contacting family members directly. Instead, to offer tributes to Mr. Sitchin or to contact those handling his affairs, please email tributes@sitchin.com <mailto:tributes@sitchin.com or send a letter to P.O. Box 577, New York, NY 10185.
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Post by Jaga on Oct 26, 2010 7:50:54 GMT -7
Hi John,
sorry to hear. I am not sure, was somehow this person related to Polish culture or to anything you post here?
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Post by justjohn on Oct 27, 2010 4:56:25 GMT -7
Subject: Sitchin Update - Sad Note.... www.sitchin.com/Dear friends and fans of Zecharia Sitchin, It is with deep regret to inform you that Zecharia passed away on the morning of October 9th. A small, private family funeral was held the next day. The family asks that you respect its privacy during this difficult time and refrain from contacting family members directly. Instead, to offer tributes to Mr. Sitchin or to contact those handling his affairs, please email tributes@sitchin.com <mailto:tributes@sitchin.com or send a letter to P.O. Box 577, New York, NY 10185. Zecharia Sitchin and The Earth Chronicles ". . . he's just another nut making a living selling books that treat folks to a tale they want to believe in." ---Rob Hafernik "...the Sumerian Epic of Creation is not an allegorical myth but a sophisticated cosmogony scientifically describing how our solar system came to be...." Zecharia Sitchin Zecharia Sitchin, along with Erich von Däniken and Immanuel Velikovsky, make up the holy trinity of pseudohistorians. Each begins with the assumption that ancient myths are not myths but historical and scientific texts. Sitchin's claim to fame is announcing that he alone correctly reads ancient Sumerian clay tablets. [Of course, he didn't announce this by taking out an ad in the New York Times but by implying it with his "translations" that do not jibe with the work of legitimate scholars in the field.] If Sitchin is right, then all other scholars have misread these tablets, which, according to Sitchin, reveal that gods from another planet (Nibiru or Niburu, which orbits our Sun every 3,600 years) arrived on Earth some 450,000 years ago and created humans by genetic engineering of female apes. Niburu orbits beyond Pluto and is heated from within by radioactive decay, according to Sitchin. No other scientist has discovered that these descendants of gods blew themselves up with nuclear weapons some 4,000 years ago (The War of Gods and Men, p. 310).* Sitchin alone can look at a Sumerian tablet and see that it depicts a man being subjected to radiation. He alone knows how to correctly translate ancient terms allowing him to discover such things as that the ancients made rockets (ibid., p. 46).* Yet, he doesn't seem to know that the seasons are caused by the earth's tilt, not by its distance from the sun. Sitchin was born in Russia, was raised in Palestine, and graduated from the University of London with a degree in economic history. He worked for years as a journalist and editor in Israel before settling in New York. Sitchin, like Velikovsky, presents himself as erudite and scholarly in a number of books, including The Twelfth Planet (1976) and The Cosmic Code (1998). Both Sitchin and Velikovsky write very knowledgeably of ancient myths and both are nearly scientifically illiterate. Like von Däniken and Velikovsky, Sitchin weaves a compelling and entertaining story out of facts, misrepresentations, fictions, speculations, misquotes, and mistranslations. Each begins with their beliefs about ancient visitors from other worlds and then proceeds to fit facts and fictions to their basic hypotheses. Each is a master at ignoring inconvenient facts, making mysteries where there were none before, and offering their alien hypotheses to solve the mysteries. Their works are very attractive to those who love a good mystery and are ignorant of the nature and limits of scientific knowledge. They are especially attractive to those who are ignorant of biblical and historical scholarship. Sitchin promotes himself as a Biblical scholar and master of ancient languages, but his real mastery was in making up his own translations of Biblical texts to support his readings of Sumerian and Akkadian writings. He's let us know he's going to twist the translations around to support his thesis. Indeed, a reader of Sitchin's book would do well to keep a couple of Bibles handy to check up on the verses Sitchin quotes. Many of them will sound odd or unrecognizable because they have been translated from their familiar form (this is made harder by the fact that Sitchin rarely tells you just which verse he is quoting). This would be much more acceptable if he wasn't using the twisted translations to support the thesis that led to the twisted translations (Hafernik). Most of Sitchin’s sources are obsolete. He has received nothing but ridicule from scientific archaeologists and scholars familiar with ancient languages. His most charming quality seems to be his vivid imagination and complete disregard for established facts and methods of inquiry, traits that are apparently very attractive to some people. Sitchin's ideas have been appropriated by Raël, another wise man, who has started his own religion (Raëlian Religion) around the idea that humans are the result of a DNA experiment by ancient visitors from outer space. Raël has even written a channeled book, dictated to him by extraterrestrials. It is called The Final Message. We can only hope it is.
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Post by karl on Oct 27, 2010 5:53:42 GMT -7
J.J.
Your presentation of this sad day of death of Zecharia Sitchin is in deed sad. For his time under the sun is over in of the mortality we each must face.
Even though Mr. Sitchen face considerable amount of criticism over his books as written. For many were simply consumer goods for public consumption. These books non-the-less, provided him with income for living expenses and to further his research.
I tend to believe the above was the foundation of much confusion between his fanciful writing and his research for truth. For in this field of ancient discoveries, is one thing, but, the interpretation of the finds, becomes in self, a means to and end to a truth of a civilization with no survivors to describe the actual event.
To this is the question: What is Truth?
It is one thing to unearth the various Cuneiform tablets of Sumerian and Akkandian. But yet, to translate the language into understandable present day language. This in turn creates a related situation of word usage. For a word as spoken, may hold various different meanings if interpreted exactly. For now the reader is to form a picture of word meaning into his/her mind, this is fine with exception, the word picture of the writer has another different word picture within his mind as written.
For this above may and has given cause for many diverse arguments between various scholars.
For it needs be remembered, the Rosetta stone discovery in archaeological time frame, was simply yesterday.
In as much to the topic of which scholar is correct, then truth is to which has hold of the best argument..
Karl
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