Table of Contents
The interview opens on a war. On 4biddenknowledge, Paul Wallis says biblical stories of the Elohim retell Sumerian tales of the Anunnaki, powers who fought one another while great numbers of people were killed. He calls them an airborne host, not one gentle deity, and he offers that reading as his own. From long years in ministry he argues that pastors already learn how biblical writers shaped older Mesopotamian material. Christians, he says, could not see the parallel until nineteenth century tablet finds. He matches the flood story’s birds to those older tales and links a chaos figure at the start of Genesis with Tiamat. Elohim, in his gloss, means the powerful ones and stays plural even where later faith hears a single God. Judaism’s turn to one deity, he thinks, required forgetting the others. A female power he calls Asher was pushed aside. Jesus stays historically real for him, but proving every event is not the point. Read as unjust rule by these powers, he says, the harsh episodes in the Hebrew narratives look like politics.
Key points
- Wallis claims the Elohim narratives retell an Anunnaki war in which many humans died.
- He treats that war as his reading of the texts, drawn from years of church teaching and later doubts.
- Mesopotamian parallels, including a flood tested by birds and a chaos figure like Tiamat, are central for him.
- Elohim, he says, means a plural company of powerful ones, later collapsed into one God.
- A female power he names Asher is, in his account, pushed out of the story.
- He keeps a historical Jesus while saying the point of the old books is not to prove every event.
Short quotes
a retelling of Mesopotamian story now Christians didn't know this until the 1800s and it was only after we found the
Paul Wallis, Anunnaki war in the biblical stories
He says churches learned of the older parallels only after the tablets could be read. Watch at 9:37
about the releasing of a number of birds to confirm that the flood is receding
Paul Wallis, Anunnaki war in the biblical stories
He notes the shared detail of birds sent out as floodwater drops. Watch at 12:16
linguistically is derived from Tiamat so the conceptual resemblance is really striking that both function as chaotic
Paul Wallis, Anunnaki war in the biblical stories
He ties a biblical chaos figure to the Mesopotamian Tiamat. Watch at 18:43
confident that there really was a Jesus and an original Jesus tradition but historicity was not the be all and end
Paul Wallis, Anunnaki war in the biblical stories
He affirms a real Jesus while refusing to make proof of events the whole task. Watch at 36:15
Judaism becomes monotheism and we have to forget all the other Elohim so all
Paul Wallis, Anunnaki war in the biblical stories
He thinks the move to one God meant setting the other powers aside. Watch at 54:08
different ways I think when the female powerful being the female Elohim Asher was sort of demonized and pushed
Paul Wallis, Anunnaki war in the biblical stories
He says a female power among the Elohim was later attacked and sidelined. Watch at 1:29:06
Video by 4biddenknowledge Podcast Network. Watch on YouTube.