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Gomorrah were destroyed by an atomic bomb. Lot’s wife, he asserts, did not turn into a pillar of salt but was reduced to a pile of ashes when she ignored a warning not to linger behind Lot’s fleeing party. Furthermore, in an article in Moscow’s Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1959, Professor Agrest offered the startling theory that ancient Baalbek was the Cape Kennedy of its day, serving as a launching platform for spaceships from another civilization. His “‘proof” consisted of the tektites and fused crystals found there. Such substances are the by-products of atomic explosions. A “flying roll’” measuring 15 feet by 8 feet is described in the Bible’s Book of Zechariah, Chapter 5, and the children of Israel were said to have been led out of Egypt by a pillar of fire in the sky (Exodus, Chapter 13). According to the detailed Bible story, Moses not only held conversations with a brightly burning bush (‘‘And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed” Exodus 3: 2), but he was s called to the summit of Mount Sinai after a ea ae -o4 a ee Ce ee a “cloud” appeared and covered it. Moses climbed the mount and disap- peared into “‘the midst of the cloud.” He was gone for forty days and forty nights while his people waited below (Exodus, Chapter 24). Mount Sinai is actually just a high and rugged hill, and we might ask how Moses managed to survive alone on its summit for more than a month without food. Perhaps there was more to that ‘‘cloud’’ than the children of Israel suspected. When Moses finally returned, he brought with him orders for the construction of an ark to be filled with gold artifacts and left as a token to the Lord. Among the instructions were directions for building a ‘mercy seat” of pure gold measuring 50 inches long and 30 inches wide. Gold plays an important part in many Bible stories and it also seems to have an interesting role in the UFO mystery. That ‘‘pillar of fire’ not only led the Israelites out of Egypt, it also intervened and protected them from the pursuing Egyptian army (Exodus, Chapter 14). But the most graphic account of all is detailed in the first chapter of Ezekiel and is so well known and so frequently quoted that we need only mention here that Ezekiel claimed an encounter with four strange beings who got out of some kind of flying object. ‘Their appearance,”’ he said, ‘‘was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps.” In a paper presented before the American Rocket Society on Novem- ber 15, 1962, Dr. Carl Sagan, a young Harvard astronomer, repeated xomie of Professor Agrest’s speculations and urged that ancient myths and legends be reexamined for possible clues to an early visit by an extrater- 62 / Operation Trojan Horse