Hello,
I’ve been researching the primordial stories of Genesis and it’s pretty funny how these first 12 chapters of Genesis reflect other pagan stories in many aspects. Genesis 1’s 7 days = Sumerian’s 7 tablet creation story in the Enuma Elish. The flood = other flood story. Plus many other stories. I also tend to believe in Aliens and I see no reason why the would deny alien life (regardless of the theory that Aliens are demons which I find unconvincing). Many pagan stories especially from Sumeria and Egypt seem to indicate that these gods were alien in origin and that in Genesis 6, the sons of God would be aliens, just speculation. I guess my question is, is it reasonable to believe in the Ancient Alien theory as a Christian? Believing that Ancient Aliens contacted ancient Sumeria and Egypt as well as the pagan stories to somewhat be credible? (as in, the gods [Aliens] were at war in the heavens [space] and during that war, blew up a planet, causing the astroid belt as well as causing a planet to collide with earth, forming the moon and causing pangea). I’ve read many reports of the sumerians gaining rich knowledge of many things that modern humans today didn’t know until the past couple centuries. Whether or not its true, my question still stands. Would that be offensive to God or “unbiblical”?
The thing is, I dont believe it would necessarily affect much of the Bible as the Bible is the History of the true God interacting with humans and Him teaching us. My question doesnt deal with aliens creating humans or creating the universe or whatever as I know God created everything. But I do think the Ancient Alien theory could be compatible with a Christian worldview if we can get passed the implications of intelligent alien life, such as “do they jave redemption and salvation from God?” Or are did they Fall like we did?
When I was a kid I was a fan of this theory. But sadly, modern models of the formation of the solar system hold that no planet could have formed there, because Jupiter’s gravity was just too much of a destabilizing force. Planetismals, maybe.
I know a couple people who believe aliens could explain much of this stuff. Hard to say though.
I’m not sure it would be necessarily “unbiblical.” I mean, if spiritual beings of some kind (“sons of God,” etc.) did interact with people on earth, it’s not surprising that they could have been seen as “aliens.” I think C.S. Lewis draws on some of these ideas in his Space Trilogy, though using allegory.
I guess to me it doesn’t really matter whether aliens exist or not. I don’t really bother too much in researching it because it seems like quite the rabbit hole to me, but I also don’t see that it would shake my faith if God created other beings out there.
I think that the similarities are important, but I would certainly have to urge a slight caution against parallelomania:
How far can one take such similarities?
What evidence do you have of this position? Also note: Pangaea was not formed until over 4 billion years after the earth/moon system was formed so that is definitely false.
Do you have any actual examples? Many people claim that such ancient documents had “hidden knowledge” contained therein. But such “hidden knowledge” is only ever claimed in retrospect. That is after scientific inquiry has gained knowledge on some topic does anyone ever claim that their document had such “hidden knowledge.” It is never the other way around.
Would what be offensive to God? For someone in the modern era to make claims that have little support to then tout such claims as facts or that some ancient species did stuff that accidentally created a habitable planet?
Ya, I only included that because that’s what many say as well as some believe pagan myths propose this. I don’t know what happened but either way, I think aliens could have influenced other cultures. If you look at Israel vs other cultures, Israel stands out. Sure they fell at times and worshipped other gods as described in the Bible but God is different form the others and the gods of Egypt, Sumeria, etc. All seem like they are the same which could be those alien being that they thought were gods. I’ve also heard that the book of Ezekiel describes an alien ship and aliens contacting Ezekiel. I havent looked too deep into it yet but what are your thoughts on this?
I agree it can be a rabbit hole. Also, I wouldnt necessarily say that the “sons of God” were spiritual. I mean that’s one interpretation but there are many times in the old testament that the phrase refers to human beings, specifically, the Jews. I would say there’s 3 interpretations of Genesis 6:1-4
Sons of God were angels
Sons of God were descendents of Seth (vs Cain, who had the corrupt descendents)
And lastly, 3. Aliens were mistaken for angels and were called “Sons of God”.
I’ve seen support for each one and they all make sense. I just can’t say I know which is to be 100% fact. Though I have my doubts that they are fallen angels who mated with human girls. I mean, this doesnt dictate the validity of it but that would sound like something from a mythology of pagan cultures in my opinion. But also, you never really see angels or demons physically mate with anyone else or in fact, you never see angels become physical beings besides a couple times, I believe.
And lastly, the subject of Genesis 6 was humans, not angels or demons. For the first 4 verses to talk about something and the rest about something else is really strange. God was punishing man for becoming corrupt instead of dedicating their lives to God.
So I guess for me, I would say the Sons of God in Genesis 6 was either the Sethites (descendents of Seth) or Aliens who did weird stuff, but even then, I guess aliens would still apply to the angel category since Genesis 6 doesnt mention aliens.
I will admit, some of my original post was speculative, I was just going off reports and stuff. I had no intention of saying whether they were true or not. Regardless, my question was that would believe Aliens influenced other pagan cultures and that Aliens help shape civilizations here on earth be unbiblical? I agree with God influencing Israel’s civilization, and shaping their nation. But I’ve heard that its blasphemy (not word for word but basically what they meant) to believe in Aliens, to believe they ever made contact with ancient humans, and also to believe aliens influenced other ancient human civilizations. That was my question, and what I was talking about when I said “offensive to God” because blasphemy is offensive to God. As for the similarities between Genesis and other writings, I’m not sure what you mean by how far can I take it. I believe there are similarities and yes it is important. Also, yes, I do believe that because of this, there’s a connection between Genesis and the pagan stories… Whether or not Genesis is a retelling of those myths so that Genesis could present the REAL TRUTH in a way that the israelites were familiar with, because lets be honest, Israel had probably heard of the Egyptian and Sumerian myths before Genesis was written, According to pretty much every scholar and archeological finding. Also, by Genesis, I was talking about Genesis 1 and 6-9 (the flood story).
I would be curious what commandment or biblical truth people feel a belief in alien influence on human culture violates. I can’t think of one. I don’t personally think the theories are all that persuasive, but that doesn’t make it sinful to entertain them. Some of my Christian friends believe essential oils have amazing healing properties for ADD and autism and that you can cure infertility with chiropractic therapy. I’m highly skeptical, but I don’t think those beliefs are blasphemous. The Bible doesn’t say anything about essential oils, chiropractics, or aliens. So we have to evaluate those claims using common sense and good research strategies, not the Bible.
I have heard (on the fringe YEC side of things) Genesis 3:20 used as a proof text against the existence of aliens because it refers to Eve as the “mother of all the living.” Even then, that would mean using “living” in an unusual way since she is obviously not the mother of plants and animals. I think sometimes there is this view that if something exists, God would have put it in the Bible (hence the attempts to find “dinosaurs” in the Bible), but like you say, there are all kinds of things that we have to use our brains to figure out on our own – I simply trust that the Bible contains the most important things for us to know spiritually.
The sons of God/the gods were highly advanced (by the standards of the day) sons of Lamech, who were mistaken for gods by stone age man, I say this due to the fact that both groups are given features akin to the Mesopotamian Apkallu. That’s just my theory. In Deuteronomy 32:8 it refers to divine beings, with YHWH being among them.
DarkXStudios…I once was quite interested in UFO and alien stories…Nothing wrong with reading about them…I was not really interested in religion of any sort at the time but know that Christians have wondered about this topic during the last few decades especially…
However, I like them more as stories. Something for the imagination — and that is as far as it goes. Alien war in the heavens blowing up a planet and etc to form the earth and Pangea? What evidence exists of that? It’s great for comic books and scary movies — but where do we have evidence of aliens contacting humans? I mean ,really?
Supernovas have happened throughout universal history — asteroids etc ---- but these could be consequences of laws of physics, the Big Bang and a whole lot of things.
As for flood stories — there have been lots of floods throughout human history and many destructive, leaving room for lots of stories of floods during which people died and civilizations were destroyed — plus a few survivors. The biblical Flood story is very specific in that God brought it about because of the evil that He saw developing on the Earth. This differs radically from flood stories that say we were too noisy and bothered the gods, etc. So differences exist between these stories. Many theologians would say the Genesis flood story is a corrective to the false stories (or false interpretations of events) that existed elsewhere in the Ancient Near East.
As for the sons of God — why is it that they would be aliens? The passage could well refer to demons. That is, to fallen angels. There is a whole school of thought on that. Sometimes it seems to me that people think it easier to believe in aliens — without proof — than in demons or fallen angels, of which the Bible writes a certain amount.
So aliens and UFOs…great for comic books and the youthful imagination. But the biblical narrative seems inclined toward other explanations.
There is the notion of panspermia – the idea the life originated elsewhere and somehow ended up on earth. I sometimes joke that we are the result of some teenage-joyriders who went on a wild drinking binge and left some of their remains on earth. It might explain why we are so messed up.
Of course, I will not argue how that fits with any reasonable theological interpretation.
I am not against the notion that alien civilizations exist. It ruins any chance of some remote adventure like Star Trek if we are really alone. It is also a fundamental scientific question. If intelligent life exists in the universe, how similar is that life to that which developed on earth. Is their biology similar to our own (DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolic systems, etc.), or is it entirely different?
However, as Enrico Fermi said quite well “If these civilizations do exist, where is everybody?”. I grant that “Beam me up Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here” sometimes seems more true than I would like to think, but, at the very least, it seems like we actually should see some very persuasive evidence. It might also be good to remember that there were probably good paying jobs and lifetime employment in the pyramid projects, so we should be cautious about doubting the ingenuity of our ancient forefathers. They had their loves and affections that were just as real as our own. Their loves and their hates seemed just as real, but their’s are now forgotten.
Anyway, I don’t say that it cannot be so, but SETI has not found anything persuasive yet. So only if (or when) they (SETI) do, I would prefer to attribute the works of the ancient world to the ingenuity of people in the ancient world.
I have to wonder too – if we ever did find “intelligent life,” would we even recognize it as such? We haven’t even done that great of a job of recognizing the humanity and intelligence of “the other” humans on our own earth – I’m not convinced that we wouldn’t repeat those same mistakes if we were actually to find “life” elsewhere. (It reminds me a bit of the ethical dilemmas posed in classifying life forms in Orson Scott Card’s book Xenocide, and others.)
My mom used to have a coworker who is always excited about alien life and believes that aliens contacted ancient Egyptians and are shown in hieroglyphics. My mom dismissed all of his ideas, but I told her there’s nothing wrong with believing in the possibility of alien life somewhere in the universe. What doesn’t seem right to me is the idea of ancient aliens (I think it’s just people reading what they want to see).
As others have pointed out already, there are a number of errors in your analysis. Here’s another one;
(as in, the gods [Aliens] were at war in the heavens [space] and during that war, blew up a planet, causing the astroid belt
But the Hebrew word for ‘heavens’ (shamayim) doesn’t mean or refer to space at all, it is synonymous with the word ‘sky’. In fact, shama-yim is partly derived from Akkadian samu, the Akkadian word for ‘sky’.
In other words, by definition if you take this theory, this alien battle happened not in space but in the skies of Earth, making it impossible for any planet to have ever been blown up to cause this asteroid belt (and as others have noted, modern cosmology/astronomy has explained that already).
The sons of God in Genesis are fallen angels, and either way, Genesis 1-11 is an archetypal, allegorical narrative and not something that took place in physical history.
As for the idea of advanced ancient technology, you should see this documentary;
