FROM THE JUNK HISTORY FILE:

If I may quote something I wrote in November:

One of the concepts we ancient historians take for granted, yet have immense difficulty getting across to laypeople, is that there is a large range of "theories" that we or our subspecialties agree to be quite impossible and not worth talking about (because they are obviously grossly flawed methodologically or the evidence put forth for them is obviously wrong or for various other reasons). There are lots of other theories that are somewhere between barely possible and quite likely, and it is this latter category of the possible that we spend so much time arguing about, while we tend to ignore the impossible theories except when, say, a crank manages to get them some media attention, in which case we say that they're impossible and the crank complains about ossified mainstream scholarship which can't appreciate his or her grand breakthrough.

The context was some comments on the "James Ossuary" inscription, which some real scholars still do think may be genuine. But here's an excellent example of a "quite impossible" theory that illustrates my point:

The History and Future of Israelite America -- Author Sets Out to Prove Israelites were Real Native Americans (PrimeZone Media Network press release)

GOODING, Idaho, Jan. 9, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- History teaches students that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas and Native Americans passed to North America via an ice bridge from Asia. This is all wrong, writes Walter Baucum, who believes the real natives of America are Israelites. In his new book, The History and Future of Israelite America (now available through 1stBooks), he shows readers that America was visited and settled by "lost tribes" of Israel well before American Indians.

"(I) boldly accuse America's historians and archeologists of mysteriously failing or deliberately refusing to teach these truths for centuries and point out how even our own government has bought into the farce that Asians are the 'native' Americans," Baucum says.

The History and Future of Israelite America rejects the idea that Columbus was the first European to reach America and embraces the idea of America's Israelite ancestors, from Abraham all the way to Noah's son, Shem, and Sumerians. Baucum shows "proof upon proof" that the continent was not "found by a few lost and shipwrecked seamen sailing the crosswinds and ocean currents of the world." Instead, it was a deliberate outpost for all the great empires that included trade, settlement and exploitation by countries from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Scandinavia for at least 3,000 years, he explains.

[...]

There's more here. Excerpt:

"Sumerians [were] a worldwide empire, with their influence found in many nations on the earth--the ancient Hebrew-Israelites were descended from Shem, from whom came the Sumerians--founders of early civilization--these Israelites carried on the Sumerian?s cultural and empire-building traditions, down through, and by right of, the Covenant Promise to Abraham, establishing empires and spreading the same culture to all corners of the globe."

"Many of the Phoenicians, Greeks, Libyans, Celtiberians, European Celts, and Scandinavian Norsemen who settled at various times in America were Israelites. That America is not only our land today, but also that we have a prior, more ancient claim to it by our Sumerian forebears, has become overwhelmingly evident by modern research."

"Our people came to this land as rulers, exploiters, and colonizers before Columbus. And they continued to come after Columbus as so-called New World colonists. America is our land by right of the Covenant Promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [Israel]. This is our past, as mapped out by both Biblical and secular history. It is our destiny as one of the two "Birthright" nations to preserve this ?original? knowledge."

"The aim of all learning should be to arrive at the truth, but once a paradigm has been established and bought into, such as "Columbus discovered America," the students can do little or nothing but agree with what their professors tell them. Thus the error is perpetuated with each successive generation."

"America is Israelite land, as proved by history, archaeology, serology, Amerindian tribal tradition, epigraphy, and, most of all, by inheritance and settlement. That the English-speaking people are Israelites seems evident in light of much research. We are the modern heirs of this land."

This is a weird amalgam of bits of history, theology, politics, and imagination, with an especially heavy dose of the last. The author has no training in the history, archaeology, languages, linguistics, and epigraphy of the numerous cultures he writes about, yet he thinks he can overturn centuries of work by serious scholars in many fields. It's hard to know where to begin: The Sumerians did not have a worldwide empire, Sumerian is unrelated to Hebrew, and both are unrelated to the European languages. None of these are related to the Native American languages. The use of the Bible is uncritical (Shem = Sumerians). As for children being taught that Columbus discovered America, if I recall correctly, I was taught that the first verified Europeans to reach North America were the Vikings, who arrived in the year 1000 and called it Vinland and that Amerigo Vespucci may have gotten there before Columbus too and that, in any case, at least he had some idea of what he'd found. Surely school children today are being taught the same thing. Archaeologists and epigraphers in various fields would have massive objections to this book too. But enough: you get the picture.