The Bible's UFOs

One rabbi's hot take

I have been advised not to talk about Biblical UFOs. I’m a mystical rabbi pretty deep in the woo and folks who care about me are worried that if I talk about Biblical UFOs I’ll be marginalized. Which is possible! Turns out, the scientific community is also concerned about talking about UFOs. They’re so worried about what the topic will do to scientists’ reputations, they decide to issue UFOs a rebrand: they’re now called UAP: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Less activating, no?

So given the possible risks, I will not be writing about UFOs. But I am delighted to tell you about some of the UAPs that may appear in the Hebrew Bible!

I love UAPs. I think people’s relationship to UAPs reveals so much about their inner worlds, their relationship to the Unknown, to the “other,” to truth, to skepticism—to lots of the good stuff that I care about as a rabbi. I especially love Biblical UAPs because the Hebrew Bible overflows with national accounts recast as family dramas, myths braided with history, and ancient secrets buried beneath bombastic propaganda. Filter people’s relationship to UAPs into that and all kinds of fascinating things can be revealed!

The Ivri principle of Hineni/Here I Am asks us to be aware of our situated perspective—the gifts and limitations of our particular viewpoint on the world—so I want to be clear that I approach UAPs as a skeptic. I’ve watched many UAP documentaries and heard many UAP stories that I don’t find to be persuasive accounts of alien life. But there are some that I do find convincing, at least in part. (Eg The Ariel School incident explored in the documentary Ariel Phenomenon.)

And lastly, before we dive into the juicy stuff, I want to note that when we bring the principle of Hineni/Here I Am to the phenomena of UAPs more broadly, we remember that the message a person believes that they received in an encounter with a UAP—or in any mystical encounter–is as much a portrait of the receiver as it is of what may have been received. I’ve witnessed this many times while working with others and in my own mystical experiences: Transcendent experiences can surface our most tightly held secrets and project them onto the face of the Other. The brain has a hard time unscrambling that. We think we heard an alien or Spirit tell us X, but really it’s a jumbled message of XYZ, and XY is something within ourselves we haven’t wanted to look at for a long time. And on top of that, as beings encased in material form, when we make contact with pure spiritual presence there’s always some static, some noise that gets in the way— like a spider crossing a telescope. We can honor the spider without mistaking it for a new planet in the distant skies. So when we explore a possible Biblical UAP, we can honor the strangeness and the possible alien origin of the encounter without accepting that every word recounted was actually spoken by the “alien.”

Okay, now, finally, to Biblical UAPs. I’ll start with my favorite and the one I find most persuasive:

EZEKIEL’S CHARIOT

I love this text. I love it so much. And I’m not the only one. This incident sparked an entire mystical discipline called Merkavah or Chariot Mysticism. The fact that this one story has had such enormous generative power is already enough to make me look twice.

Ezekiel was a priest in the 6th century BCE. He and his people are being deported from their homes by the Babylonians. Suddenly, at the edge of a river, Ezekiel sees something comes out of the sky. IT’S INTENSE. As Ezekiel describes the experience he stumbles and repeats himself and breathlessly interrupts himself and the words seem to tumble out of his mouth and pile up in heaps as he struggles to explain something beyond his comprehension.

Other Biblical stories of otherworldly visitors (including ones I’ll share after this) have a smooth, mythical, aggrandizing feel. These passages feel totally different. But they’re also very familiar—they feel exactly like talking directly to someone in a state of shock. For me, that’s another point in favor of a real UAP.

But the thing that really thrills me, that has me coming down on the side of “yes---this feels pretty convincingly like a UAP” is hearing Ezekiel describe what he sees. Remember, this is about 2,600 years ago. Put yourself in that mindset. People can walk, ride animals, or ride in animal-drawn vehicles. Glass as we know it---a transparent material that can be used in windows---had not yet been invented. (They only had opaque glass jewelry.) Now imagine a UAP lands with semi-humanoid aliens in it.

What language would you use to talk about what you see?

How would you describe what a UAP looks like as it descends?

How about: “A stormy wind came from the north, a huge cloud and flashing fire surrounded by radiance and in the middle a gleam like metal amidst the fire.” (Ez 1:4)

How would you describe the overwhelming force of a UAP landing or taking off?

How about: “God’s hand was strong upon me” (Ez 3:14)

How would you describe electric lights on a UAP?

How about: “Something that looked like burning coals of fire, looking like torches, moved between the [elements/beings]” (Ez 1:13)

How would you describe rocket flames?

How about: “The fire had a radiance and lightning came out of the fire” (Ez 1:13)

How would you describe the roar of a UAP’s engines?

How about: “I could hear the sound of their wings like the sound of mighty waters, like the voice of Goddess when they went, a huge sound like the sound of an army.” (Ez 1:24)

How would you describe high tech multi-directional wheels?

How about: “The wheels were also carried wherever the spirit wanted to go, they went and the wheels were carried along with them for the spirit of the creatures was in the wheels” (Ez 1:20)

Can you hear the desperation in his voice as he tries to express something beyond his comprehension?

And he really can’t wrap his head around the aliens. There seem to be four of them, he describes them as having the figure of humans (Ez 1:5), but each one has four faces, one human, three animal, and four wings, and the bottom of their foot looks like a calf’s hoof (moon boots?) (Ez 1:7). He also uses a confusing mix of male and female gendered terms to describe them. This kind of gender funkiness appears a handful of other times in the Hebrew Bible as well, but I find it fascinating here. Is the slippage in what Ezekiel saw or only in how Hebrew sometimes talks?

But the one thing that I find most exciting is transparent glass---that’s the real kicker for me. How would you describe a UAP’s transparent glass dome if you have never seen transparent glass and you have no idea what it is?

How about:

“And over the heads of the creatures something that looked like a sky with a wondrous gleam of ice was spread out above their heads.” (Ez 1:22)

Remember—this text was published and circulating before the invention of transparent glass. To me, it’s revelatory---a pre-glass description of a glass dome: “something like an ice sky.”

A voice issues from the vehicle. It tells Ezekiel he’s being chosen as a prophet but warns that the people won’t listen to him. Then Ezekiel is told to eat what is given to him and a hand stretches from the vehicle holding a scroll. The scroll is unrolled to show it contains the description of many troubles. Ezekiel eats it, and it is sweet.

With a great blast and a mighty roar, the UAP leaves. Ezekiel goes back to his people and sits stunned for seven days. After this, his adventures continue. God gives him many more messages to transmit to the people about repenting, which he tries to convey. He is instructed in various kinds of theater to try and get his messages across and famously has a psychedelic experience in which a valley of bones appears to come to life. These remaining chapters feel pretty familiar in tone, fairly similar to the accounts of the other prophets of the time that appear in other Biblical books.

What do you make of all of this? Do you find that encounter in the book’s opening a persuasive account of a UAP? Or does it sound like something else?

As I said, this is my favorite Biblical UAP account, the one I find most persuasive. But I’ll also share three other experiences people often point to as possible UAPs:

THE FALLEN ONES

Early in Genesis, the text recounts a long list of ancestors who lived hundreds of years old. Then we’re told that as the human population grew, the “Sons of God” thought human women were beautiful and married them. It says:

It was then and later that the Nephilim/Fallen Ones

appeared on earth—

when the son of Gods came

to the daughters of earthlings,

and they gave birth

to the heroes of old, renowned men.

It’s not clear in the text if the “Fallen Ones” are the Sons of Gods who have fallen or if the ‘Fallen Ones” are the progeny of the Sons of Gods and the human women. And some people ask: are the “Fallen Ones” cosmonauts who came down from outer space? Are they survivors of a crashed UAP?

The term “Fallen Ones” shows up one other place in the Hebrew Bible: When the people are returning to their ancestral homelands after hundreds of years in slavery, they send scouts to check out the land. Most of them are terrified by what they see and they come back and report that they saw the “Fallen Ones” and that one of the peoples in the land, the people of Anak, are “from the Fallen Ones,” and these people are so huge the scouts think they look like grasshoppers in comparison. (Num 13:33)

The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish text that isn’t considered part of the Hebrew Bible but it really takes these Fallen Ones and runs with it---the whole thing can read like Enoch’s very trippy alien abduction story.

My instinct is that the sons of Gods and/or the “Fallen Ones” are not aliens. To me these have the feel of legends of a much older time, not first hand accounts. I’d put my money on the sons of Gods and the Fallen Ones being a tale that arose from a memory of encounter with another ancient people who were significantly larger than the ancestors or from encounters with dinosaur bones.

But what do you think? How do these texts land for you? Do you think they’re talking about aliens who came out of a UAP?

JACOB’S LADDER

Jacob is on the run after he steals his brother’s blessings. He stops to sleep for the night. He puts a stone under his head and dreams of a ladder set on earth that reaches the heavens, with angels ascending and descending upon it. God stands over Jacob or over the ladder (the language isn’t clear) and promises Jacob that he and his descendants will flourish. Jacob wakes up. He says (Gen 28:16-17)

“Surely there is the One in this place and I, I did not know!”

He was awed. He said:

“How awesome is this place.

This is none other than the house of God

and this is the gateway to heaven.”

He takes the stone he used as a pillow and anoints it with oil and calls the place Bethel, meaning House of God.

Some people say that this story is recounted as a dream because Jacob couldn’t wrap his head around a UAP encounter. I don’t really buy it. I take the text at its word here. I think this is an inspired dream. But what do you think? Is Jacob’s ladder a beam of light emerging from a UAP, with aliens floating up and down? Is the stone under his head important to the story or just an incidental prop?

ELIJAH’S CHARIOT

Elijah is a really interesting character in the Jewish tradition. He was a prophet and the head of a prophetic school in the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th c BCE, almost 3000 years ago. Since then, Elijah is spoken of as an eternal spirit who shows up in many points over the course of Jewish history, tutoring the sages, performing miracles, visiting our homes on Passover.

Like Ezekiel, Elijah also has an encounter with a chariot. His happens at the end of his life. He’s saying goodbye to Elisha, his closest student and there’s all this back and forth: He asks Elisha to stay behind because he’s going on a journey to Bethel. Elisha swears he won’t leave him. The prophets of Bethel come out to Elisha and they ask him if he knows that Elijah is going to pass into the next world on this very day. Elisha says he knows and tells them to hush. Then Elijah asks Elisha to stay behind because he has to go to Jericho. Again, Elisha swears he won’t leave him. The prophets of Jericho come out to Elisha and they, too, ask him if he knows that Elijah is going to pass into the next world on this very day. Elisha says he knows and tells them to hush. Then Elijah asks Elisha to stay behind because he has to go to the Jordan river. Elisha swears he won’t leave him.

At the river, fifty prophets watch at a distance as Elijah rolls up his cloak and hits the waters. They split, and Elijah and Elisha walk through on dry land. Elijah invites Elisha to ask him for something before he leaves this world. Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah’s powers. Elijah says that’s hard to do, but if Elisha can see Elijah when he leaves this world, it will confirm that he can have what he wants.

“And they walked and went and spoke and behold

A fiery chariot with fiery horses separated the two of them

and Elijah went up to the heavens in a whirlwind.” (2 Kings 2:11)

Elisha sees it happen, goes back to the other prophets, using Elijah’s cloak to split the river just as his teacher had.

What do you make of this one? It’s a long and strange tale. Elijah seems to have an appointment with a fiery chariot—did he get a telegram that the UAP was coming for him? Why does he go from place to place with Elisha? Does Elijah have a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic a la Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and he’s just going from place to place trying to get the strongest signal? Is the “whirlwind” the blast of the UAP taking off? Is this complex story really about Elisha (or those who spoke in Elisha’s name) building an elaborate narrative to authorize Elisha inheriting Elijah’s job?

My spidey sense is saying this is more aggrandizing mythology and power play than firsthand UAP account—but what do you think? Does it ring true to you?

*

I’ve told you how I feel about each of these stories, but I’m curious about how they land for you. Do they raise the hair at the back of your neck or do they make you roll your eyes? Do you see them as angelic visitations that have nothing to do with alien life or completely fictional stories made up to help the ancestors make sense of a mysterious world? Do any of the details in these stories catch in your chest and ask you to sit with them, maybe for reasons you don’t understand?

Notice your reactions to the stories. Those reactions can tell you something meaningful about your Hineni, your “Here I Am”, the particular perspective from which you, one minuscule but brilliant flame of consciousness standing on this rolling planet as the infinite cosmos swirls all around you, meet the Unknown.

Blessed be She

and may you be blessed.

Ken teheye ritzona

May it be Her desire