Table of Contents
A summary of Biblico-Egyptological research
In Pre-Adamite Man (1863, published under the pen name Griffin Lee, of Texas), Paschal Beverly Randolph gives “a summary of results deduced from Bunsen’s and other Biblico-Egyptological research”. It is a timeline of key events and of the age of early civilizations, from the creation of man to the time of Christ, with the great floods along the way (pages 133 to 134).
| Event Description | Date (B.C.) |
|---|---|
| Creation of Man in the dim background of Time | UNKNOWN |
| Civilized Nations on the Plateaus of Eastern Asia | 35,000 |
| Earliest Date of the Founders of the Thinite Nation | 28,000 |
| The Flood in Asia and part of Europe | 21,000 |
| Date of Nimrod, Atlantis, and Babylon | 16,000 |
| Date of Ghost-worship in Egypt | 12,000 |
| Date of Menes | 4,200 |
| Date of Abraham, probably not less than | 2,900 |
| Date of Moses | 1,900 |
| Date of Solomon | 1,015 |
| From First Civilization known to Christ | 35,000 |
Randolph adds: “These figures appear alarming”. He says he can prove human dates as high as these, or higher, later in the book.
The Flood and the cataclysms
Randolph holds that there were at least two great cataclysms in Asia and Africa, and others as large in America, which he links to the Flood. In his view the last of them was caused by a shift in the earth’s axis, which melted the polar ice, set off volcanoes and threw up and sank whole lands.
Randolph accepts more than one flood. One is the well-known Flood of Noah and Deucalion. Before it came an older “Mysterious Event”, dimly recorded in early Chinese annals. He thinks it may be the same disaster the Priests of Sais described to Solon.
He dates the greatest event the earth ever saw to no less than 42,000 and no more than 58,600 years ago. In his account, a planet between Mars and Jupiter burst about 58,600 years ago, and its pieces became the asteroids. (Compare the channelled account of Maldek.)
He says he reached these conclusions on “geological, astronomical and other grounds”. In his view these events shaped the history of the earth and of its civilizations.
Randolph on the Flood
Randolph says a burst planet caused the greatest cataclysm on earth.
The “Flood,” itself, may be dismissed in a few words. I consider the testimony to that event as being unimpeachable. There must have been, at least, two great cataclysms in Asia and Africa, besides others of equal magnitude in America—the last of the former of which was caused by the shifting of the axis of the earth, from causes already stated herein. The melting of the ice at the Poles, the bursting of volcanoes and other frightful convulsions of this last event, caused the molten bowels of the earth to move, and in their movements, mountains, islands, continents were upheaved in some portions of the globe, and other mountains, islands and continents sunk to rise no more. Vast floods of water rushed down from either pole; myriads of peoples, scores of nations, attained immortality in the twinkling of God’s eye; and their souls, in millions, rose to heaven and entered the portals of disbodied glory, while their fleshly forms sunk, food for fishes and for worms, leaving only here and there a fragmentary bone or skeleton, to become in future ages, after other upheavals, mute but eloquent witnesses to the fact that there did exist, once upon a time, Pre-Adamite races of men. The particular event here alluded to, is the Oriental “Flood” of Noah, Deucalion and others. But there was one before that. I allude to the “Mysterious Event” so dimly alluded to in early Chinese annals; and, perhaps, may be the same terrible catastrophe alluded to by the Priests of Sais, in their conversations with Solon, something like six centuries before the Christian Era. Upon geological, astronomical and other grounds, I have reached the conclusion that, at a period not less than 42,000, nor more than 58,600 years ago, there occurred the most tremendous event this earth ever witnessed, or ever will witness, until a final convulsion shall hurl it out of being—as a habitable globe. It is known that the Planets of the Solar System are interdependent, and mutually connected; and from researches conducted for long years, I conclude that about 58,600 years ago, the planet of this system then revolving on its axis in an orbit between those of Mars and Jupiter, BURST asunder—scattered into a million fragments, the larger ones now constituting the Asteroids, and named Juno, Vesta, Pallas, Ceres, and so on, to the number of a hundred or more, and the smaller bits of which are now revolving at greater or less distances apart, in a track or belt, so situated as to be crossed by the earth from the 10th to the 24th of every November, at which time we are visited by showers of meteoric stones, attracted then by the globe, and which fragments once formed part of the now shattered world. Millions of such fragments are yet flying through space in elliptical orbits; but their number will continually lessen as Novembers pass, for then “We gather them in! we gather them in!”
Paschal Beverly Randolph, Pre-Adamite Man (1863), pages 134 to 135
The timeline and this passage show Randolph trying to fit ancient records to the geology and astronomy of his day, in support of his theory of advanced pre-Adamite civilizations and a long history of cataclysms.
