Return to the Stars: Evidence for the Impossible (21 page)

I should also like to examine what the Old Testament has to say about artificial insemination. 'God' (or the 'gods') had landed on earth in a cosmic vehicle. They began their most important task of fertilising the inhabitants of earth with their seed. They separated all the people chosen for this experiment from the hybrid bestial world and destined them for the 'journey into the wilderness'. There they had their guinea pigs in quarantine, so to speak. They protected them from their enemies and gave them manna and ambrosia so that they did not starve. They had to stay like that 'in the wilderness' for a whole generation.

Exodus 19:4, says:

'Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings (!), and brought you unto myself.'

If it is true that the 'gods' were masters of the genetic code, it throws light on the darkness surrounding many texts, for example the passage in Genesis 1:26-27:

'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him ...'

Not until later, as I have already mentioned, was woman created from man, as Moses tells us in Genesis 2:22:

'And the rib, which LORD GOD had taken from man, made he a woman ...'

Noah, survivor of the flood and progenitor of the races of the world, was placed in the womb of Bat-Enosh by the 'gods'. Abraham's wife Sarah, who could no longer bear children because of her advanced age, was visited by 'God' and brought her son Isaac into the world. Moses recounts this in Genesis 21:1:

'And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken.

'For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age ...'

The 'Lord' confides in the Prophet Jeremiah (1,5):

'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee ...'

The reference to knowing Jeremiah before birth is crystal clear if we take it in the sense of programming according to the genetic code. Many Old Testament stories seem to me to refer to fertilisation by the gods. In my interpretation the 'gods' created a special race to carry out the terrestrial tasks they later entrusted it with. Moses speaks about the future of the race in Genesis 15:5:

'(God is speaking to Abraham) Look now towards heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them ... So shall thy seed be.'

But the seed must preserve its individuality, according to Leviticus 20:24:

'... I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people.'

However, the 'gods' had no end of trouble with their creatures, who could not give up their old habit of coupling with animals. So Moses warns backsliders and threatens them with punishment in Leviticus 18:23 et seq.:

'Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.

'Defile ye not yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:

'And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.

'Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments ...'

The punishments for sin were harsh. They had to be, for intercourse with animals was obviously an everyday occurrence. Here are examples of punishments given by Moses in Leviticus 20:15-16:

'And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death; and ye shall slay the beast.

'And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt surely kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death ...'

The 'chosen people' were finally to be freed from this sexual deviation, but only after spending forty years in quarantine in the wilderness. Afterwards the new generation would be disgusted at the idea of cross-breeding with animals. So the 'gods' carried on a hard, but successful battle against the half men, half animals, and on behalf of the higher men genetically programmed by them. Consequently they only allowed the young generation to return to the 'promised land'. Listen to Numbers 14:29-30, on the subject:

'Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward ...

'Doubtless ye shall not come into the land ...'

But the same strict laws also applied to life in the promised land, according to Joshua 23:7 and 12-13:

'That ye come not among these nations, these that remain among you...

'If ye ... shall make marriages with them, and go into them, and they to you:

'Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations ... but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your side, and thorns in your eyes ...'

After the entry into the promised land, customs and mores were still very strict. Bestiality was only put an end to by new laws made by the 'gods'.

The 'gods' gave the group of men they had mutated precise hygienic instructions, which are reproduced in Leviticus 12:2-4:

'When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy; then shall he be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests:

'And the priest shall look on the plague in the skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague is turned white, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, it is a plague of leprosy...

'If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in sight be not deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof be not turned white; then the priest shall shut him up that hath the plague seven days.'

'Gods', i.e. unknown intelligences, taught the new men to diagnose diseases and—as in this case—to isolate the sick.

Modern instructions for total and scrupulous disinfection were also given. The procedures are described in detail in Leviticus 15:4-12:

'Every bed, whereon he lieth that hath the issue, is unclean: and every thing, whereon he sitteth, shall be unclean.

'And whosoever touchest his bed shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water...

'And he that sitteth on anything whereon he sat that hath the issue shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water...

'And he that touchest the flesh of him that hath the issue shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water...

'And if he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean; then shall he wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water...

'And what saddle soever he rideth upon that hath the issue shall be unclean ...

'And whosoever toucheth any thing that was under him shall be unclean ...

'And the vessel of earth, that he toucheth which hath the issue, shall be broken ...'

Those are ultra-modern sanitary precautions. But who could have had such knowledge in antiquity? Read with my glasses—1969 model—what happened was as follows:

'Gods' came from the cosmos.

'Gods' selected a group of beings and fertilised them.

'Gods' gave the group which bore their genetic material laws and instructions for a civilisation capable of development.

'Gods' destroyed those beings who relapsed into their former ways.

'Gods' gave the chosen group an extensive knowledge of hygiene, medicine and technology.

'Gods' imparted the art of writing and methods of cultivating barley.

I have deliberately not taken chronology into account in presenting my version. The Old Testament texts are steps in the construction of a religion; they do not reflect an accurate historical unfolding of time. Comparisons with the literature of other ancient (and older) peoples lead to the conclusion that the events chronicled in the Pentateuch could not have taken place in the period assigned to them by theologists. The Old Testament is a wonderful collection of laws and practical instructions for civilisation, of myths and bits of genuine history. This collection contains a wealth of unsolved puzzles, which religious readers have been striving to solve for centuries, but it also contains too many facts that are irreconcilable with the concept of an almighty, good and omniscient god.

The central problem is: how can an omniscient god make mistakes? Can we really call a god almighty who, after creating man, says that his work is good, but a little later is full of repentance for what he has done?

Compare Genesis 1:31:

'And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.'

With Genesis 6:6:

'And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.'

The same god who had created man decided to destroy his work. And he did it often. Why?

The idea of 'original sin' also seems inconsistent to me. Surely god, who created man, must have known that his creations would be sinful? And if he did not know, how can he be an omniscient god?

God punished not only Adam and Eve for the Fall, but all their innocent descendants as well. Yet their children's children had no part in the Fall; indeed, they knew nothing about it. Did god in his rage want to be propitiated by the sacrifice of the blood of the innocent? I doubt whether an infinitely good god has feelings of revenge. Nor do I understand why almighty god later allowed his own innocent son to be put to death in a gruesome way in order to forgive the whole world for its sins.

When I ask such questions, I am not trying to denigrate or doubt the great religions. I only point out these contradictions because I am convinced that the great god of the universe has absolutely nothing in common with the 'gods' who haunt legends, myths and religions, and who affected the mutation from animal to man.

All this wealth of 'literary' evidence reminds me of a sentence with which Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) concluded a lecture to a circle of illustrious philosophers :

'Gentlemen, all I have done is make a bouquet from flowers already picked, adding nothing but the string to tie them together.'

Because I go into things so basically, imploring letters reach me begging me not to take the sources so literally. But our fathers were obliged to take the Bible literally for 2,000 years. If they had expressed any doubts, they would have suffered for it. Today it is permissible to discuss problems and debatable points, and so I ask more questions.

Why did 'god' and his 'angels' always show themselves in connection with phenomena such as fire, smoke, earthquakes, lightning, noise and wind? Bold and imaginative explanations are offered of the kind that can flower into axiomatic proofs in the course of 2,000 years of dialectical training. But who has the courage to take the mysterious as reality?

The Swiss Professor Dr Othmar Keel thought that these epiphanies of god ought to be understood as ideograms, in direct opposition to Professor Lindborg, who interprets the same events as hallucinatory experiences. The Old Testament scholar Dr A. Guillaume considers them to be natural events, while Dr W. Beyerlein recognises ritual parts of the Israelite religious holiday customs in nearly all the phenomena.

Scholarly explanations? I find nothing but contradictions. But the change in mental climate among the younger generation is refreshing.

Thus Dr Fritz Dumermuth wrote in the periodical of the theological faculty of Basle (No 21/1965) that 'on closer inspection the accounts in question can hardly be equated with natural phenomena of a meteorological or volcanic kind. The time has come to approach things from a new point of view if biblical research is to make any progress in explaining them.'