Although this edition is late to press, there are some good reasons for that. Oh, sure, work at the College and at church "interferes" with the production of the Biblical Astronomer, but occasionally some geocentric projects do, too. This was one of those occasions.

The Biblical Astronomer has undertaken a new project. We have been given some seed money to develop a geocentric video, focusing on the motions of the sun and planets about the earth, the seasons, eclipses (see "Is the Shadow of the Moon Proof of Geocentricity" elsewhere in this issue), retrograde motions, etc. Furthermore, Pastor Paul Norwalt, who was a machinist before answering his call to the pastorate, independently planned to construct a geocentric orrery (a working model) based on the model presented as Figure 45 (page 342) in Geocentricity. He plans to have the model driven electronically, so we need an electronic engineer for that. With "cheap" CCDs readily available on a board, we could mount them at strategic points on the orrery to illustrate the aforementioned phenomena. We also have enlisted the aid of a mathematician proficient in Mathematica to construct animations using that software. Ultimately we shall need a scriptwriter and a narrator, so if any of you can help, we would appreciate it very much.

We continue our look at the size of the cosmos in this issue by printing David Lifschultz’s reply to "Spatial Measurement and Modern Science: Reply" which appeared on page 10 of issue number 91 of the Biblical Astronomer. In that article we examined the nature of parallax and the various geocentric models which may account for it. In the next installment we shall, D.V., look at the construction of the modern distance scale. The key assumptions hinge on whether or not the annual motions involve the stars or not. If the stars are centered on the earth, as in the Ptolemaic model, then parallax as a geometric phenomenon can only be due to the diameter of the earth. That places Alpha Centauri, the star with the largest known parallax, about 12 astronomical units away which is a bit further out than Saturn but not nearly as far away as Uranus, let alone Pluto. If this were true, then the whole space program, not to mention astronomy, must be a vast conspiracy! Now I am no great fan of conspiracy theories. I do not believe that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy to "get" the "most moral" couple in America, William Jefferson and Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example. No, not a word of it. It’s conspiracy advocates such as the Clinton apologists that will force me to vote for Howard Philips this fall. So I certainly don’t believe in a giant astronomical conspiracy.

If parallax is not geometric, then other explanations may come into play. Jim Hanson investigated one recently and concluded that all the stars would have to be exactly the same distance from earth. Hopefully he will report on his findings on the pages of this journal in the not-too-distant future.

In this issue we also present a paper submitted by Dick Elmendorf. In true Elmendorfian fashion, he tackles the motions of the sun about the earth with text and figures. If you have trouble visualizing what the motion of the sun and planets are, then this article is for you.

I disagree with two things in the paper. First, that the mass of the sun is so grossly uncertain with the veiled suggestion that the sun may be hollow. Second, I take issue with the low view of the King James translators work on Ecclesiastes 1:5-6. I will not comment other than to answer the question "why the translators used the word ‘wind’ instead of ‘spirit.’" Both the Hebrew-English diglots (two-language parallel Bibles) I’ve consulted use "wind" and put a period after verse 5 so that wind is the subject of verse 6. Since the King James translators had a man on the committee who could read the unpointed Hebrew at age five, and since all Europe was involved in reconstructing the Hebrew and Greek texts, I see no reason to doubt their accuracy. By using spirit and combining it with the masculine "his," the Douay-Rheims makes the abominable error of equating the spirit with a devil. Throughout both testaments, the human spirit and God’s Spirit are neuter whereas evil and unclean spirits are masculine unless a man is possessed with the spirit.