Wonders of the Bible
The Bible, a great moral arbiter of today’s world, was set down by various hands between about 1400 BC and 95 AD, with a lengthy gap between 450 BC and the last half of the first century AD, during which little or no writing was done. (The gap is accounted for by a natural pause between the two books of the Bible, and known-world political upheaval caused by Alexander.) As empires of the period waxed and waned, the Bible’s authors attempted to codify acceptable human behavior. Along the way, provocative descriptions of skyborne objects and wondrous creatures appear in many Books. Genesis, for instance, talks of the Nephilim: fallen angels, according to some interpretations, or perhaps the offspring of fallen angels and humans. Pillars of clouds and pillars of fire appear in Exodus, suggesting, to some, the landings and departures of extraterrestrial spacecraft. More clouds and flames appear in various Psalms.
A gout of flame that engulfs a sacrificial offering in Leviticus has been interpreted as alien high-tech, a heat ray or similar device. Similarly, a defiant Elijah and fifty of his men are “consumed” when “the fire of God fell from heaven” in 2 Kings. In the same Book, Elijah is lifted to heaven in “a chariot of fire,” suggestive to some latter-day interpreters of a visit to a spaceship or even an alien abduction. Some translations use the word “chariots” as well as the singular “chariot,” as if Elijah witnesses a mother ship and subsidiary craft.
Deuteronomy talks of the giant Og and “strong and tall” people called the Anakites. Some readings of the latter race describe the beings as “elongated”— to some minds, an alien physiognomy.
The Book of Isaiah describes “chariots,” a “whirlwind,” and other seemingly inexplicable upsets to the natural world, and the physical descent of (as some readers see things) mortal aliens that became worshipped as gods. Zechariah mentions “a flying scroll, thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide (5:1-2)— suggestive to some of the classic cigar-shaped UFO. Although verses three and four suggest that the scroll contains the Ten Commandments, some argue that “scroll” was Zechariah’s best available word with which to describe a ship.
But ancient Hebrew was rich language that translates well into modern Hebrew and modern English. In an instructive 2013 exercise, biblical scholar Michael S. Heisman examined the ancient Hebrew language to demonstrate a biblical writer’s ability to accurately describe a UFO in then-contemporary terms, without recourse to words that (to some) open themselves up to controversial latter-day interpretation. (By using the word “scroll,” for instance, Zechariah meant . . . a scroll.) Dr. Heisman found—and explicated—Hebrew equivalents for “round” and “disk”; “metallic” and “silver”; “bright,” “shining,” and “burning”; “black”; and a straight line, or “side.”
Ezekiel contains many passages seized upon by UFOlogists and others holding a keen interest in extraterrestrial beings and unfathomable alien power. The “four living creatures” that assume center stage in 1:4-10 have faces unlike those of humans, which has allowed an extraterrestrial interpretation. The Book’s repeated mention of “wheels” suggests alien technology to some. Likewise, “chrysolite,” a blanket word for any number of semiprecious stones with which Ezekiel would have been familiar, is cited by some UFOlogists as Ezekiel’s inadequate attempt to describe shininess and smoothness—such as the skin of a spaceship. The hotly glowing “figure like that of man” (8:2) means “angel” to some and “alien” to others. Later in Ezekiel, oddly featured “cherubim” appear on fabulous platforms showing wheels within wheels, and abilities to move easily in any direction. Surely, some feel, the words refer to advanced technology. But when Ezekiel wrote “wheels,” wheels are what he meant. Some scholars suggest that “wheels within wheels” refers to wheels and their hubs.
Others focus on the significance of the wheels themselves, specifically, that thrones of the ancient world often rolled on wheels. Thrones with wheels are depicted in art from numerous ancient cultures. The notion was well known when the Book of Ezekiel was written; a unique sort of wheel, then, might metaphorically suggest the uniqueness of God’s throne, and the unfathomable extent of his power.
In the New Testament, Jesus’s Ascension in Acts 1:8-11 is observed by “two men dressed in white.” Not surprisingly, many UFOlogists are excited by those men, regarding them as emissaries from an alien ship, and thus essential parts of the Resurrection narrative. They are present as Jesus ascends into a spaceship, and it is from a spaceship that Jesus will return—a notion seized upon by numerous quasi-religious UFO cults (as we will see in chapter fourteen).
The symbolic visions that comprise the Bible’s last Book, Revelation, are the climax to the end of life on Earth, a final battle that comes as a response to the opposing poles—good and evil, Yahweh (God) and Belial (Satan)—that dominate human affairs. So intense does the tug of war for human souls become that all must be violently swept away, so that affairs on Earth may begin afresh later. Many things from earlier in the Bible that are often tied to UFOs recur in Revelation, including clouds, fire, angels, chariots, and horsemen. The book is among the best-written in the Bible; indeed, its imagery is frequently breathtaking. As religious-based literature, Revelation may have had no equal until Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (written in the early 14th century as the first part of the author’s Divine Comedy).
Revelation pulses with strange beasts and demons; earthquakes, tidal waves, gigantic hailstones, and other violent natural upheavals; murder; famine and plague; deadly heat; agonizing boils and other sores; terrifying changes to the sun, Moon, and stars; peculiar numerology; Death personified; and a river of blood coursing 180 miles. It even describes “three foul spirits like frogs” central to Revelation 16: 12-21, and suggestive to some UFOlogists as a description of the aliens that we now categorize as grays.