I’ve decided to post my old notes on Ezekiel’s vision, as I put the link into some comments earlier. As I noted in that comment, these notes are in need of revision. I wouldn’t change much until the end, when the statuary about the eyes in Ezekiel comes up. In the six years that have passed since I posted this on my old Sitchin site, I’ve come to believe that the eyes (critically, on the WHEELS) of Ezekiel’s vision are constellations, specifically those in the zodiac. I’ll try and explain that in the next post, Part 2.
Ezekiel’s Vision: Why it Wasn’t a Flying Saucer, Part 1
Michael:
A flaw in your presentation?
The iconography you provide shows what others may have actually experienced or seen, since there are similarities among the Babylonian and Egyptian pictographs.
That is the iconography represents not imaginative drawings but, rather, actual representations of things experienced or perceived by those doing the drawings, etchings, or by others who reported what they saw to the “artists.â€
Perhaps Ezekiel saw what had been seen elsewhere, by others, in the same time-frame.
That would be easier to accept than the idea that Ezekiel borrowed the images for his polemic, since the “borrowing†would have had to been rather substantive or complete, and Ezekiel would have had to had access to far-flung images from arcane sources, many not even close, geographically, to his locale.
Your thesis is that Ezekiel saw representations like those you provide from Keel’s work.
But where and how did Ezekiel see those images? Where would he have had access to the panoply of images, scattered as they were, that allowed him to use them for his observation?
To ascribe his motive as one to diffuse the god Baal, supplanting Baal’s imagery with that of Yahweh, bespeaks a calculating mind that his devious beyond imagining.
Ezekiel, like the other Hebrew prophets, was a smart guy, surely, but scholarly to the point that he could conceive of a scenario as shrewd as the one you allow for him and his vision?
Supplying Ockham’s Razor, which I generally avoid as it is so overworked by non-academics, works here: Ezekiel either saw what he saw, and related it accurately as he was able to, or he provided an amalgam (as you cite) of images he stumbled across somehow and somewhere in such a way that exactly duplicates what others were doing in their kingdoms, for their gods.
The latter is a stretch, the former meets Ockham’s maxim.
Rich (RRR)
@rrrgroup: I certainly would not deny that Ezekiel or any other prophet could have seen visions. My point is only that the images were familiar to him or anyone who has seen sculptures and engravings of royalty (Egypt is obviously littered with them on just about every building; Babylon would not have been much different, though less has survived).
Michael:
I’m not saying that Ezekiel had visions. I’m saying he actually saw what he said he saw.
And those who created the iconographs Keel found, also saw what they depicted.
No visions, just reality, as best as could be fathomed by Ezekiel et al.
Rich (RRR)
it seems an odd meme but it was significant enough to them to warrant recording it over and over in their art. Ezekiel here, so it seems to me, goes to great lengths to describe the truly bizarre details of this thing. Do the experts have any idea where the Babylonians and Egyptians (and seemingly the Israelites) came up with the flying throne platform and cherubim concept in the first place? Wheels suggest a certain utility. Why put wheels on something that floats? I wonder if these things were ever built and used in a ceremonial fashion.
@rrrgroup: “Vision” doesn’t mean “not real” or “not occurring in real time.”
@Matt…: This is hardly spectacular, or paranormal. The gods were conceived as living in the heavens. Why? Because they were thought of as being removed from human experience — absolutely separated from the human experience on this mundane earth. They also (in their pre-scientific worldview) believed this because they saw the sun, moon, and stars MOVE – and movement to them meant animate life — and those things up there weren’t people. They must be gods. This is why iconography has these themes, and due to the human necessity of speaking about gods in human terms (anthropomorphically), the heavenly and earthly descriptions get mixed. It’s quite comprehensible if we put ourselves in their shoes.
the assumption that any of the prophets or other ancient people mentioned in the Bible are “pre-scientific” is beyond my comprehension.
Then you need to read the text more closely. The Bible locates the seat of emotions in places like the kidneys or bowels (not the brain); it assumes that children come about by planting a seed in a woman that grows (the male contribution isn’t the new human life; it fertilizes the egg of a woman). The sky was conceived of as a solid dome (Job 37:18). There are many examples.
Hi Michael.
You did explain Ezekiel in your words and your opinion, what is important is the fact that billions out there read the bible and most of them do not know you, and for that reason whatever perception most out there get about Ezekiel become their opinion. When I decided some time ago to draw the description in the bible it ended up being some form of craft carrying “God” If “God” need a craft to transport him then surely Jesus talked nonsense when he stated that his “Father” was a spiritual being who did not know this world, spiritual beings do not need crafts to transport them! Or did I form the wrong opinion on this whole matter called religion.
Another question which you have probably heard before is this: In Genesis chapter 1 “God” made animals, then man, in Genesis two he made Adam, then animals as companions, and Adam had to name them, then “God” suddenly realized Adam also needed a female companion similar to himself. Which is to be believed?
If the texts in the Bible is so complicated it needs to be explained by a well educated expert like yourself why is the Bible distributed to billions of uneducated people?
Is all the pastors enlightened enough to preach? What must we simple mortals make of religion?
people make it too complicated with assumptions brought to it. Your comment is somewhat illustrative. Human writers have no choice to anthropomorphize God (after all, we aren’t deity but we are human). Their experience and vocabulary dictate the description, and so it is a bit pointless to analyze it to the degree even your comment has (as though God was surprised Adam needed a mate). The writer is just moving the story along. The text doesn’t say God was surprised, either. The writer just says that Adam got Eve because God deemed it better than having the man alone. A very “human” explanation in terms of its rationale and coherence.
I would also add that it isn’t at all necessary to understand every point of the Bible to understand most of it. I certainly don’t have everything down (thankfully – it would be boring if I did). It’s like saying I can’t drive a car if I don’t understand how it runs. Hey, I put gas in it, turn the key (or push the button now), and push the pedal. I still get the benefit out of it that was intended by its inventor.
Michael, you almost had me convinced that Z. Sitchin is a boob until you trashed the book of Ezekiel. Anybody with half a brain can tell the book tells it like it happened, boob. I’ll pass right by your stuff in the future and continue to enjoy Sitchin. At least he doesn’t make a living slapping up old men!
Of course the book tells it like it happened. You must not have been listening very well. He saw what he saw and we know what he saw. Unless you’re going to accuse me of carving the ancient sculptures myself. But you’re way too smart for that, I can tell. So the lesson you have for all of my readers is that “if you’re old, you can say anything whether it’s true or not, because if you’re old, everyone else should just shut up.” Brilliant.
Hi Michael.
Thank you for responding. I wrote to John Halloran a proffessor on Sumerian at the university of Los Angelos some time ago, asking him about Sitchin and yourself, and also on true expertise regarding Sumerian. It was interesting to receive an answer stating that there is probably no “expert” on Sumerian on this planet due to the fact that the understanding of Sumerian is based on ancient Hebrew of which a large part of the vocabulary is lost to us.
If this is true then yourself and Sitchin is mostly improvising regarding that language and this can then leed to the ‘assumption’ that the readers can form their own opinions regarding what is known regarding the history as stated by anybody in connection to the Sumerian tablets!
Which will make your “bone” with Sitchin totally unneccasary. I have wondered since I noticed your dispute why the two of you do not rather get together and share your opinions in an effort to give this world a more studied idea on Sumerian. The man do have 40 plus years experience on the investigating side of it, compare that with your experise in ancient languages and we might all be surprised at the outcome!
Just a thought.
Walter.
Either you didn’t understand what John said, or John is way off base. Knowledge of Sumerian is not based on Hebrew vocabulary. No one in Sumerian studies would claim this; it’s absurd. Sumerian lexicography is largely based on lexical lists, and Halloran is going to know that. I want to see the email exchange between you and John, or better yet, have John email me. If you don’t I will assume this is hearsay, and I’ll email him myself and post that exchange on this blog. What you have him saying is absurd. I’ll give you two weeks.
I find interesting former Nasa engineer Blumrich deceived by Daniken’s translation into creating a UFO quadri-helicopter, actually DREW the crossed wheels within wheels as seen by Ezekiel (checked his webpage) but disregarded them because he thought they were actually behaving like wheels. Hence he created ridiculous tiny wheels (like the ones of the supermarket charts) coming from BENEATH the cherubim which is not what Ezekiel describes. I guess if Daniken & Sitchin ever saw a bacteriophage T4 virus they would swear it’s a lunar rover.
I wrote 3 letters to Sitchin (he responded via typewriter machine but actually superficial replies) saying to him is absurd to think Anunnaki would glue or depict paintings or drawings of EARTHY animals since so-called planet Nibiru is alien. The fact is ancient civilisations did worshipped hybrid hum-animals.
hard to make heads or tails of Sitchin’s response here – ?
The wheels looked like wheels but the purpose maybe other. Check the film Contact & Event Horizon, the spinning mechanism looks like magnets going in different directions to jump to other dimensions. Now add argon gas and you’ll have Looking Glass Proyect plus the Yellow Pandemonium Pandora’s Box… a bit like Hellraiser, right?
it’s a logical fallacy to judge an ancient description by a modern 20th century film imagining wheels within wheels. Personally, I think the Ezekiel description is an amalgam of Babylonian iconography and Babylonian zodiacal descriptions / understandings.
Hi Michael.
I did some mind searching due to the fact that the email exchange on my side has been deleted; it took place more than a year ago, you may however ask John he might still have it.
What I remember and feel safe to state is this; my question was, ‘how accurate are Sitchin and Heiser in their debate and books regarding the Sumerian language, and history as far as our heritage is concerned? His reply was this; Most authors writing historical novel type books tend to dramatise their work in order to create better sales. He also stated that so far he himself had not at that stage come accross any mention of spacecraft in the sumerian history, he also stated that so far the researchers have not yet concluded their studies on Sumerian although a 140 years of research has been done we might eventually understand the language and be able through that to fully comprehend the Sumerian history. Which is an indication that no ‘total’ expert on the language exist.
He also stated that the course which he handles on Sumerian were quite a challenge and that only a handful of people accross the globe do have a degree on Sumerian due to the difficulty in comprehending the known language. Are you one of the handful?
As for me mentioning that some of the vocabulary in Ancient Hebrew is lost to us, if I recall correctly it was stated by you on an explanation regarding this language on a web site I cannot recall at this stage, I read it plus minus the same time I wrote to John.
On John’s website on the Sumerian Language page their is question and answer section, in this section a question was asked regarding Akkadian words relating to Sumerian, the answer was that Akkadian, Phoenician, Egyptian and Hebrew are all sister languages, and that some words or vocabulary might have been borrowed from Sumerian, although none of the sister languages are a sister language to Sumerian, this could have happened in all the sister languages, apparently Sumerian survived for two thousand years after the race became extinct, and this could be the cause of the borrowing! Is it possible? I do not know, I am not an expert on any language!
As for my statement regarding that the understanding of Sumerian is based on ancient Hebrew; that was my own assumption! And I suppose as assumptions go, somewhat off base.
I trust that this has answered you.
Regards
Walter.
I’ll make it simple for readers. I’ll ask him myself and post it. Sumerian is not a sister language to any semitic languages, including Akkadain. The only thing Sumerian and Akkadian share is the cuneiform script. Sumerian is not a semitic language.
I should add that it would be utterly simple to produce texts (if they exist) that have Sitchin’s core ideas on the Anunnaki and nibiru in them). But I feel completely able to say these ideas have no correspondence to reality precisely because I know these ideas do not exist. It isn’t about translation; it’s about “is it real or not?”
With all do respect, when dealing with Ezekiel’s vision, what is important? What the text actually says or what you think should be Babylonian iconography? Because if you care to study beyond the realms of Mesopotamia you’ll see the visionaries have seen the same thing worldwide: 4 faces in a single head, wings and even the feet of the calf and the “dome” sort of thing. Perhaps even the Egyptian and Sumerian sphinxes.
Don’t you think you and Mr. David Flynn are depending too much on “constelations” and zodiac? The constellations don’t have the real shapes of the lion or a bull or scorpion or so on. They are mere dot handpicked stars that BARELY remind something after someone draws line to link them. Wouldn’t it be that Ezekiel actually SAW in his mind real creatures NOT EVEN CHRISTIANS BELIEVE and actually the link with the heavens is because these odd cratures have been dwelling up there?
It’s typical reading information provided by churches saying the lion represents “justice” or the eagle means wisdom. What justice is in the lion which eats its cubs or the wisdom of the eagle? Don’t you think it’s possible these creature are like this in the interdimensional realms? To think the cherubim are the zodiac is the same kind of argument given by Sitchin though he also fits his UFO devices and you apply to “stars”. Changing the eyes of the so-called Onanim wheels from UFO windows or lights to stars is pretty much the same literal adaptation.
More nonsense. I don’t do what Flynn does. I didn’t design the four cardinal points of the Babylonian zodiac, which correspond the four faces in Ezek 1. The Babylonians did. But that won’t impress you, since it apparently doesn’t matter that Sitchin can utterly ignore the Sumerian – Akkadian bilingual dictionaries when “translating” (and he does nothing of the sort) these texts.
When I talked about wheels within wheels is not that the films invented that notion but all the way around: the vision inspired the scriptwriters. I know pretty well. I have discussed the EYES on the wings and hands of the cherubim with Mexican director Guillermo del Toro who did Hellboy I and II.
I can’t even follow this one. Now we’re referencing movies.
I won’t be responding to any more on Ezekiel or the Eve nonsense — unless of course you find that verse about Eve and the serpent having sex. It is clear to readers where I’m at on this, and what I want to see to move the conversation.
Was just curious if you had managed to get a hold of the aforementioned “John” yet and had that email to post. Not that I don’t believe you Dr. Heiser, I would just like to see this issue put to bed. Thanks!
John who? This post is very old, and I don’t feel like hunting for this – can you email me the line or whatever it is that you are asking about?
From Walter Muller’s post John Halloran a professor on Sumerian at the university of Los Angelos.
You asked Walter to post his email with John but he didn’t have it. And your response was “I’ll make it simple for readers. I’ll ask him myself and post it. Sumerian is not a sister language to any semitic languages, including Akkadain. The only thing Sumerian and Akkadian share is the cuneiform script. Sumerian is not a semitic language.”
is there a question here?
hello dr. Heisner,
first, thank you for opening my mind(a 24y.o.) away from Sitchin, he almost had me and my friends from being brainwashed, and even people like David Icke( who can make claims because who really has claims on spirituality and conciousness…its like spirituality and reptilians VS angels and demons). What bothers me is Jordan Maxwell and his claim that the new testement is a medaphor. Example: Luke 22:10 when jesus talks about going to the house with the man pouring a water pitcher because of the age of aquarius is coming and the age of pisces is ending (how he fed the people with “2 fish”) and how jesus and lucifer were both morning star/the light. and how God has human-like qualities…I forgot the verse, but moses calms down god from destroying soddam and gammora(i think) on the top of the moutain when he recieves the cammandments. and how God kills which mean she breaks his own cammandment.
And Jesus, why is he so voilent on Matthew 18:7-9. and if you want to work on the sabbath day then you get killed (exodus 31:15). people argue “well, dont take it seriously” and i tell them, you have to take it seriously, it says so on psalm 19:7 “the laws of the lord are perfect” enough said. So this leaves me to thimk, is the god in the bible an alien, or at least some parts. and the whole ezekial thing, yeah, why would god need a chariot to go from A to B and land, my god would just appear.
thank you, I only ask because i need answers and you are very smart and am greatful for opening my eyes and would like to learn more from you.
art torez
email these to me so they stay on my radar.
I almost forgot, (this one would make david icke’s day) numbers 21:4, god throws snakes at the Israelites and they would only not die if they make a pole of s serpent(paraphrasing). and how god is a jealous god and ….basically if you step out of the box, god is very human. why? and why did he not want man to have knowledge( apple tree) and become part of the gods(genesis 3:22)
ditto on my email note below
Michael Heiser is a moronic wanna-be. He has no proof of what he states. The only evidence he claims to have are his own interpretations of material written by man, for man. There is no God as we puny humans believe there to be. And this guy, for being as smart as he claims is a closed minded fool!!! Good luck!!
I love replies like this. Why? because they’ll live forever on my site so all who pass by and read will see the weightiness of the evidence offered, the astounding clarity, the penetrating scholarship. My readers are truly blessed by someone so intelligent and with such a rapier wit. I salute you, “patriot”!
Michael prefer to use constellations and the zodiac because at times the Israelite nation did indeed worshipped the stars and zodiac “bodies”. According to the book of Enoch the “gods” taught us humans astronomy and astrology, there is however a devide in these teachings, apparently the sons of God (from Genesis chapter 6 fame) came and took themselves earth woman , those gods “jumped the gun” in a manner of speach and taught the astrological and astronomical wisdom to the wrong people (gentiles etc) then Yahweh and his loyal lesser gods realized that they were loosing control over mankind and took men like Enoch, taught them all this wisdom and also promised them that all the unintended; those who married earth woman and also their offspring will be wiped out by way of the flood etc. Well we are all still here, it seems all those promises by Yahweh and his lesser gods came to nothing.
This wisdom mentioned above were also taught accross the borders of the then, known world to all the gentile nations, look up mythology of the ancient nations, it is all there, all of this also happen to occur just about simultaneously in all the known nations of the time. It seems the disobeying sons were quite busy back in the day, funny enough in the mythology of the other nations it is never mentioned that any of them or their enemies were unintended, you will only find mention of the unintended in the book of Enoch and also in the Torah, the two holy books according to the chosen nation, another interesting fact is that the black Jews is utterly convinced that the white Jews who reign in Israel today actually stole that religion from them, according to the book of Enoch the original Israelites were black! Makes one wonder!
Art Torez, Jesus was not really violent in Matthew Chapter 18, it is actually symbolical speach he used, meaning if you are taught differently, or something which is way off base, then reject the teaching which do not correspond to that which makes more sense and can be used logically in life.
Yahweh never “promised” (according to the OT anyway) that humanity would be wiped out because humans learned astronomy, or even by the flood. There was a promised remnant, of which you are a beneficiary, so your line about the promises doesn’t make much sense to me (this reply of course assumes how a person who believed in a global flood would respond, since that appears to be your target). I’m not married to the notion that the biblical flood story (or any other one) describes a truly global event. The point: there are some stark differences between the Hebrew Bible and Enoch and other Jewish lit on the flood, angels, watchers, etc. We cannot treat them as though they say the same thing. Especially with non-canonical texts (deemed so by both the passage of time and the immediate faith communities), a lot of the material is often in response to something happening at the time of composition (i.e., there’s a polemic going on that we may or may not understand).
No promises in the Old Testament!! Genesis 2 verse 17 “you must not eat the fruit from that tree; if you do, you will die the same day.” According to the bible Adam and Eve were the first people, both ate they did not die, but instead became wise, who lied the Lord Almighty or the Snake? Genesis chapter 6 “I will wipe out these people I have created, and also the animals and the birds, because I am sorry I made any of them”. from the Christian bible Old Testament, because these sons of god taught people some wisdom!!
Book of Enoch-; chapter 6 verse 1 to 8 apparently two hundred of them took wives, the names of their leaders are listed here.
Chapter 7 and 8 of Enoch it is listed how they took wives, and what they taught the people including their offspring; they taught them about weapons, gold, silver, make up for woman and men, enchantment, root cuttings, astrology, the planetary and star constillations, clouds rain or dry clouds, signs of the earth, the sun, the moon.
In chapter 9 verse 6 of Enoch Azazel the leader of these sons of god are found guilty of sin, by teaching people the above mentioned subjects, apparently people were not supposed to learn these “secrets”, but the Lord Almighty gave Uriel to Enoch to taught him all those same secrets and told Enoch that he was going to destroy all those sons their offspring and all people who were taught or influenced by those sons. We are still here!
Lastly; Zephaniah chapter 1 verse 2-; “I am going to destroy everything on earth, all human beings and animals, birds and fish. I will bring about the downfall of the wicked, I will destoy all mankind and no survivors will be left, I the Lord have spoken.
verse 18-; “On the day when the Lord shows his fury, not even all their silver and gold will save them. The whole world will be destroyed by the fire of his anger, he will put an end-a sudden end-to everyone who lives on earth.” No wonder Jesus said, “you have been worshipping your father, the Devil since the beginning.”
What was Zephaniah referring to? The Lord always demanded the silver and gold! Perhaps he referred to the New Jerusalem, it is mentioned in chapter 21 of Revelations that the wealth of the nations must be carried into its gates the minute it lands in the “holy place”; the old Jerusalem, Jesus did state that the awfull horror wil stand in the holy place! This new Jerusalem will be 5.7 million square kilometres big, imagine the driving force this monstrosity will have, the “fury” of its motors will destroy anything underneath it, should it settle in an ocean most of us will drown in massive tsunami waves, others would have been dead already due to the fact that this massive cities motors force would have pushed us out of orbit, we might die of freezing cold or die from heat exhaustion. Should it land all survivors will be taken care of mercilessly, I have qouted from two places above, one specifying the silver and gold won’t help this time. No wonder Jesus said those who came before him were murderers, liars, and thieves. They killed us and plan to finish us, they lied to us since day one, they stole this planets gold and plan to come and fetch the balance with the New Jerusalem, they lied to a nation and told them they were special, yet plan to get rid of even them.
Michael, I DO NOT BELIEVE IN A GLOBAL FLOOD, but should this New Jerusalem ever arrive, I will change my mind.
No one in their right mind would say that there are no promises in the OT. I was referring to promises connected to the astrological stuff and Enoch. You should know that. There is nothing of that sort in the OT. If you knew Hebrew, the verse translated “you shall surely die” has no tense (time) attached to it. (Biblical Hebrew verbals do not have tense, except perhaps for the archaic preterite form). That means what is said in Gen 3 *cannot* be correctly construed as a non-fulfillment. The supposition that they’d drop over dead is added by modern (English) readers. You also seem to equate Enoch with the OT in terms of canon or content. 1 Enoch was written centuries after Genesis and was not considered canonical at any councils. The only *possible* exception has to do with Qumran. There are “Enochic texts” at Qumran, which apparently represent the views of a sect of Judaism (or perhaps only the person who produced them) where Enoch material is cited in a manner similar to the way canonical material is cited. This Enochic sect is a subset of what we find at Qumran; it does not equate to Qumran. That means, in the scope of ancient Judaism, the thought that anything in 1 Enoch would be canonical represents a miniscule percentage. As a result, when you mix the two, it carries no weight with me in terms of an argument.
Hi Michael, thank you for the reply, the excuse or fact that biblical verbals do not have tense does not nullify what is written in the English Bibles or any Bible written in any other language, it just confirms that the world at large it seems can be fed anything; everytime religion is attacked because of irregularities some misunderstanding due to translation is given as reason!
Why was the text in English or any other language left to be published if the owners of Hebrew knew from start that it was wrong? Don’t use ignorance as an excuse, the researchers who translated the scriptures from Hebrew all did so with the experts in Hebrew, of which many was Hebrew nationals!!
The issue isn’t a question of “wrongness” in translation per se – languages use tense — the issue is what determines that. When doing a translation one cannot produce a tenseless English translation since that wouldn’t be English. You don’t seem to realize the difference between translation and exegesis / interpretation. Translation is a starting point for communication. But communication has to be interpreted. If this wasn’t the case we wouldn’t need people like lawyers, judges, teachers, etc. It is quite evident when you think about it — it’s so common we just don’t. It’s no different when it comes to the Bible. When people who are trying to interpret the text based on an argument from tense that isn’t actually supported in the original language, that isn’t the fault of the text; it’s the fault of the interpreter. Yes, the ignorant can be fed anything, but those who aren’t ignorant of these things cannot.
Michael, I appreciate what you are saying.
It’s true. This idea Ezekiel was a UFO came because of former NASA engineer (Blumrich) who read Daniken’s explanation of the text. I STUDIED those documents written by Blumrich and discovered he actually drew the wheels within wheels but DISREGARDED HIS OWN DESIGNS because he felt those wheels had no real meaning as wheels. In a nuthell: he eliminated the detailed description to adapt it to his own imagination. Ezekiel never wrote the wheels behaved like wheels or were actually wheels. Ezekiel was describing what he saw, period. Have you noticed a similar device was presented in the film CONTACT based upon that cynical scientist called Carl Sagan who also suggested things for the film? In that film (and many others like EVENT HORIZON where a spaceship contacts demons from another dimension) a device looks like Ezekiel’s depiction of wheels but are not wheels. They are like a sort of anti-gravity magnetic rotating device.
Ezekiel saw the TETRAMOULON a word that borrows from Greek and Latin which is not a chariot pulled by 4 mules but the combo of 4 real creatures. Sorry: not stars or constellations with imaginary shapes of hybrid animals.
http://books.google.com.br/books?id=_ICO0Mv3cw4C&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=tetramoulon&source=bl&ots=7G5b7c5X7h&sig=sJ2dtbCV5ZURs_0tWOEHKL1ANgg&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ei=xxZ9UY6WIYSi9QS454G4CQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=tetramoulon&f=false
Carl Sagan was an astronomer / astrophysicist. He had zero qualifications for knowing anything about the biblical text. He wouldn’t have known Hebrew exegesis if it had bitten him on the rump.
Blumrich site acknowledges his Ezekiel UFO sort of helicopter wouldn’t work even in other planets!
http://www.spaceshipsofezekiel.com/html/spaceships_of_ezekiel_comments-appendix-j.html
Blumrich was a fraud – that is, he was no NASA engineer – just an uninformed amateur when it came to biblical interpretation and working in the Hebrew text (I don’t see any evidence he knew Hebrew).
http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2013/04/spaceships-ezekiel-fraud/
Really? That’s very interesting. Have you done any google searches, you know, basic research, before declaring that Blumrich was not a NASA engineer?
Do a Google search and you will discover that “Josef F. Blumrich” actually did work for NASA.
So, the government documentation is wrong but some web page is right? Nice. SHOW ME the official NASA documentation that has him at NASA.
And for me, it doesn’t matter. He’s no biblical scholar or even literate when it comes to the biblical text. THAT is the issue. I’ll trust the material the Babylonians left us, not you or the internet.