Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (257 page)

or the two 'men in shining garments', who appear in Luke (24)? Astronauts!

Or the angel in Matthew (28) with a face 'like lightning, and his raiment white as snow'? Another extraterrestrial being in a protective suit!

Or Jesus' saying: 'In my Father's house are many mansions'? That can only mean the innumerable inhabited planets in the universe.

Or Mark's assertion (13) about 'the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory'? It's obvious, the Supreme Commander is going to send his son in a spaceship.

Enough of that. The list could be continued with as many 'proofs' as you want.

This is the position I adopt:

1) We must believe the texts of the Gospels if we are going to infer alleged knowledge from them. For example, we must believe that Mary conceived Jesus immaculately, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and alighted on the Lord, and a voice came out of heaven, a gleaming white angel appeared at the tomb, Jesus actually did the deeds and spoke the words which were posthumously put into his mouth. Anyone who does not believe the texts literally, anyone who knows how 'God's word' originated, cannot accept the accounts as reality. Anyone who tries to deduce an 'astronaut Jesus' from the Gospels is committing the same error as judges who form and pronounce a verdict of guilty on the basis of forged documents. (As far as the Soviet citizen Saitsev is concerned, 'belief is a contradicto in adjecto!)

2) What is the astronaut Jesus supposed to have done on earth? To have brought a religion, Christian or moral precepts? He introduced nothing new. From a comparison of the gospels and the Qumran scrolls we know that the core of Jesus' teaching stems from the Essene community. His other contributions made no advance. It was not necessary to send out the cosmonaut Jesus in order to threaten men with punishment, to spread panic, to make hell the terminus for non-believers!

3) Interstellar space travellers would have operated according to a precise programme, but the helpers from the spaceship came too late to save their top man from death. If the astronaut Jesus had been able to count on the help of his brothers in the cosmos at the right moment (which he must have known about), he would not have spent his whole life speaking of his unavoidable death. If we imagine that space-travellers would have left their important special messenger in the lurch, we are really underestimating extraterrestrial beings.

4) Even if the resurrection were adduced as a proof, it would be absurd. Nevertheless, let us assume that the extraterrestrial visitors had succeeded in revivifying Jesus' corpse with their special advanced medical skills (blood banks, transplants etc.). Would they have missed the chance of a public demonstration of their powers over death itself? Only a few people, and they doubted, knew about the miracle of the resurrection. Would not extraterrestrial visitors who had achieved such a feat have taken Jesus straight back to Jerusalem to show him and let him preach there? Their impressive achievement would have remained unknown without a demonstration of their superior abilities. Besides, according