The Ancient Alien Question (10 page)

¹⁴
And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.

¹⁵
Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.

¹⁶
The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the color of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

The vision is one of seven Ezekiel had throughout a 22-year period, from about 593 to 571
BC
. Ezekiel had been deported by King Nebuchadnezzar in circa 597
BC
to Babylon when he was about 25 years old. He lived in the village of Tel-Abib on the River of Chebar in Chaldea and had been a Temple priest in Jerusalem. All of his visions occurred when Ezekiel was in exile, with his first vision occurring at the age of roughly 35.

What Ezekiel saw in his visions has remained a subject of intense speculation. Astrologers have claimed to understand the vision as a representation of the zodiac, which they see enforced by the mention of a wheel. The faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle are interpreted as being linked with the fixed signs of the zodiac. But what to make then of the whirlwinds or the creatures that materialized as a flash of lightning, which are clearly not typical of the zodiac? These were precisely the details that inspired Erich von Däniken to include the story of Ezekiel in his book as evidence of possible alien encounters in the Bible.

Josef Blumrich had received a copy of
Chariots of the Gods
while working as a NASA engineer at the Marshfield Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He decided to use his 40 years of aerospace engineering knowledge, which included work on Skylab and the space shuttle, to explain how von Däniken had it wrong—for it was clear that the Swiss hotelier had no expertise in the subject area. “It was all rubbish,” Blumrich wrote:

From the wealth of material supplied by von Däniken, I found, when I came to the description of the technical characteristics of Ezekiel’s vision, a territory in which I could join in the conversation, so to speak, as I have spent most of my life in the construction and planning of aircraft and rockets. So I got a Bible to read the complete text, feeling sure that I would refute and annihilate Däniken in a few minutes.
¹

It didn’t quite work out that way. From reading the very first chapter, Blumrich began to change his mind.

In his 1973 book,
The Spaceship of Ezekiel
, Blumrich describes how the main body of the spaceship was shaped like an ice cream cone: “It is a rather wide cone with some inward curves—and that main body is carried by four helicopter units.” In 1964, Roger Anderson, an engineer of the Langley Research Center in Norfolk, Va., had designed a vehicle with a similar configuration. Anderson had drawn this type of craft because he had been asked to design a vehicle that could make entries into planetary atmospheres.

What he achieved was a series of technical drawings, which suggested that Ezekiel had indeed seen a spaceship. Blumrich concluded that the ship Ezekiel had described was almost possible to construct with present-day technology, and that its shape was largely similar to a
Gemini
or
Apollo
capsule, with the addition of helicopter-like devices to control flight. From his interpretation of the Book of Ezekiel, Blumrich concluded that Ezekiel flew at least three, if not four times, inside this craft.

There is a 20-year gap between Ezekiel’s third and fourth encounter, in which he is taken to a temple, which most commentators identify as the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. However, it is clear that Ezekiel was intimately familiar with that temple, yet in his vision does not recognize it. Furthermore, some details of the setting of this temple do not match the landscape of Jerusalem. Von Däniken is among those who have proposed that Ezekiel was actually taken to a site known as Chavin de Huantar, in northern Peru, whose measurements and location do correspond with Ezekiel’s description. Of course, the most important observation is that it doesn’t matter where Ezekiel was taken; that he might have flown with unknown pilots to
any
location is the clincher.

Of equal note for the Ancient Alien Question is that Ezekiel took hundreds of precise measurements of the temple he saw in his vision, which the German engineer Hans-Herbert Beier used to make a detailed model. His conclusion, when incorporating the work of Blumrich, was that the temple was a purely technical construction, to accommodate the housing of the spaceship for maintenance. He believes it was in this “temple” that the nuclear reactor of the spaceship was maintained, and points to Ezekiel’s description of the workers wearing protective clothing, as well as the procedures used in replacing the fuel elements of the craft.

Historian Walter Webb has created a modern interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision, which, as he describes it, “is a free, imaginative interpretation and as such is purely speculative.”
²
This is his reading of the story: Sitting next to the river Chebar in circa 593
BC
, Ezekiel saw a bright, fiery cloud of amber color coming out of the north. As it drew closer, he saw four disk-shaped objects, which he described as “wheels,” at least one of which landed near Ezekiel. Four humanoid creatures came out of the craft, each apparently having four “wings,” which could have been a device strapped to their back. The devices enabled the creatures to move about rapidly (“and the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning”). That the wings were some type of device is suggested by Ezekiel’s description that “when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great water.” He saw a throne above the ship—a dome-like structure with a pilot’s seat?—with the “likeness of a man” seated in it. This frightened Ezekiel so much that he fell on his face. A voice emanated from the ship telling him to get up. He was then taken aboard the ship and heard the “noise of the wheels...and a noise of great rushing” and was carried to Tel Abib, where his fellow exiles lived and where he sat “astonished among them seven days.”

Could the “visions” of Ezekiel, which some scientists have argued might be due to temporal lobe epilepsy, be real? That idea is precisely the conclusion reached by Blumrich, a man
of science. He is absolutely convinced that what happened to Ezekiel was physically real: He was taken onboard a spaceship, and what he described in his vision were technical details that we are only able to interpret correctly because by the second half of the 20th century, we had the proper framework: the capability to build spaceships.

Giants and Hybrids

One of the most intriguing references in the Bible, at least when it comes to anomalous sightings, is
chapter 6
of the Book of Genesis, with its references to “giants,” which are clearly nonhuman, but somehow were able to sexually liaise with human women.

¹
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

²
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

³
And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

⁴
There were giants [Nephilim] in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

This is the very passage that set Sitchin on his quest, and it is indeed one of the truly enigmatic passages of the Bible. Taken literally, the Bible states that in those days there were giants on our planet, and it was also at that time that the “sons of God”
introduced themselves to “the daughters of men,” and had children with them. It clearly reads that this was a meeting of two species, the “sons of God” being clearly not human, but somehow able to create offspring with humans.

The Nephilim are sometimes translated as “giants,” sometimes as “fallen,” and are therefore sometimes identified as the fallen angels. The story goes that when Lucifer rebelled against God, he was allowed by God to take up residence on Earth and many other angels followed. The Nephilim were present on Earth before the Flood, and one interpretation suggests that God caused the Flood to rid the Earth of the Nephilim, as well as the hybrid creatures the “sons of God” had created with humankind. However, the Bible also suggests that the Nephilim were present on Earth after the Flood.

The translation of
Nephilim
as “giants” comes from the Greek Old Testament, where
Nephilim
was rendered as “gegantes,” which looks like
giants
, but would actually be
Titans
. Not coincidentally, the titans were the supernaturally powerful offspring of the union of gods and humans.

The union of “sons of Gods” and women is indeed not unique to the Hebrew Bible. There are hundreds of examples in Greek mythology of a Greek god falling madly in love with a woman. Zeus, the king of the Greek pantheon, married six times and had numerous affairs with mortal women, including Semele, the outcome of which was the famous Dionysus. Another of Zeus’s divine affairs was with Alcmene, resulting in the birth of Hercules. According to Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
, her labor lasted seven days and she had great difficulty giving birth to such a large child.

The Greek myths are usually taken as allegorical, whereas the Bible is often used for more literal interpretations. The Nephilim, as “fallen,” have been identified with the Greek Grigori, or the Watchers of Book of Enoch fame, and have led scholars to argue that the Nephilim/Watchers/Grigori/sons of God are fallen
angels—otherworldly creatures that ended up living on planet Earth after a dispute with God (or someone who went down on paper as God, but might not have been the Almighty).

There are other interpretations of this passage, such as the one held by St. Augustine in the fourth century, which argued that “sons of God” referred to the line of Seth, while “daughters of men” referred to the line of Cain—two biblical patriarchs. Still others interpret “sons of God” as meaning a line of priests—men in the service of God.

Other parts of the Bible also suggest there were indeed giants living on the Earth. Genesis 14 and Deuteronomy 2 speak of two tribes, the Rephaim and the Anakim. The Anakim were directly connected with the Nephilim, and were said to be descended from a giant named Anak. In Numbers 13:33, it is said that this tribe was so tall that spies who were sent in felt like “grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” Moses is said to have killed Og, king of the Rephaim and “the last of the remnant of the giants,” according to Deuteronomy 3. Og had a bed nine cubits long, which, depending on which cubit was used, measured between 13.5 and 15.5 feet. And we are all familiar with the story of David fighting Goliath, who was about 9 feet tall. In 2 Samuel 21:20 and 1 Chronicles 20:6 we read of “still another battle, which took place at Gath,” where “there was a huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot—twenty-four in all,” showing that these giants were clearly described as being largely human, but having a much larger size, plus extra fingers and toes. But the giants were clearly of flesh and blood, as many episodes of the Old Testament detail how the Israelites came upon many of these giants in Canaan and killed most of them, thus claiming the land of Israel as their own.

In isolation, the passage from Genesis 6 could indeed mean anything, and could be interpreted literally or symbolically. But placed in a larger context, it is clear that references to nonhuman or superhuman creatures breeding with human women is
a common theme throughout many myths and legends. One can argue that all of these should be seen in a symbolic manner, but it is equally valid to argue that they should be interpreted literally.

Biblical Longevity

One of the more intriguing aspects of the Bible is the list of prediluvian patriarchs and their ages. Methuselah, for example, was said to have lived to the impressive age of 969 years, though “the First Man,” Adam, lived for a solid 930 years—respectable for any prototype.

Detailed recordkeeping of people’s dates of birth and death is a relatively recent—and still largely Western—practice. But from the available records, it is clear that humankind’s age limit seems to lie somewhere between 115 and 120 years—however few attain it. The oldest attested person on record is the French Jeanne Calment, who lived to be 122 years and 164 days, born as she was on February 21, 1875, and dying on August 4, 1997. Interestingly, this outside limit is on par with what is said in Genesis 6:3, “his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.”

The list of biblical patriarchs as given in Genesis 5 goes as follows:

Adam: 930 years; begetting a son at the age of 130.