Introduction

The pages that follow deal with the marvelous and the miraculous. On the pages of the Old Testament and in Hebrew lore stories are told of unusual phenomena. They intrigued me by the fact that so many of them reappear in the fields of modern paleontology, physics, and psychology. In almost every instance the gap could be bridged by an association - from archaic and miraculous to modern and self-understood, but still miraculous. Is not the phenomenon of magnetism well-known, yet still miraculous? And the same is with many other phenomena in the natural sciences. Thus a miracle of ancient lore is explained, yet the miraculous in the natural event remains.

As I proved in Ages in Chaos the letters found in the Egyptian State Archive of el-Amarna originated in the ninth century, and a very considerable portion of them was written in Palestine, by Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat, king of Jerusalem, and their generals. The corresponding texts of the Scriptures prove a very high grade of trustworthiness, even in transmission of orations and dialogues, ascribed to historical personages. This fact encourages to approach with credence the stories of Elijah and Elisha, interwoven in the same parts of the Book of Kings.