Book Review Unleashing Yahweh: Ezekiel and the Northern Lights

By George Siscoe

2023, Maine Authors Publishing, Thomaston, Maine, USA, 195pp.

ISBN-10 1633813533, ISBN-13 978-1633813533

There have been a number of writings discussing and attributing to aurora the bizarre visions in the sky reported by Ezekiel as he sat in exile in Babylonia in about 590 BCE.

The extensive multi-decade study of Ezekiel, of mid-eastern history, and of solar and geophysical processes by George Siscoe (American Geophysical Union Fellow; former professor and department head of atmospheric sciences at UCLA; former research professor at Boston University, USA) has resulted in this fascinating posthumous publication of his scholarship.

From 2008 to his passing in March 2022, George founded and operated the unique Old Professor’s Bookshop in Belfast, Maine, USA. The book shop and its holdings reflected George’s far-ranging reading and scholarship in the sciences and humanities. And it provided the opportunity to bring to fruition his lengthy studies of solar and geophysical processes at the time of Ezekiel’s visions. Nancy Crooker, George’s wife and also an AGU Fellow in her own right, thankfully saw the book through the publication process after George’s death. Over the years I had the opportunity to discuss with George his ongoing Ezekiel studies, including many visits to his bookshop. I highly recommend this book for its thorough examinations of solar-terrestrial physical phenomena over the millennia, and for the interwoven discussions of mid-eastern history. Of especial interest are George’s conclusions of how the auroral visions apparently solidified the concept by Ezekiel of monotheism, in contrast to the 100 or more location-specific gods that existed in the mideast in Ezekiel’s time.