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. 

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

UFOs MIMIC STARS

Another possible UFO connection could be a ‘star’. While most references in the Bible that refer to stars really do refer to those celestial stellar objects; most, but not quite all. There’s that one famous exception – the Star of Bethlehem. 

Matthew 2:9: When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

*Alas for a natural explanation, no celestial objects (apart from the North Polar Star Polaris) ever stand still since the Earth rotates, and one assumes that the North Star was a familiar object – which was in the north and not in the east in any event. This was obviously not a standard celestial sight, and since it ‘guided’ people to a specific destination then stood still, well that implies intelligence. Therefore this is another case of a Biblical UFO under the direction of ET.

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:

Gods of the Chariots

One telltale sign that the ‘gods’ were really extraterrestrials would be if they displayed advanced high technology before humans could have come up with those same high-tech goodies. An obvious electronic circuit; a diagram of some sort of particle physics interaction; an aerodynamically sound aircraft, even a depiction of Saturn’s rings represented as a 50,000 year old  petroglyph or as cave art would just about be proof positive to convince the most strident of ancient astronaut sceptics. Alas, no such evidence – yet at least. But we do have those ‘chariots of the gods’, a topic worthy of further exploration.

When it comes to high-tech in our ancient history, few things impress me as representing extraterrestrial technology, such as the Baghdad (Parthian) battery or the Antikythera mechanical/astronomical ‘computer’. While impressive in their own terrestrial right, they are hardly the stuff of which extraterrestrial influences on our home planet are made. Ditto that for most of the megalithic structures like Stonehenge or massive building works like the Egyptian or Mesoamerican pyramids. Terrestrially impressive as representing massive undertakings involving lots of hard labour over long periods of time – yes. As extraterrestrial structures they leave a bit to be desired. You tend to think of alien stuff as a lot more futuristic looking – polished metals, weird designs, next generation computers, lots of flashing lights and unexplainable gizmos. If ET builds a building on Earth you’d hope for something more imaginative than a pyramid built with blocks of stone.

What else is there to consider? Well, machines that fly seem to be futuristic gizmos that were beyond the capabilities of the ancients to build and operate.

We have those vimanas (flying machines in Hindu mythology)  and the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’ (in Biblical mythology) and those Pre-Columbian little gold model ‘aeroplanes’ from Central and South America, not to forget to mention those ancient Egyptian wooden ‘birds’, so-called, and pigeon-holed as such, yet ‘birds’ aerodynamically perfect as rigid fixed-wing  models that could really fly when scaled-up. While these and more have occupied much attention from ancient astronaut theorists, more traditional ‘chariots’ from much better known mythologies haven’t really captured their attention despite that title of Erich von Daniken’s best selling book. Alas, Erich didn’t provide an index entry for “chariots” in that tome of his, so maybe not even he was willing to put money where his mouth was when it came to just plain every old day aerial ‘chariots’.    

There’s nothing overly high-tech about a chariot, apart from those cultures like those of the Americas (North, Central and South) for example that never invented the wheel or cultures who hadn’t domesticated a horse to pull one. I guess to the Incas a horse-drawn land chariot of the ancient Egyptians might have seemed high-tech indeed.

But to the ancient Europeans, especially southern Europeans like the Greeks, Romans, and other cultures in the Mediterranean and nearby regions like Mesopotamia, and of course the Egyptians, even unto India and China, chariots were part and parcel of their transport and means of waging war.

But chariots that fly, aerial ‘chariots’, are a whole new ballgame, yet those ancient cultures and more had aerial ‘chariots’, often described as ‘fiery’, contained within their mythologies. Of course these winged ‘chariots’ weren’t meant as a public transport network for the great unwashed (like a subway or bus system), rather as limousines reserved for the gods, goddesses and just plain deities in general. Are they fact or fiction?

There’s no shortage of ‘gods’ who make use of aerial transport in the form of ‘chariots’. They tend to read like a who’s who of deities in mythology. They can be sky gods like Zeus; Thor (of the Norse) is obviously another; Apollo (Greece) ditto that; the Greek Moon goddess Selene (Luna if you’re Roman) is another as is the Greek goddess of the dawn Eos (the Roman’s Aurora). Most mythological Sun gods are associated with aerial chariots like the Nordic god Sol and the Hindu god Surya, or a solar barge (or boat) as in ancient Egypt.

Now you might think it obvious that chariots (or a boat) would be associated with a Sun god or a Moon goddess (or a sky deity in general).  Something has got to pull those celestial orbs along (recall this was way before Newton and that falling apple that came down with gravity). But, do you see a chariot (or a boat) associated or in proximity with the Sun and the Moon? You don’t? Well the ancients had eyesight equal to us moderns, so no doubt they didn’t see any chariots associated with the Moon or Sun, any more than you do. So there has to be another explanation for those ‘chariots’. Perhaps one needs to separate the god or goddess or deity from what they represent. Selene may be the goddess of the Moon, but she is not actually the Moon and it’s her ‘chariot’ not the Moon’s ‘chariot’ that is an issue here. Translated, the Moon doesn’t need transport; the goddess does.

Now following the Greek god’s War of the Titans, Zeus divided up the cosmos among his clan by their drawing of lots for the various portfolios and spoils of war that go to the victors. The Greek Sun god Helios, though well respected by Zeus, missed out on the spoils being fully occupied at the time with solar duties. However, Helios did take a ‘shine’ to a new piece of real estate that popped up in the Aegean Sea, so Zeus gave him title to that. It was called Rhodes and the locals later erected a statue of Helios in his honour – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the famed ‘Colossus of Rhodes’. Now mortals do not go to that sort of time and trouble, expend vast amounts of money and energy, on constructing gigantic statues of and to imaginary beings. There’s no benefit of doing so, either personally or for the community. Conclusion: Helios was real.

Now Helios, like nearly the entire ancient Greek pantheon of deities, had his share of offspring. Helios had various offspring-producing lovers like Rhode (the nymph of his island) and Clytie (another nymph) as well as his wife Perse (or Perseis), an Oceanid. [Talk about girls having a really hot time in bed – it doesn’t get any hotter than with the Sun god!] Among his kids were Circe (a sorceress) and Pasiphae, Queen of Crete, who had herself an affair with a bull (but that’s another story). Helios also had a fling with the Oceanid Clymene, resulting in a son Phaeton; setting the stage for the tragedy to follow.  

Now after that little interlude, let’s return back to those ‘chariots’. There’s one ‘chariots’ case history that really stands out and that’s the story of that Greek Sun god Helios, and especially the story of Helios and his son Phaeton. Now daddy very unwisely grants his son a wish. That wish is to drive the family car without benefit of a driver’s license or even any driving lessons. Now the family car is of course an aerial ‘chariot’. The end result was that the son suffered a bit of a prang – well that’s actually quite the understatement. Let’s just say modern Greeks even today could be finding pieces of the wreckage. Shades of Roswell! In fact, this might be the ancient Greek or Mediterranean version of Roswell!

Being a bit of a typical teenage hoon with a yen for fast ‘chariots’ (some things are probably universal even across extraterrestrial societies), Phaeton put the pedal to the metal, doing burnouts in the sky, and of course he lost control. Passing too close to ground level, the out of control ‘chariot’ scorched fertile plains, burned mountains and forests, turned lands into deserts, destroyed towns while burning the locals to a brownish crisp. No wonder Helios’s ‘chariot’ was thought to be the personification of the Sun!   

With the fate of the Earth at stake, a rather pissed-off Zeus brought this unhappy state of affairs to a quick conclusion by blasting the ‘chariot’, Phaeton and all, out of the sky via one of his famous thunderbolts. The ‘chariot’, trailing fire like a shooting star, fell from the heavens. The ‘chariot’ crashed and Phaeton’s dead body ended up in the River Eridanus. Good riddance to bad rubbish Zeus and no doubt the rest of ancient Greek society probably concluded. It doesn’t seem to be recorded what Helios thought – probably a silent “I told you so”. And that’s the story of the ancient Greek version of what I conclude as their Roswell.

In a further conclusion, the ancients could only label unknown exotic flying machines (UFOs) by what they were familiar with – like boats and chariots. In that sense I guess they, those aerial ‘chariots’ weren’t really UFOs since they had been identified, albeit incorrectly, in familiar terms.

Gods of the Chariots

One telltale sign that the ‘gods’ were really extraterrestrials would be if they displayed advanced high technology before humans could have come up with those same high-tech goodies. An obvious electronic circuit; a diagram of some sort of particle physics interaction; an aerodynamically sound aircraft, even a depiction of Saturn’s rings represented as a 50,000 year old  petroglyph or as cave art would just about be proof positive to convince the most strident of ancient astronaut sceptics. Alas, no such evidence – yet at least. But we do have those ‘chariots of the gods’, a topic worthy of further exploration.

When it comes to high-tech in our ancient history, few things impress me as representing extraterrestrial technology, such as the Baghdad (Parthian) battery or the Antikythera mechanical/astronomical ‘computer’. While impressive in their own terrestrial right, they are hardly the stuff of which extraterrestrial influences on our home planet are made. Ditto that for most of the megalithic structures like Stonehenge or massive building works like the Egyptian or Mesoamerican pyramids. Terrestrially impressive as representing massive undertakings involving lots of hard labour over long periods of time – yes. As extraterrestrial structures they leave a bit to be desired. You tend to think of alien stuff as a lot more futuristic looking – polished metals, weird designs, next generation computers, lots of flashing lights and unexplainable gizmos. If ET builds a building on Earth you’d hope for something more imaginative than a pyramid built with blocks of stone.

What else is there to consider? Well, machines that fly seem to be futuristic gizmos that were beyond the capabilities of the ancients to build and operate.

We have those vimanas (flying machines in Hindu mythology)  and the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’ (in Biblical mythology) and those Pre-Columbian little gold model ‘aeroplanes’ from Central and South America, not to forget to mention those ancient Egyptian wooden ‘birds’, so-called, and pigeon-holed as such, yet ‘birds’ aerodynamically perfect as rigid fixed-wing  models that could really fly when scaled-up. While these and more have occupied much attention from ancient astronaut theorists, more traditional ‘chariots’ from much better known mythologies haven’t really captured their attention despite that title of Erich von Daniken’s best selling book. Alas, Erich didn’t provide an index entry for “chariots” in that tome of his, so maybe not even he was willing to put money where his mouth was when it came to just plain every old day aerial ‘chariots’.    

There’s nothing overly high-tech about a chariot, apart from those cultures like those of the Americas (North, Central and South) for example that never invented the wheel or cultures who hadn’t domesticated a horse to pull one. I guess to the Incas a horse-drawn land chariot of the ancient Egyptians might have seemed high-tech indeed.

But to the ancient Europeans, especially southern Europeans like the Greeks, Romans, and other cultures in the Mediterranean and nearby regions like Mesopotamia, and of course the Egyptians, even unto India and China, chariots were part and parcel of their transport and means of waging war.

But chariots that fly, aerial ‘chariots’, are a whole new ballgame, yet those ancient cultures and more had aerial ‘chariots’, often described as ‘fiery’, contained within their mythologies. Of course these winged ‘chariots’ weren’t meant as a public transport network for the great unwashed (like a subway or bus system), rather as limousines reserved for the gods, goddesses and just plain deities in general. Are they fact or fiction?

There’s no shortage of ‘gods’ who make use of aerial transport in the form of ‘chariots’. They tend to read like a who’s who of deities in mythology. They can be sky gods like Zeus; Thor (of the Norse) is obviously another; Apollo (Greece) ditto that; the Greek Moon goddess Selene (Luna if you’re Roman) is another as is the Greek goddess of the dawn Eos (the Roman’s Aurora). Most mythological Sun gods are associated with aerial chariots like the Nordic god Sol and the Hindu god Surya, or a solar barge (or boat) as in ancient Egypt.

Now you might think it obvious that chariots (or a boat) would be associated with a Sun god or a Moon goddess (or a sky deity in general).  Something has got to pull those celestial orbs along (recall this was way before Newton and that falling apple that came down with gravity). But, do you see a chariot (or a boat) associated or in proximity with the Sun and the Moon? You don’t? Well the ancients had eyesight equal to us moderns, so no doubt they didn’t see any chariots associated with the Moon or Sun, any more than you do. So there has to be another explanation for those ‘chariots’. Perhaps one needs to separate the god or goddess or deity from what they represent. Selene may be the goddess of the Moon, but she is not actually the Moon and it’s her ‘chariot’ not the Moon’s ‘chariot’ that is an issue here. Translated, the Moon doesn’t need transport; the goddess does.

Now following the Greek god’s War of the Titans, Zeus divided up the cosmos among his clan by their drawing of lots for the various portfolios and spoils of war that go to the victors. The Greek Sun god Helios, though well respected by Zeus, missed out on the spoils being fully occupied at the time with solar duties. However, Helios did take a ‘shine’ to a new piece of real estate that popped up in the Aegean Sea, so Zeus gave him title to that. It was called Rhodes and the locals later erected a statue of Helios in his honour – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the famed ‘Colossus of Rhodes’. Now mortals do not go to that sort of time and trouble, expend vast amounts of money and energy, on constructing gigantic statues of and to imaginary beings. There’s no benefit of doing so, either personally or for the community. Conclusion: Helios was real.

Now Helios, like nearly the entire ancient Greek pantheon of deities, had his share of offspring. Helios had various offspring-producing lovers like Rhode (the nymph of his island) and Clytie (another nymph) as well as his wife Perse (or Perseis), an Oceanid. [Talk about girls having a really hot time in bed – it doesn’t get any hotter than with the Sun god!] Among his kids were Circe (a sorceress) and Pasiphae, Queen of Crete, who had herself an affair with a bull (but that’s another story). Helios also had a fling with the Oceanid Clymene, resulting in a son Phaeton; setting the stage for the tragedy to follow.  

Now after that little interlude, let’s return back to those ‘chariots’. There’s one ‘chariots’ case history that really stands out and that’s the story of that Greek Sun god Helios, and especially the story of Helios and his son Phaeton. Now daddy very unwisely grants his son a wish. That wish is to drive the family car without benefit of a driver’s license or even any driving lessons. Now the family car is of course an aerial ‘chariot’. The end result was that the son suffered a bit of a prang – well that’s actually quite the understatement. Let’s just say modern Greeks even today could be finding pieces of the wreckage. Shades of Roswell! In fact, this might be the ancient Greek or Mediterranean version of Roswell!

Being a bit of a typical teenage hoon with a yen for fast ‘chariots’ (some things are probably universal even across extraterrestrial societies), Phaeton put the pedal to the metal, doing burnouts in the sky, and of course he lost control. Passing too close to ground level, the out of control ‘chariot’ scorched fertile plains, burned mountains and forests, turned lands into deserts, destroyed towns while burning the locals to a brownish crisp. No wonder Helios’s ‘chariot’ was thought to be the personification of the Sun!   

With the fate of the Earth at stake, a rather pissed-off Zeus brought this unhappy state of affairs to a quick conclusion by blasting the ‘chariot’, Phaeton and all, out of the sky via one of his famous thunderbolts. The ‘chariot’, trailing fire like a shooting star, fell from the heavens. The ‘chariot’ crashed and Phaeton’s dead body ended up in the River Eridanus. Good riddance to bad rubbish Zeus and no doubt the rest of ancient Greek society probably concluded. It doesn’t seem to be recorded what Helios thought – probably a silent “I told you so”. And that’s the story of the ancient Greek version of what I conclude as their Roswell.

In a further conclusion, the ancients could only label unknown exotic flying machines (UFOs) by what they were familiar with – like boats and chariots. In that sense I guess they, those aerial ‘chariots’ weren’t really UFOs since they had been identified, albeit incorrectly, in familiar terms.