In these books, Alford argues that ancient religions were ‘cults of creation’ – i.e. cults whose primary aim was to celebrate and re-enact perpetually the myth of the creation of the Universe – and that the gods personified the cataclysmic powers of creation. And he demonstrates, beyond any doubt, that these ancient religions transmitted a profound legacy of creational and cataclysmic thought to modern-day Judaism and Christianity.

But Alford is no Velikovskian catastrophist. Rather, he suggests that the cataclysm of creation was a mythical event which dated to the beginning of time – little different in principle from the modern myth of the Big Bang. As far as human history is concerned, he calls only for the recognition of cometary and meteoritic phenomena as contributory factors to the development of man’s theories on the origins of the Universe. Thus has Alford carved out his own distinctive niche as a pioneering interpreter of ancient myth, religion and philosophy.