Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel eBook

Ignatius Donnelly
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 440 pages of information about Ragnarok .

Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel eBook

Ignatius Donnelly
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 440 pages of information about Ragnarok .

“6.  The stones of it are the place of sapphires, and the clods of it” (King James, “dust”) “are gold.”

We are again reminded of those legends of America and Europe where gold and jewels fell from heaven among the stones.  We are reminded of the dragon-guarded hoards of the ancient myths.

The Douay version says: 

“9.  He” (God) “has stretched out his hand to the flint, he hath overturned mountains from the roots.”

What is the meaning Of FLINT here?  And why this recurrence of the word flint, so common in the Central American legends and religions?  And when did God in

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the natural order of things overturn mountains by the roots?

And Job (chap. xxx, Douay version) describes the condition of the multitude who had at first mocked him, and the description recalls vividly the Central American pictures of the poor starving wanderers who followed the Drift Age: 

“3.  Barren with want and hunger, who gnawed in the wilderness, disfigured with calamity and misery.

4.  And they ate grass, and barks of trees, and the root of junipers was their food.

“5.  Who snatched up these things out of the valleys, and when they had found any of them, they ran to them with a cry.

“6.  They dwelt in the desert places of torrents, and in caves of the earth, or UPON THE GRAVEL.”

Is not all this wonderful?

In the King James version, verse 3 reads: 

3.  For want and famine they were solitary, fleeing into the wilderness, in former time, desolate and waste.”

The commentators say that the words, “in former time, desolate and waste,” mean literally, “the yesternight of desolation and waste.”

Job is describing the condition of the people immediately following the catastrophe, not in some remote past.

And again Job says (Douay version, chap. xxx): 

“12. . . .  My calamities forthwith arose; they have overthrown my feet, and have overwhelmed me with their paths as with waves. . . .

“14.  They have rushed in upon me as when a wall is broken, and a gate opened, and have rolled themselves down to my miseries. . . .”

Maurer translates, “as when a wall is broken,” “with a shout like the crash of falling masonry.”

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29.  I was the brother of dragons and companion of ostriches.

“30.  My skin is become black upon me, and my bones are dried up with the heat.”

We are reminded of Ovid’s statement that the conflagration of Phaëton caused the skin of the Africans to turn black.

In chapter xxxiv, (King James’s version,) we read: 

“14.  If he” (God) “set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;

“15. All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.”

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Project Gutenberg
Ragnarok : the Age of Fire and Gravel from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.