Gramps,
A friend in mine told me about a planet called Nibiru, in another solar system. Nibiru’s orbit supposedly passes through our solar system every so many thousand years, creating havoc with the orbits and rotations of our sun’s planets, including our own earth.  Some scientists surmise cataclysmic events as a result. Please tell me your thoughts about how this may relate to the destruction in America at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, and possible future events.
Michael, from Provo, Utah

Dear Michael,
Nibiru is an interesting planet. The word comes to us from the Sumerian culture. The Sumerians (~4000BC) named it as the 12th planet and called it the “planet of the crossing,” which may have to do with its highly elliptical orbit. That the Sumerians could name and identify all of our known planets, and another for which scientific evidence is just now appearing, produces many questions. Yet there is much evidence that our solar system has had a stormy history and that the ancients had very detailed knowledge of the heavens that was later lost and has been, and apparently is still being, rediscovered.
Here are just a few of the facts from ancient cultures that reveal both a knowledge of, and the stormy history of, the heavens. From ancient Egyptian writings, and from at least one other culture, we have the statement, “The new sun rises in the east. The old sun rose in the west.” There is much evidence that the earth has shifted on its axis many times.
1) Sedimentary deposits that have drifted to the ocean floor contain magnetic components. In 1946, as I recall, a core was drawn up from the abysmal depths of the Atlantic Ocean. By measuring the direction of the magnetic field along the core it was determined that the earth has shifted on its axis 167 times, and that the last shift was in historic times. Opposing polar orientations have also been deduced from the opposing magnetic orientations of different lava flows lying on top of one another.
2) Mammoths have been found both in Siberia and Alaska frozen to death with tropical flowers in their mouths–a stark evidence of a sudden shift in the earth’s’ axis in relatively recent times. The flesh on some of these animals is still intact, to the extent that it has been eaten by the dogs accompanying those who have explored the sites.
3) Ancient literature speaks of the “horns of Venus.” This means that Venus was at one time close enough to the earth to be seen as a crescent, since it is closer to the sun than the earth. Further, ancient astrologers wrote of three major planets, and from the description of their positions we know them to be Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. Around 1550 BC a forth major planet began to appear in astrological literature. From the description of its position we know it to be the planet Venus. So Venus is a recent newcomer to the solar system.
4) Mars, the red planet, was also known anciently as the god of war, and as the angry planet. There is astronomical evidence from early writings that sometime after Venus entered the solar system it disturbed the orbit of Mars, which in about 730 BC made some passes relatively near the earth that disturbed the period of the orbit of the moon around the earth. Before that time the moon had a 36-day orbit. Around 730 BC, the lunar calendar no longer matched the lunar orbit, which caused much consternation. The Romans developed a calendar that they claim was developed by Romulus, who founded of Rome in about 753 BC. This was a lunar calendar consisting of ten 36-day months. The last four months were named September, October, November and December–Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth. Following the disturbing of the orbit of the moon the calendar was changed by the Greeks a number of times, in order to correlate it with the new lunar orbit. An early version of the Roman calendar year lasted 304 days divided into ten months of 30 and 31 days, and there were about 61 days of winter that did not fall within the calendar. This highly inaccurate calendar was adjusted many times during the Greek period. Finally, in 46 BC, Julius Caesar authorized a new calendar with 12 months in the year to correspond with the lunar orbit. Caesar added two new months to be placed in the middle of the year, and named them Julius and Augustus–July and August. This is known as the Julian calendar. It was replaced in 1582 by the more accurate Gregorian calendar.
Now to the planet, Nibiru—
An astronomical body correlating with much of the legendary accounts of the planet Nibiru was first observed in 1983 by IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite). It was first observed by the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California on Oct. 21, 2003. This planet, estimated to be two to three times the diameter of the earth, has a highly elliptical orbit, extending from a distance from the sun at aphelion of approximately 2000AU (one astronomical unit is the distance of the earth from the sun, or 93,000,000 miles) to only 5AU at perihelion. Thus, at perihelion the planet would pass between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The orbital period has been calculated as approximately 3784 years. The last aphelion of the planet is estimated from historical data to have been around 160 BC. So it is possible that it could have perturbed the earth near the time of Christ.
Gramps