The 5th Kind - i've been a preacher for more than 30 years i've studied and taught through the book of genesis many many times in churches all around the world and i've trained pastors in the skills of interpreting text you translate elohim in the plural it all makes sense that what we actually have is a conflict among the sky people among the powerful ones over how intelligent the human species is to be if you listen to the epic people of nigeria they have the story of abbasi and thai who are very worried that their ability to govern over the human population will be very diminished by the progress humanity is making and in that story they release devices into the environment that will diminish the mental health and mental acuity of the human beings it's curious isn't it that the creation of the female of the species is an afterthought that's how it appears in the way the story is translated at the moment there's a pattern here that you can find in other ancestral narratives and the pattern is this that we begin with a society of all males so that's not a species that's what we would call clones each directly genetically engineered go to the book of revelation and there's a verse there that talks about a dragon being cast out of heaven and it says that dragon is clearly the bad guy is that ancient serpent the one known as satan or the devil all of a sudden there's this equation of well i only know of one serpent in the bible that's the one in genesis 3 so it must be the devil but that really is not a correct equation at all the bible is full of serpents and that text in revelation reminds us that by serpent it means dragon check out our official website at fifth kind dot tv for more than two millennia readers of the old testament the hebrew scriptures have interpreted these ancient texts as stories of god a seamless narrative in which god creates the heavens and the earth botanical and animal life and eventually the human race however a number of anomalies in the stories themselves along with intriguing questions of translation point to another possibility in the beginning god elohim created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and empty tohu the deep waters were covered in darkness and the spirit of god the ruach was hovering over the waters and god said let there be light and there was light are these verses a poetic account of creation how in the 21st century is this story to be interpreted well it's not a story about creation and it's not a story about god it's the story of the elohim the powerful ones who came and terraformed our planet in the deep past that word elohim which often gets translated as god is a masculine plural form noun it often takes plural form verbs plural attributives it demonstrates plural behaviors let us make let us make the humans to look like one of us and it demonstrates plural agendas we have the wars of the elohim in the hebrew canon this jealous conflict among the elohim as they compete with one another for hegemony and resources so first off it's not a story of god if by god we mean the source of the cosmos and everything in it the elohim was the hebrew word for the sky people of the mesopotamian stories the mesopotamian stories from the ancient cultures of sumeria babylonia arcadia and assyria speak of the arrival on planet earth of advanced extraterrestrial people in our deep past these stories curated by the world's oldest known culture with the world's oldest body of written texts speak of anunnaki sky people who colonized planet earth genetically modifying our hominid ancestors and governing over planet earth for tens and hundreds of thousands of years these mesopotamian stories are not religious texts nor do they speak in any length of an almighty god they are the stories of plural advanced beings not from earth and not human enki is the commander of project earth his younger brother enlil is the commander of this region of space other entities nama ninhusag kingul maduk all play their part in a story of conflicts over their agendas for our planet and our race the stories of the elohim the powerful ones of the bible appear to be a summary form of these even more ancient recollections of sky people the moment you put elohim back into the plural and read these stories as the stories of the powerful ones you realize what we have is the summary form of the mesopotamian stories about endial and enki and the sky people so are the early narratives of genesis creation stories only giving the credit for that work of creation to a different kind of entity or is something else being recalled the reason i'm so confident this is not a creation story as we imagine it to be is that before any word of creation is spoken before the let there be light and the advent of the sun and the moon and the stars planet earth already exists and it's flooded and shrouded in darkness now some would say you're over interpreting the order of the sentences that we've been told that in the beginning the earth was in a chaotic state and now we're going to be told how we got there the reason i don't think that is the right reading is that almost every ancestral narrative concerning the origins of our civilization begin with a planet that is flooded and shrouded in darkness we find it here in genesis i am saying this is a restatement of the mesopotamian stories which begin with the descent of the sky people to the flood waters which then have to be separated using vortices of wind you go to the philippines and you've got stories of the tagalog the hawk hovering over the flood waters using swings to create vortices to begin clearing land so that the planet can be terraformed you listen to the ido people of nigeria and they talk about the almighty one above the waters who arrives and begins terraforming you listen to the story of the arrival of viracocha over the waters of lake titicaca it's the same thing now here in genesis we have the arrival of the ruach and again the root meaning of that word implies something that creates a wind and that is the story of terraforming we find all around the planet so that's why i'm confident that the order of sentences in genesis is quite correct our memories do begin on a planet that is flooded and chaotic and the phrase in the hebrew tohu bohu implies the planet has been devastated by a cataclysm and that is when the powerful ones show up these correlations among ancient narratives in which our cultural memory begins on a flooded and devastated planet hint at the possibility that these stories have their roots in the ancestral memory of earth's most recent planetary cataclysm the global impact of the clovis comet an extinction level event along with the trauma of the younger dryas cold period from 12 800 to 11 600 years ago these planetary changes would have caused sky fires rapid freezing and immense tsunamis on a global scale other anomalies in the stories of genesis raise questions about the departure of homo sapiens sapiens from the array of other hominids occupying planet earth in the distant past from genesis 2 then the lord god formed a human from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life then the human became a living being the lord took the human and put him in the enclosure at eden as a worker and caretaker then the lord god said it is not good that the man is alone i will make a suitable helper for him now the lord god had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky god brought them to the human but for the human no suitable helper was found so the lord god put the human into a deep sleep and while in this deep sleep god removed a part of the human side and closed up the wound with flesh and from the extracted part the lord god made a female the human said this is bone from my bone flesh from my flesh well it's curious isn't it that the creation of the female of the species is an afterthought that's how it appears in the way the story is translated at the moment how could an almighty god leave it as an oversight that adam would need an eve that there would need to be male and female if this was to be a happy human story curiously there's a pattern here that you can find in other ancestral narratives and the pattern is this that we begin with a society of all males so that's not a species that's what we would call clones each directly genetically engineered and then we have males and females but they're not fertile again they're directly genetically engineered much as we would hybridize a mule and then the mules can't reproduce that was us in the beginning and then there's a conflict in genesis 3 over whether the humans should be upgraded to be a proper species not clones but fertile able to reproduce and become a society and the lord god commanded the man you are free to eat from any tree in the garden but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil but when you eat from it you will certainly die now the serpent was more wily than any of the wild beasts the lord god had made he said to the woman did god really say that you must not eat from any tree in the garden the woman replied to the serpent we are allowed to eat from the trees in the garden but god did say not to eat the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden you must not even touch it or you will die the serpent said you certainly won't die god knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like god with knowledge of good and evil when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom she took some and ate it she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it then the eyes of both were opened and they understood that they were naked so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves the lord god said to the serpent because you have done this you are cursed and i will make the woman and her offspring hate you as an enemy to the woman the lord god said you will now bring forth children in severe pain with painful labor you will now give birth to your children to the human he said cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil you will eat from it all the days of your life and the lord god said the human has now become like one of us with knowledge of good and evil he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and so live forever so the lord god banished him from the garden of eden and placed at the entrance to the garden cherubim with a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life now the way it's translated at the moment the god character is the one against human progress the god character is the one who wants to keep the humans so unintelligent they don't even know they're naked and it's the serpent who wants to upgrade the humans for a better human experience to be conscious to be aware to be able to make their own decisions and it's quite clear that the god character feels very threatened by that idea and says if you do that they'll be like us so again you've got that anomalous like one of us as if god and the serpent are the same as if god is plural again you translate elohim in the plural it all makes sense that what we actually have is a conflict among the sky people among the powerful ones over how intelligent the human species is to be and that concern about being overwhelmed or overpowered by a multiplied human presence with higher intelligence where you can find that in stories all around the world but if you listen to the epic people of nigeria they have the story of abbasi and a thai who are very worried that their ability to govern over the human population will be very diminished by the progress humanity is making and in that story they release devices into the environment that will diminish the mental health and mental acuity of the human beings which is a rather odd little story with echoes in genesis as we'll see a little later traditionally the story of the forbidden fruit in the garden of eden has been told as the fall of humanity from a state of innocence seen in the context of a plural elohim the narrative flips far from being a fall the conflict is over an upgrade to the human condition pluralizing the translation almost reverses the meaning of the entire episode what we have here is the bible's version of the conflict between enlil and enki over how intelligent the human beings should be reading genesis 3 as the story of an intervention in the process of human evolution and as an upgrade to human intelligence reframes the whole scene casting the serpent in eden as the good guy of the story for some this is a disturbing and controversial interpretation it represents a 180 degree change from the traditional religious reading of those texts for centuries the story of yahweh elohim and the serpent in eden has been read as a moment in the cosmic battle between the almighty and satan a fight between god and the devil however the names devil or satan are nowhere mentioned in the text and if this is really an elohim story then we are certainly in the realm of plural visitors powerful ones conflicting over project humanity moreover the source narratives from ancient mesopotamia on which the genesis story would appear to be based point to a completely different framing what i would say is that the source of this story is not a god and the serpent story at all it's the story of two brothers enlil and enki who have this argument over how intelligent the human beings should be why then is the serpent of genesis 3 so often equated with evil with the devil or satan nothing in the genesis story itself makes that equation so where does that association come from the answer lies in a correlation with a verse in the new testament book of revelation go to the book of revelation and there's a verse there that talks about a dragon being cast out of heaven and it says that dragon is clearly the bad guy is that ancient serpent the one known as satan or the devil the text says and so all of a sudden there's this equation of well i only know of one serpent in the bible that's the one in genesis 3 so it must be the devil but that really is not a correct equation at all the bible is full of serpents and that text in revelation reminds us that by serpent it means dragon in fact the bible contains 34 mentions of dragons translation choices throughout the centuries have often obscured the presence of these dragons in the biblical texts one word more commonly used is serpent so there are many ancient serpents to which the revelation text could be pointing moreover there are plenty of clues remaining in the texts to indicate that these serpents are not snakes indeed in the book of revelation the words for serpent and dragon are used interchangeably one episode in which these enigmatic serpents appear occurs in the hebrew canon in the book of numbers it speaks of a time when the people of israel are starving in the desert and they ask moses for food on hearing this yahweh decides to punish the starving people for complaining this he does by sending fiery serpents to attack the people why are the serpents described as fiery what exactly is a fiery serpent the words for these fiery serpents are saraf and seraphim the book of isaiah describes in some detail what these fiery seraphim looked like each set of had six wings with two they covered their faces with two they covered their feet and with two they were flying then one of the seraphim flew to me carrying a live coal in its hand the root meaning of the word seraph or seraphim in the plural is burning or one that burns another entity in the bible is the cherub or cherubim in the plural a cherub or is far from the cute baby-like figure we often imagine the bible describes them as terrifying entities with four faces like the seraphim they also could fly the book of job is believed by many bible scholars to be even more ancient than the books of genesis it describes an entity called leviathan any hope of subduing leviathan is vain if you lay a hand on it you will remember the struggle and vouch never to do it again i will not fail to speak of leviathan's limbs its strength and its graceful form who can remove its outer coat who can penetrate its double coat of armor who dares to open the doors of its mouth ringed about with fearsome teeth its back has rows of shields tightly sealed together its snorting throws out flashes of light its eyes are like the rays of dawn flames stream forth from its mouth sparks of fire shoot out smoke pours forth from its nostrils as from a boiling pot over burning reeds its breath sets coals ablaze and flames dart from its mouth when it rises up even mighty men are terrified they retreat before its thrashing the sword that reaches it has no effect nor does the spear nor the dart nor the javelin in the new testament the book of revelation describes a fearsome entity which it simply calls the beast the beast i saw resembled a leopard but it had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion then i saw a second beast it had two horns like a lamb but its voice was like the voice of a dragon it would be easy to dismiss these descriptions as fanciful imaginings of mythical beasts except that among this panoply of non-human entities an entity carrying the name of yahweh is described in startlingly similar terms the prophet isaiah reports the entity yahweh describing himself in language which comparison by comparison prefigures the book of revelations description of the beast i will come upon them like a lion like a leopard i will look by the path like a bear robbed of her cubs i will attack them and rip them open like a lion i will devour them a wild animal tearing them apart it would seem strange that the writer of revelation would describe a beast with a voice like a dragon in exactly the same language as the book of isaiah's description of yahweh why in the book of job would yahweh boast of his own strength by comparing himself with the monstrous fire-breathing leviathan in the book of 2nd samuel king david describes yahweh like this in my distress i called out to yahweh from his temple he heard my voice my cry came to his ears the earth trembled and quaked the foundations of the skies shook they trembled because he was angry smoke rose from his nostrils consuming fire came from his mouth burning coals blazed out of it he parted the skies and came down with dark clouds of smoke under his feet he mounted the cherubim and flew soaring on the wings of the wind bolts of lightning blazed forth the valleys of the sea were exposed in the foundations of the earth laid bare at the rebuke of yahweh at the blast of breath from his nostrils multiple texts in the hebrew canon speak of yahweh's wings and pinions and in almost every text where the nostrils of yahweh are mentioned in the bible the length of the nostrils is mentioned and almost invariably destruction by fire quickly follows from another part of the world the mesoamerican account of human origins reported in the pope vu speaks of early humans being produced by those who engineer their chief genetic technician is referred to as kukulkan or kukumats he is another dragon-like entity in our ancestors memories of beginnings quetzalcoatl is described as a feathered serpent his job is to engineer a new kind of hominid his instructions were simple make avatars for us to work for us and bring us our food in the bible yahweh presides over a human population who serve him follow his instructions and bring a continual supply of edible offerings for example numbers 31 17 reports that after one raid on a neighboring community yahweh demands that his human avatars bring him 675 sheep and goats 72 cattle 61 donkeys 32 virgin girls and 420 pounds of gold the humans he says can keep the rest this would seem a strange request if yahweh were an almighty god but what did the entity yahweh want with all those edible offerings was it possible that they were intended to be consumed not by yahweh himself but by his priests from the septuagint to the greek translation of the hebrew scriptures comes a surprising clue in it a book called bell and the dragon mocks a competing society who have all the same pattern of worship that surrounded yahweh including the regular task of providing their powerful one with continual edible offerings the joke in the story of belle and the dragon is that the huge tent supposedly holding their dragon is empty the priests are pretending the powerful one is still in the tent pretending to visit him as the people's go-betweens in reality it is the priests who are eating all the edible offerings brought by the people this story is told to contrast the competing people group with the people of yahweh the people of yahweh had a real powerful one who really was eating the offerings himself who really was kept hidden in the furthest recesses of an enormous tabernacle hidden in darkness and surrounded by smoke but does that sound like the story of an almighty god could these ancient stories of a fearful dragon ruling over his humans have been mistakenly translated as stories of yahweh how can a name associated with almighty god also be associated with such a fearful fiery figure in the final edit of the hebrew canon did the editors paste the holy name of god over stories of completely different kinds of entity i think it's that translation confusion that has really muddled the picture now there's a very broad consensus among bible scholars that the final edit of the hebrew scriptures was done in the 6th century bce and one of the main agendas was to present the stories of the hebrew canon as if it was a seamless story of almighty god the cosmic source from the very first verse of genesis onwards but unfortunately what that meant is that they pasted the holy name yahweh over these other texts that are about something else what i argue in the scars of eden and escaping from eden is that we should use the root meanings of the words in the text so that the stories of the powerful ones are the stories of the powerful ones the stories of the dragons are the stories of the dragons and that when god the cosmic source makes an appearance well let's call that god but if we model them all together and call them all god we end up with a very distorted picture where we're all laboring in fear and terror of an almighty entity that will torment us forever if we get it wrong that is very unforgiving can turn on a dime terribly violent and has no empathy towards us that's all a confusion that has resulted from our forgetting that many of these stories are our ancestors memories of the traumas we suffered when we were invaded by extraterrestrial forces in our deep past the beginning of the story of the people of god goes back to another episode now expressed as a yahweh story the progenitors of the hebrew tradition are named as abraham and sarah their role as the patriarch and matriarch of many nations begins with an anomalous close encounter yahweh appeared to abraham near the great trees of mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day abraham looked up and saw three men standing by when he saw them he hurried to meet them and bowed low to the ground he said if i have found favor in your eyes my lord do not pass your servant by let water be brought for you to wash your feet and rest under this tree let me get you something to eat so you can be refreshed before you go on your way then one of them said i will surely return in about a year by which time your wife will have a son now sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent abraham and sarah were already very old and sarah was past the age of childbearing so sarah laughed to herself as she thought worn out as i am and old as my master is will i now have this pleasure the stranger's words prove true the elderly couple gave birth to isaac and isaac produces two sons jacob and esau but how ancient is this story does it come from far further back in the lineage of homo sapiens the story of jacob and esau would appear to describe two different kinds of human being one is smooth-skinned and highly intelligent jacob the other esau is considerably less intelligent he is as strong as an ox and his body is covered in thick red hair in fact his body hair is so thick that his blind father is unable to tell the difference between the skin of esau and the height of a goat the smooth-skinned human learns to manipulate and control the hairy one with offerings of food and despite being the younger manages to gain the upper hand and take control of their environment now that clues me that we might be looking at a far more ancient story than we think we are and indeed if abraham and sarah of the hebrew tradition are in fact the same as brahma and seraswati of the vedic tradition then we really are looking at a more ancient story because brahma and seraswati are the progenitors of humanity in the vedic tradition now that's a nice story in which we have a benevolent encounter with sky people who are very attractive and look human in that encounter abraham and sarah just think that they're three guys at the beginning of the encounter now when those entities then go and visit sodom in the very next chapter we're told something else about them and that is that they're drop dead gorgeous in fact they're so attractive that the locals are driven wild with passion for them and so that's a clue that those sky people those powerful ones looked human and were very attractive but we have other passages other ancient stories that seem to depict human colonies being governed over by entities that look and sound more like dragons and so when you get to the transition king the first human king over the people of god you've got a story of the human beings saying to yahweh we don't want you governing anymore we want a human king if yahweh is the name for almighty god that story doesn't make any sense at all but when you realize the name has actually been pasted over some of these other more traumatic memories the picture begins to resolve and you understand what you're looking at bible scholars believe that the hebrew canon formed through a sequence of writing amalgamation and redactions or edits originally a disparate collection of scrolls and books the leaders and scribes of the hebrew tradition brought them together to form a library of sacred texts genesis 1 to 11 comprise the stories of beginnings possibly dating back to abraham and sarah who brought a summary of their folklore from their family's ties with the sumerian-based cultures of mesopotamia through the centuries that followed new books were added and the collection harmonized to teach the stories of moses and to authenticate the mosaic law this collection became the pentateuch further books were added and the expanded collection harmonized to authenticate the laws and institutions of yahweh the monarchy and the priesthood this became known as the deuteronomistic history similar processes continued until the 6th century bce with a final redaction which appears to have aimed at distancing the entire collection of writings from their mesopotamian roots expunging their memories of dragons and sky people airbrushing out the problem of too many gods and presenting a story more in keeping with the developed monotheism of jewish faith in the 6th century bce so there is a very broad scholarly consensus that the most recent redaction on the hebrew scriptures occurred in the 6th century bce with the agenda of turning all these ancient stories into a seamless story of almighty god the source of the cosmos and it's a wonderful very positive message that there is only one god the source of the cosmos and everything in it that in which we all live and move and have our being it's a very empowering vision to have but paste it over those old stories and it doesn't quite work the shape of the old stories remains and in the scars of eden i argue that we should use the root meanings of many of these words instead that we tell the stories of the elohim as the stories of the powerful ones and begin to understand the true nature of our origins as a species and our place in the cosmos the final edit of the old testament of the bible the hebrew canon included the layering of some beautiful and profound theology over the top of ancient texts unfortunately mistranslating traumatic ancestral memories as if they were encounters with god is a choice with far-reaching consequences belief in a violent xenophobic hierarchical god has been used through the ages to justify violence wars and all manner of abuses however the fidelity with which the ancient manuscripts have been curated in the hebrew canon by countless generations of priests and scribes means that in our generation we can now return to these fascinating artifacts of our pre-history and ask how differently they might be translated i think it's very important that we do this translation work because if we're going to confuse god and a dragon that's a pretty serious kind of confusion to come up with if god is the source of the cosmos and everything in it that in which we all live and move and have our being i find that a very freeing and empowering vision but if god is like a fire-breathing dragon i'm not so sure and it's not just a matter of picking the image of god that you prefer it is a question of what do the texts say and in the scars of eden i argue that the texts are very clear they carry the memory of our ancestors encounters with extraterrestrials the fifth kind check out our official website at fifth kind dot tv where you can sign up to receive our latest newsletters chat and share ideas in our online community and select featured content that is only available on fifth kind dot tv author and researcher paul wallace probes the world's ancient mythologies for clues about the origins of the human race and has published several books in the field of mysticism and spirituality in the last decade his work has probed the world's ancient mythologies for the insights they hold on our origins as a species and our potential as human beings work in church ministry has included training pastors in the interpretation of biblical texts working as a troubleshooter for communities of faith and serving as an archdeacon in the anglican church in australia his background is a senior churchman makes it all the more surprising that paul's latest book argues that human origins lie in our prehistoric contact with extraterrestrial species go to www.paulanthonywallace.com for information about paul and his books you
2021-07-30