You would benefit a great deal from reading Worlds In Collision. No one I can think of better understood events described in the original testament than Velikovsky.
I did read Velikosky and his assertions that the history of the Hebrews leaving the land of Egypt was true not necessarily because God did the engineering but because Venus had been expelled from Jupiter and was flying around the Solar System exuding gravitational and extreme electro magnetism effects. The pillars of fire, the flinging of meteors hydrocarbon dustings of the atmosphere which made “manna” and also may have caused the “3 days of darkness” ect. The Hebrews claimed however that in their settled area of Goshen none of those disasters hit. That is the key issue between Velikovsky’s view of Hebrew history versus what the Hebrews via Moses had to say about it. The Hebrews were not personally effected by the disasters and Moses had foreknowledge of each of the disasters. Velikovsky asserted that there was truth in the accounts of how the Hebrew nation came to be because they were able to take advantage of Egypt’s weakened state and the superstitions of the times. He picked and chose what parts of Hebrew history to support in accordance with his theories and what part to ignore and that is always a bad error.
The Hebrews claim that Goshen was protected from disasters while the rest of Egypt was laid waste, hence their view of divine protection. Now how could the vast destruction of Egypt be limited to just Egypt and not the Hebrews too? In short, by what measure did Velikovsky use to deny parts of Hebrew history while positing other aspects as true, based on his theories?
By the way there is an archeologist Steven Collins who claims to have found Sodom and “the cities of the plain...part of his claim was the discoveries of artifacts and bone that were suddenly exposed to very high heat including microscopic sphericals of iron indicative of a blood spray coming from exploding bodies in which the blood was instantly vitrified into inert iron globules. They suspect high heat from a meteor impact that took out a number of villages in an area on the East bank of the Jordan at its mouth and proceeding up the East bank and Eastward encompassing approx.250 SQUARE MILES. They found that the artifacts included many Minoan type artifacts or items indicating Minoan religion and practice such as “bull horns”(jumping of the bull) as well as sexual toys and artifacts indicating widespread homosexuality and pederasty, the same that was known from the Minoans. They’ve dated the impact from the same period that the Minoans were taken out via Santorini!
Can God use astronomical effects? Can he cause them? Can he even interfere if he wishes with the running of the universe? I say yes!
Velikovsky posited that folks deluded views “of the gods’ were shaped by mechanical astronomical events, but since he waded into the tautological waters, he never has the integrity to explain how one can then dismiss scientifically how Moses or Abraham might or might not have had certain foreknowledge of these
disasters or explain why the Hebrews of Goshen experienced no negative effects. Even “that ancient aliens guy” acknowledges that the miraculous may have occurred to protect these Hebrews during horrendous times on the Earth, but only thru an ET influence and he even posits that ET’s may have engineered the destruction of other civilizations.
(GT doesn’t explain why ET’s like to maintain their ‘godlike’ cover with mankind, if they indeed they have been behind our human history, ...logically most folks could handle the truth after the initial shock but the issue becomes a matter of moral behavior. With no transcendent values put forth by an immutable God, men should then become ungovernable either in themselves and by themselves or thru external governing agencies. Everyone will throw off moral restraints as there is no God only the naked force exerted by other humans. The apostle Paul observed that he didn’t suffer violence or wrestle with the beasts of Ephesus by reason of a myth...”if there be no resurrection of the dead, then let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die!”)
The Resurrection of Christ indeed was the axis upon which turned the direction of human history. One has to ask the question, why indeed did Paul suffer for something that was only a myth,,,unless a deeper transaction was going on thru history and with God’s interaction with the universe and with humans in particular. Many have felt God’s grace and power in their lives and understand that suffering and inner growth are intertwined; issues that a pure mechanistic view of the scientific method, which can’t answer questions of a tautological nature, can never logically approach.
There is an epistemological gap between the knowledge of objects and objects themselves. Science can describe the characteristics of the object and it’s behaviors, it’s solubility, ect, but it still doesn’t explain that object’s being”ness”. The light switch turns the light on because we have expectancy that it will, but we are shocked when the light burns out in defiance of our expectancy. In short mechanistic, utilitarian scientific knowledge itself will always have an uncertainty about it. Faith is the bridging gap between knowledge and it’s object along with it’s partner “hope”. For those of science to try to decouple logic from faith and hope completely is utter foolishness for it simply leads to despair and a loss of intuitive vision.
For at worse, as we saw in the 20th century, misused, visionless science led to weapons of war unmatched in history in their destructive power and the death of millions. It also fostered the rise of atheistic polymorphic socialism which threatens to destroy the freedom of billions as well as having engineered the deaths of millions of unborn innocents!