Biblical UFOs, Abductions & Ancient Astronauts: Part Three

Nearly all of us are familiar to a greater or lesser extent with the concept of ‘ancient astronauts’ – extraterrestrials that influenced human history many millennia ago. Evidence is cited from around the world, and draws on mythology, religion, out of place artefacts, artistic works, and the construction of various monumental megaliths that modern society and modern engineering would be hard pressed to reconstruct. It shouldn’t be surprising that a small fraction of that evidence has been culled from the Bible. You won’t hear this preached in church!

I have long maintained that God and the gods were not totally imaginary, but not supernatural either, rather extraterrestrials (ET). What ET is known for today, among other things, are not only those UFO encounters of the first, second and third kind, but those alleged abductions of humans for various purposes – close encounters of the fourth kind. Perhaps as it is now, so it was back in Biblical times.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

CHARIOTS

Chariots are an obvious choice as something associated with UFOs, especially given Erich Von Daniken’s best seller “Chariots of the Gods”. Most chariots in the Bible are clearly your standard horse-drawn ground vehicle. Of course there are exceptions.

2 Kings 2:11: And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

*I repeat this famous passage to illustrate the association of a chariot with an up, up and away whirlwind.

Psalm 104:3: Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind.

*I repeat this verse to indicate the cloud-chariot connection as well as the other aerial connection of walking-wings-wind.

Jeremiah 4:13: Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind: his horses are swifter than eagles.

*I repeat this verse to point out the connection of a chariot with both the whirlwind and clouds. The horses are given an aerial connection being compared to eagles, all the more obvious since the “he” in question is ascending.

Isaiah 66:15: For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.

*We note the association with the whirlwind; the implication that the chariots are airborne.

Zechariah 6:1: And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.

Zechariah 6:2: In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses.

Zechariah 6:3: And in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses.

*Zechariah must have been puffing on the good stuff. The four chariots appear to be aerial coming out from between two mountains, mountains that were made of brass – WTF? Further, all the horses aren’t pulling the chariots; they are “in” the chariots!

FLYING ROLLS

And whatever are we to make of this incident?  Is he doing some more puffing on the weed perhaps? What transpires in Zechariah is hardly an incident that anyone would suggest is an alien abduction, nor is there a cloud noted, but it’s still obviously a close encounter of the third kind.

Zechariah 5:1: Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a flying roll.

Zechariah 5:2: And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I answered, I see a flying roll; the length thereof is twenty cubits, and the breadth thereof ten cubits.

*A “flying roll” is a near perfect description for a standard disc-shaped UFO. Now a cubit is roughly equal to 18 to 22 inches, so let’s call it 20 inches even. That makes the “flying roll” 400 inches in length and 200 inches in breadth, or a bit over 33 feet in length and a bit over 16.5 feet in breadth. That’s pretty good ballpark figures when compared to your average run-of-the-mill modern UFO sighting.

Zechariah 5:9: Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven.

*These winged females are not identified in any shape, manner or form as being angels. In fact they aren’t identified as anything at all, except winged females.

WINGED HUMANOIDS

While non-human entities in the Bible aren’t depicted with green skin, or pointed ears or antenna or oozing slime or hoisting ray-guns, there are certainly some out-of-this-world creatures in the Bible. The most notable of these are the winged beings called the Cherubim and the Seraphim. [Note: despite popular depictions, angels aren’t winged.]  

Exodus 25:20: And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high.

2 Chronicles 3:13: The wings of these cherubims spread themselves forth twenty cubits: and they stood on their feet, and their faces were inward.

Isaiah 6:2: Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

JESUS, THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL

John 8:23: And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.

*Though one could put this statement in a supernatural context, one could just as easily interpret this as having an extraterrestrial context.

So there you have it. This is by no means an exhaustive list of relatively suggestive close encounters as related in the Bible. For more of same, see my further suggested reading list immediately below.

Further readings: While dozens of books on ‘ancient astronauts’ and UFOs will discuss the more famous of the Biblical UFO events, there’s more to Biblical UFOs than just The Star of Bethlehem and the Wheel of Ezekiel.

Blumrich, Josef F.; The Spaceships of Ezekiel; Bantam, New York; 1974:

Dean, John W.; Flying Saucers and the Scriptures; Vantage Press, New York; 1964:

Downing, Barry H.; The Bible & Flying Saucers; Avon, New York; 1968:

Jessup, Morris K; UFO and the Bible; Citadel Press, New York; 1956:

Leonard, R.; Flying Saucers, Ancient Writings and the Bible; Exposition Press, New York; 1969:

Extraterrestrial Angels: Part Two

My philosophy tends to be that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out what that hidden needle-in-a-haystack reality might be without access to the actual needle. Take the case of angels. I think a better reality would have them as angelic extraterrestrials relative to the mythological ‘winged’ entities that really aren’t represented as such (winged, that is) in the Bible and similar texts.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

One of the numerous aspects dealing with angels is that they have a hierarchy – not all angels are equal in rank and status.

From the First Sphere come the Seraphim. You have apparently someone called the Metatron, an angel who acts as the ‘voice of God’, a scribe, and is the tallest and greatest of the lot. ‘He’s’ sort of the chief cook and bottle washer in Heaven’s highest level.

From the Second Sphere you have the governor or watcher angels who, well, as your typically obedient angels just sort of watch over humanity in general. However, disguised as men, they associated with humans in an all too human manner. According to Enoch, and Genesis 6,  those “sons of God” or “sons of Heaven”  (angels) got a tad horny and mated with human females (the “daughters of men”) producing the Nephilim, those giants back on the Earth in those ancient days! Perhaps the watcher angels watched a tad more closely than they should have! Could an angel really be a ‘peeping Tom’?

Lastly, from the Third Sphere, those messenger and battle ready angels. The best known of the lot are the archangels who are very high-ranking angels indeed, starting with Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, but followed by Uriel, Simiel, Orifiel and Zachariel.

Then there are the ‘fallen angels’ who were court-martialed and stripped of their status and rank. They play no real role in this discussion and thus are of no further concern to us.

Now not all monotheistic religious denominations embrace or adopt all of the above hierarchy. Maybe there should be a theological equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle well known in quantum physics. Let’s call it by a rather unimaginative phrase the ‘Religious Uncertainty Principle’. That’s a truism in that no two monotheistic religious denominations agree on everything which alone makes supernatural theology a bit suspect considering the alleged importance of a supernatural deity.  

In fact, you’d think the deity in question, and we all know who I’m referring to here (three letters starting with ‘G’), would take steps to clarify things. I mean if there are a dozen biographies written about you out there for sale on the market, and they all differ in key details about your life, wouldn’t you go ‘on the record’ and sort things out? 

Anyway, the upshot is that angels have a hierarchy and ranks and various jobs and responsibilities which are the sorts of things you’d expect if angels were really crew on an ET vessel that came to Earth a few thousand years ago. The parallel with crewing any navy ship or those spaceships depicted in “Star Trek” are clear-cut.    

Now what about the cherubim (mentioned above) that are depicted in the Bible; depicted with wings?

The cherubim (singular is cherub) are actually Assyrian in origin. They were depicted as enormous eagle-winged beings with the bodies of lions though usually with human heads (lammasu) or human heads and the bodies of bulls (shedu). Even though they were depicted as guardians, they don’t sound very Biblically angelic to me! However, it was these beasties, a composite of some things human and wings that morphed into the stereotyped image of an angel. However, cherubim are named as such in the Bible and the image is anything but traditionally angelic. 

They seemed however to have shape-shifted from their Assyrian image just a bit and taken on a different persona in the Bible, especially prominent in the Old Testament.

The definitive book in the Bible on cherubim is the Book of Ezekiel, mainly the first and tenth chapter. The prophet Ezekiel describes cherubim as a tetrad of living creatures, each having four faces: of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. They are said to have the stature and hands of a man, feet of a calf, and four wings each. Two of the wings extended upward, while the other two stretched downward and covered the creatures themselves. In the Christian New Testament similar beings are mentioned in the fourth chapter of the Book of Revelation. Just to further distance cherubim from traditional angels, the cherubim’s wings are multi-eyed – no doubt that’s all the better to see you with I guess.

If you check out Chapter Six of 1 Kings (King James Version), you’ll find that cherubs have a wingspan of 10 cubits, and a height of 10 cubits, at least I gather that must be their real life size since Solomon manufactured two of them, I assume on a one-to-one scale. The whole story is repeated in the third chapter of 2 Chronicles by the way. Now a cubit is roughly 18 to 22 inches; say 20 inches on average. So our model cherub is 200 inches tall; ditto the wingspan. That’s a tad over 16 ½ feet! Well, the Assyrians did say their versions were enormous!

You’ll also find several references to someone hitching a ride on a flying cherub (2 Samuel 22:11 and Psalm 18:10). At over 16 feet, well that sounds plausible.

Somewhat related are the Seraphim, but instead of four wings they have six wings (Isaiah 6:2). That’s again rather un-angelic appearing. I’ve mentioned one already, Metatron; the other suspect is called Seraphiel, who apparently had the head of an eagle (akin perhaps to the Egyptian god Horus who had a falcon head placed on a human body or Seker with a hawk’s head or Thoth who had the head of an ibis). Apparently there are two more Seraphim as well, and all four keep God in good company 24/7. Nice work if you can get it!

I think we can agree that there is no similarity between your ingrained image of a Biblical angel (with or without wings) and the cherubim.

Relation between fairies and cherubim:  In modern English the word cherub is sometimes used for what are strictly putti, baby or toddler angels, or winged children in fact, mainly shown in works of art. Sort of like our current images of Eros or Cupid but without the bow and arrows! So we have another shape-shift and another quite different persona from that in the Bible or Assyria. In this case the cherubs appear to have some sort of kinship with the fairy-folk. Check out images of fairies and they are, though not childlike, tend to be small and winged.

Then there are ‘guardian angels’. However, IMHO, the concept of a ‘guardian angel’ is seriously flawed. First off, if we each have a ‘guarding angel’ looking over us, and as the human population keeps doing it’s “be fruitful and multiply” bit, where do all the ever required additional ‘guardian angels’ come from? Do they just materialise out of thin air? And secondly, if they exist, then they are doing a lousy piss-weak job of being a true guardian. I mean you still have bad luck, misfortunes, failures, accidents, illnesses and you still ultimately end up kicking-the-bucket. If a child of two say dies of cancer (or for any other reason), do the parents really believe there was a so-called ‘guardian angel’ looking after their kid? Do you believe it?  

Conclusions: The traditional images of your typical run-of-the-mill angel are as phoney as a three-dollar bill. That’s because despite the multi-thousands of depictions available on the market that you can consult, they do not agree with what should be the ultimate image source – the Bible. So, though the Bible is a mythological mountain, there’s still that damn really real molehill to be accounted for. So, we have wingless angels. If you don’t care for that molehill (and probably extraterrestrial) accounting, then be prepared to explain how angels can go up-the-down-staircase (and vice versa) without wings – well maybe they hitched rides on the cherubim! Then again, maybe not as that’s just too Monty Python for comfort. Aerial vehicles in a time when there aren’t (or shouldn’t be) aerial vehicles are a plausible (extraterrestrial) alternative.   

Anything humanoid with wings (cherubim or fairies or related) is clearly a mythological mountain with more likely as not an extraterrestrial molehill hiding behind that mythological mountain. Supernatural just doesn’t cut the mustard.

And so-called ‘guardian angels’ are just wishful thinking. There’s no reference to them at all in the King James Version of the Bible. In fact, the word “guardian” doesn’t rate a mention. While some angels as depicted in the Bible allegedly look after selected individuals at selected times at the behest of God, that’s a far cry from the belief that God sends an angelic spirit to watch over every individual 24/7. In fact the concept of guardian angels isn’t consistently believed or upheld in Christian thought as an article of any sort of faith.

Finally we see some commonalities between the polytheistic religions of ancient Egypt (bird-headed humanoids), ancient Greece and Rome (cherubs like Cupid/Eros), the ancient Assyrians (cherubim) and the wee-folk (fairies) of the pagan Celtic religions, all with the monotheistic Bible. People who put their religious money on monotheism, based on say the Bible, obviously also believe that polytheism is pure mythology. Monotheism is factual reality; polytheism is pure fiction. Yet, those who profess the reality of monotheism based on the Bible, had better think twice about polytheism, as that very book confirms the factual reality of polytheism as well. As demonstrated here, if you believe one you have to accept the other. Of course all this monotheistic versus polytheistic bullshit can be unified by resorting to a terrestrial presence of a multiracial or more likely as not multi-species of extraterrestrials.  

Extraterrestrial Angels: Part One

My philosophy tends to be that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out what that hidden needle-in-a-haystack reality might be without access to the actual needle. Take the case of angels. I think a better reality would have them as angelic extraterrestrials relative to the mythological ‘winged’ entities that really aren’t represented as such (winged, that is) in the Bible and similar texts.

It’s been recently reported in, the “Huffington Post” on the 23rd of December 2011, for example, that nearly eight out of ten Americans believe in the reality of, the actual physical 3-D existence of Biblical angels (no doubt winged and all – the traditional image). Presumably that polling result would also apply to similar monotheistic countries like those in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and much of Europe (as well as other locations).

To be perfectly honest, in the here and now, there’s equal rational, based on images, texts and traditions, to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and even “The (Curse of the) Mummy”. But I digress, so anyway, back to belief in angels.

Now belief doesn’t of necessity make it so, but it does require some logical explanation(s).

Well, the obvious visibility of angelic beings isn’t one of those logical explanations. They might exist in the here and now, but reported sightings recorded in the press or in police records, photographs and films, interviews with them on chat shows, add up to one big bugger all zilch.

You’d think that maybe the religious higher ups, those with real influence with the Big Man upstairs, could arrange for an actual angel to give a sermon or a guest lecture at a theological course. Well, maybe angels are just really shy.

A more likely explanation is their presumed reality; images of what was but no longer is, has been passed down from generation to generation, orally and in texts, from parents to children, lecturers to students, religious officials to their sheep, oops, sorry, their flocks or congregations

After a hundred generations of this angel reality regurgitation, everything is in a right royal muddle, but you believe because you put your trust in high authority who believes, just as those higher authorities who you trust, in turn trusted in the beliefs of the generation of high authority figures before them.

Maybe the traditional image of angels is wrong. Maybe they are here but it’s the image that’s all wrong and so even if you do see and maybe film one you’re none the wiser; you haven’t a clue.

 If you see angels depicted by actors in the movies or on TV shows or in staged productions, in kiddie  plays, as little girls (especially) dressing up as make-believe angels, in manger scenes, on Xmas cards, in religious artworks, images in books or on angel-themed calendars, well what do you see?

Well, angels are white – Caucasians only need apply for the part, and even though that’s not really politically correct anymore, we’ll let that observation slide. Also angels are male, though I gather they are really asexual, androgynous or transgender beings. But the really big giveaway is of course they have WINGS!

Now if someone tells you about their guardian angel that flutters over them with their large wings, you know they have been smoking (or drinking) the good stuff or adding magic mushrooms to their Irish stew, chicken pot pie, or pizza. Why? Because traditional Biblical angels do not have wings! Oops! And another one bites the dust! 

On what authority you may ask do I rely on such that I can make such a blasphemous statement. Well, I cannot find any association between angels and wings in the Bible, at least the King James Version, presumably the authority on the matter of what traditional angels look like.

You have in the Bible flying (winged) serpents and flying eagles and flying creeping things and flying birds and flying fowl but no flying angels. That’s despite the thousands, indeed tens of thousands of images in Biblical illustrations, paintings, stained glass windows, Xmas cards, films – you name the visual; the angels will more than likely as not have wings. Wrong!

In the Bible we have angels ascending and descending; they come and they go; they carry things. But we do not have Biblical angels described with wings. My online search brought up 70 references to variations on the word “wing#” in the King James Version of the Bible. There were 283 hits on variations to “angel#”. There were zero, zip, zilch matches for angel# AND wing#. The holy angels in the Bible, where they appear, are always described as men (or transgender beings) without wings. Only cherubim have wings in the Bible, but cherubim are not called angels in the Bible. I’ll have more to say about cherubim later on.

So angels with wings are a human invention, which might have been a logical assumption 2000 years ago. Why? Because angels were messengers – postmen – between the Big Boss upstairs and the common folk downstairs – we humans that is. Angels are forever ascending and descending. How else do you go from upstairs to downstairs and upstairs again without a staircase or ladder? You have to fly of course and for that you must have wings, sort of like that father and son duo from Greek mythology, Daedalus and Icarus (the concept of Superman not being yet in vogue). It’s obvious since there is no ladder, no going up the down staircase or down the up staircase or even using that imaginary escalator to the sky (another concept unknown back then).

So how do angels get to and from Heaven, ascending, descending, through the atmosphere, often carrying things as well as messages, if not by flapping wings, an obvious logical assumption made by the ancients but totally unsupported or disproved by reading the texts of the Bible? 

Okay, how would angels without wings go from upstairs to downstairs and back again today. Well, there’s always the “Beam me down, Scotty” approach – then again, perhaps not. The physics required by the standard Star Trek shortcut of getting from Point A to Point B in quick-smart fashion are a bit on the highly improbable side for all sorts of technical reasons not required viewing in this context. What about a vehicle; say a hotrod custom-made no expense spared version of the Space Shuttle or Star Trek shuttlecraft? That would work!

And so what if angels are really real, reaffirming the nearly eight out of ten of the public’s belief in that regard, but extraterrestrial? That too would work and no need of wings. Of course that would mean the Big Boss upstairs is also an ET, but then a flesh-and-blood ET is far more plausible to the more rational of the faithful than a supernatural deity. There’s no first principle extrapolation or chain of logic that generates supernatural transcending-the-physical-law deities, but not so when it comes to ET, who can’t transcend the laws, principles and relationships of universal cosmic physics. And by the way, as far as ET is concerned, if you stop to think about it, we, the common folk, human beings, are an ET to them. If that possibility does or just doesn’t sit well, well any similarity between what you might want to believe and what actually is might all be purely a matter of coincidence.

So if angels are ET that explains why they don’t mirror our racial diversity and why they appear as transvestite weirdoes, because from our point of view they are androgynous or asexual. That might ring a responsive chord – the modern day UFO ‘Grays’ also appear to be asexual in appearance.

Now we have to admit that angels are ‘sky beings’. They are associated with ‘up there’ somewhere or ‘out there’ somewhere. That’s where they live, work and presumably play and relax and maybe watch some terrestrial television. They probably love the antics and plot developments in the TV show “Supernatural” starting with Season Four onwards featuring one of their own, the fictional character, Angel Castiel. 

To be continued…

Biblical Cryptozoology: Part Two

Cryptozoology is an endeavour to establish the reality of animal species (often mega-fauna) that are currently unverified or totally unknown. New species (usually insects and micro-fauna) are being discovered everyday. Alas a lot will never be verified because we humans unknowingly have driven them to extinction. Mythologies around the world are full of unknown mega-fauna, which truth be known, if they have or had existence it is or was extraterrestrial in nature. Here I briefly look at the most popular of all mythological texts, the Bible, to see what might be of zoological interest. 

Note: All references below refer to the King James Version of the Bible.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

LAND:

*The Behemoth is referenced once only in Job (Job 40:15) and is the Biblical kissing cousin of the Leviathan (see below). Behemoth is a primordial land monster inhabiting marshlands and rivers who likes to chomp on grass, like an ox. It’s presumed by modern scholars to be the hippopotamus, but proof-positive is lacking given the once-only reference.

*Hairy men: There’s no reference to current hairy ape-men like the Yeti in the Bible. Yet there is this interesting passage from Genesis 27:11 – “And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man”. Make of that what you will.

*Lambs with Horns: In Revelation you get two references to ‘lambs having horns’. The first (Revelation 5:6) tells of a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. However, it’s further stated that these represent the seven spirits of God (whatever that really means though I’m sure mystics and scholars have it all under control), so it doesn’t really represent something zoological. Then there’s that third beast from the earth that “had two horns like a lamb” but obviously wasn’t since it “spake as a dragon” (Revelation 13:11). So what exactly was it?

*Giants: Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua all testify to the existence of giants. From “giants in the earth” otherwise known as the Nephilim; “the land of giants” (more Nephilim); “remnant of giants”; to the “valley of the giants”, there were giants aplenty. I gather it was the presence of giants (the Nephilim) that so terrified the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness that they refused to continue their trek to the Promised Land. Instead, they preferred to do an about-face and return to Egypt! That cowardice pissed off the Almighty and he thus caused them to be condemned to wander about the wilderness for another forty years. So what terrified God’s Chosen People?

By the way there’s nothing overly unique about Biblical giants. Greek mythology is chock-a-block full of giants, good, bad but usually ugly, as they are in many other cultures. Their popularity remains through the ages, and though not a staple of our society, stories or descriptions about those elusive hairy man-apes relate beasties that are anything but dwarfs.

*Serpents: We all know about the serpent (a.k.a. Satan) in the Garden of Eden, but wait, there’s more shape-shifting in store. There’s that parlour trick preformed by Moses and Aaron before the Egyptian pharaoh to impress said ruler enough to “let my people go”. That parlour trick was turning a rod or staff into a serpent and back again. In Numbers God sends a fiery serpent to bite His Chosen People – exactly where they were bitten isn’t related, but the bite must have been poisonous for many died! However, Moses did some hocus-pocus and some who were bitten lived to tell the tale. Isaiah then talks about a “fiery flying serpent” also a “piercing serpent” and a “crooked serpent” – presumably all one and the same serpent. Jeremiah talks about that biting serpent the Lord likes to utilize. Revelation goes full circle and equates the serpent with the dragon which is equated with Satan. Whether there’s anything here anomalous from a zoological point of view is in the eye of the zoologist.

*Satyr: You wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Isaiah 13:21 & Isaiah 34:14 lend credence to the satyr that half-goat, half-human hybrid one normally associates with ancient Greece.

*Unicorns: While I’m sceptical about horned lambs, unicorns are a well established part of mega-fauna mythology from many times and places. The unicorn gets its due in the Bible as a real creature. Check out Isaiah 34:7 for example. 

SEA:

*The whale or big fish that swallowed Jonah and kept Jonah alive inside his innards would have to be a unique species to science.

*The Leviathan is some sort of primordial fire-breathing sea monster of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Job, and Psalms), the kissing cousin of the Behemoth (see above).

*Sea monsters are given the thumbs-up in Lamentations 4:3.

*A weird composite beast arises from the sea in Revelation 13:1-2: a hybrid of leopard, bear and lion (which are hardly marine animals) with seven heads and ten horns. That’s all sort of akin to Daniel 7:3-7. Here Daniel describes four different beasts arising from the sea. The first was like a lion with eagle’s wings. The second was like a bear (a pseudo-bear obviously). The third was a four-headed pseudo-leopard with four wings. The last was something radically different or diverse, something “dreadful and terrible” with iron teeth, nails of brass, and ten horns. Then another little horn pops up and starts speaking! That sounds something technological, like the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’. As with Revelation 13:1-2, the first three beasts, despite arising from the sea, are hardly typical marine animals. Something’s screwy somewhere! 

An interesting question arises. I gather or at least I assume that none of the above beasties entered onto Noah’s Ark in mating pairs, two-by-two, especially the more terrestrial and aerial ones. So, how did they survive that flood to produce offspring that would raise hell further on down the track? 

CONCLUSION: There’s much here to interest those who like to read and study mythology, especially animal-related mythology, comparative mythology and symbolism. There’s not much here to excite the cryptozoologist, although those ‘giants’ might be of interest to physical anthropologists, and the Cherubim and Seraphim to those who like to play around with the reality of possible ancient astronauts.

Biblical Cryptozoology: Part One

Cryptozoology is an endeavour to establish the reality of animal species (often mega-fauna) that are currently unverified or totally unknown. New species (usually insects and micro-fauna) are being discovered everyday. Alas a lot will never be verified because we humans unknowingly have driven them to extinction. Mythologies around the world are full of unknown mega-fauna, which truth be known, if they have or had existence it is or was extraterrestrial in nature. Here I briefly look at the most popular of all mythological texts, the Bible, to see what might be of zoological interest. 

You won’t find references in the Bible to the Yeti, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, the Cyclopes, or other similar beasties that interest wildlife biologists in the hunt for unverified, but possible examples of terrestrial wildlife. However, that doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t contain descriptions of a whole host of unknown creatures – the province of modern cryptozoology. Taking in turn the realm of the air, the land and the sea, what do we find?

Note: All references below refer to the King James Version of the Bible.

AIR:

*Cherubim: Of all the weird and wonderful creatures that appear between Genesis and Revelation, Ezekiel takes first prize for the most weird and wonderful of all. Ezekiel, assuming here he hadn’t consumed too much fermented grape juice, witnessed a whirlwind, a great cloud, full of fire with much brightness and overall the colour of amber, when as he puts it all came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month. Okay, maybe it’s a volcanic eruption (or perhaps a descending spaceship)! Well, apparently it’s not volcanic in origin for it then comes to pass that there were four creatures associated with this phenomenon which Ezekiel ultimately identifies as a Cherub (Ezekiel 9:3) or Cherubim (Ezekiel 10:14).

Ezekiel also says that these four living creatures (or perhaps crew members) “had the likeness of a man” (i.e. they were humanoid but not human).  And each of these creatures had four faces and four wings. The four faces were akin to those of a man, an ox, an eagle and a lion. And these creatures glowed. On second thought, maybe Ezekiel had consumed a bit too much grape juice! However, to be fair to the man, if you’ve never had a close encounter before and no concept of ET, then you can only interpret and describe what you see in terms you are familiar with, like an eagle or lion or something that’s akin to a man but not a man. 

Anyway, Ezekiel also describes the glowing craft or vehicle associated with this quartet, which in ancient astronaut literature is noted as the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’, a Biblical UFO encounter. Then he hears a voice, which in his confused state assumes must be a deity, in fact The Deity (well, that’s understandable – back then I probably would have assumed the same not being acquainted with ancient astronaut and UFO lore and the whole concept of life on other planets). In a similar way to his description of aliens in familiar terms (somewhat like a man), Ezekiel could explain in the only way possible the message he was given as a ‘message from God’. The messengers certainly weren’t his next door neighbours holding a conversation with him! 

It would appear that the creatures who posed as the Lord or who Ezekiel misinterpreted as the Lord departed around or about Ezekiel 3:2-14. Thus Ezekiel concluded his ‘first contact’, a close encounter of the third kind.

However, there was a second coming, a repeat performance around Ezekiel 8:1 when it came to pass for Ezekiel in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month. Again you get descriptions of those four faces, slightly altered as this time round as the four faces were akin to a cherub, man, lion and eagle (Ezekiel 10:14) – the ox had gone, so maybe these weren’t the exact same aliens. But you still get the technology of the wheels and the clouds and the brightness and the fire and the lifting up and departure, and so ‘second contact’ ended by the conclusion of Ezekiel 10.  

Something seems amiss at first glance however as first contact was in the “thirtieth year” but second contact was in the “sixth year”. I gather the thirtieth year was his 30^th year in captivity down by the river at Chebar, while his sixth year was his 6^th year back at home following. At a minimum that means at least six years between first and second contact, not that that has any great significance.

There is however one more follow-up to these four-faced creatures. Revelation, like Ezekiel, is dominated to a nearly excessive degree with four living creatures. Revelation 4:7 relates another four creatures, all with now familiar faces – lion, calf, man and flying eagle. But in the time elapsed since Ezekiel’s day (a time that hasn’t actually arrived yet apparently), these aliens had sprouted an additional pair of wings, for a grand total of six wings as related in the following verse, Revelation 4:8. Maybe these creatures have differing number of wings due to age (they grow more wings as they grow older), or sex (females have four wings; males six wings or vice versa) as something part and parcel within their own natural selection and evolution.

These six-winged beasties are probably the Seraphim as related in Isaiah 6:2 and 6:6. They like to cry out “holy, holy, holy” (their catchcry), exactly the same phrase you get uttered in Revelation 4:8. They, the four beasts with the six wings, were also blessed with a myriad of eyes (as in way more than two) on all sides. Lots of eyes can be found in Greek mythology too. Argus was a 100-eyed giant, ultimately slain by Hermes who presented the corpse to Hera (Mrs. Zeus) who incorporated the eyes of Argus into her iconic symbol – the peacock.

In any event, four-winged ‘spirits’ were commonly depicted in ancient Mesopotamia so there’s nothing unique about Ezekiel’s neural network and visions and so perhaps Ezekiel wasn’t hitting the bottle after all.  

These intelligent beings might be thought of as outside the province of cryptozoology or zoology full stop, yet the Sasquatch/Bigfoot, Yeti and similar hairy hominoids are considered legit. But since Ezekiel’s creatures are unknown humanoids to science, intelligent or not, whether they fall in the realm of cryprozoology or not, well that’s just unnecessarily splitting hairs. Still, one could argue that the Cherubim (and Seraphim) might fall more into the interests of astrobiologists and/or ufologists if my premise is correct and they are really extraterrestrials.

*Cockatrice: Both Isaiah and Jeremiah acknowledge the cockatrice which is a relatively small two-legged dragon, but with the head of a rooster. In some versions it’s cited instead as a basilisk, which in legend is king of the serpents with the evil eye (much like the Gorgon, Medusa), though without wings. Some editions just wimp out and call it a viper.

*Dragon: There are many references to the concept of dragons in the Bible, but the biggie is Revelation 12:3 – “And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.” And Revelation 12:7 – “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.” Of course in this context the dragon is equated with Satan, but “seven heads and ten horns” has to be a rather weird description of Satan, an original angel, methinks. Still, here’s the reference: Revelation 12:9 – “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” So there!

*Flying Horse: When you think of a flying horse you think of Pegasus, but Pegasus doesn’t get a mention in the Bible. But, you do get a relation of Pegasus, cited in 2 Kings 2:11 when Elijah gets abducted, placed on a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire and gets transported to heaven whether he likes it or not. I presume that in order to get from ground level to heaven the horses must have had wings. Then there’s Revelation. I think Revelation 9:17 is confusing the concept of the horse with the dragon since one doesn’t normally associate a horse’s mouth spewing forth smoke, fire and brimstone! And our poor very confused author of Revelation has trouble distinguishing a lion’s head from a horse’s head – even a very young child can tell the two apart. However, later on down the track we get white horses and riders (one of which I gather is J.C. himself – as a rider, not as a horse) heading hell bent for leather to strut their Revelation stuff. Presumably, those horses will be descendents of Pegasus, otherwise by the time they (the riders) reach terra firma from heaven it’s going to be splat-city (unless they have parachutes of course).

*Locusts: In Revelation you also have a plague of locusts appear, which doesn’t sound too unusual or anomalous, except these locusts were shaped like horses and had the faces of men and crowns on their head which was covered in the hair of women and teeth that you associate with lions and the tail of a scorpion. Are you getting the impression the author here either had some magic mushrooms for breakfast or else was puffing on the good stuff?

To be continued…