Table of Contents
On The 5th Kind, Mauro Biglino and Paul Wallis reopen the Hebrew word English Bibles print as glory. Biglino starts from an older sense of weight and honor. Greek translators, he says, picked a word that later languages softened into glory, because theology had already decided the Elohim were spirits rather than people of flesh. He wants a concrete and dangerous object. In his Exodus reading, Moses asks the Elohim named Yahweh for proof of a promised conquest, then has to take cover while that power goes by. A wilderness crowd looks upward to find it. In Ezekiel, a corrected Hebrew line has the same object lift with a roar instead of being blessed by a place. Wallis, an Anglican archdeacon, agrees the scene is local and material. He likens the rock cleft to shelter from a rocket launch, and he hears Ezekiel’s wheels, noise, and silence as the report of a flight. That technological gloss is their reading of the text.
Key points
- Biglino derives the Hebrew term from heaviness and honor, then says later theology replaced that concrete sense with glory.
- In his Exodus reading, Moses demands proof of military power and is warned that an unprotected view can kill.
- A wilderness sighting inside the cloud, and a noisy liftoff in Ezekiel, are his exhibits that the object occupies a place.
- Wallis says translators who had never seen a launch turned a physical event into pious vocabulary.
- He treats Ezekiel’s detailed wheels as hardware of the sort later patented for rovers, which is his illustration rather than a lab report.
- The pair postpone a full account of ruach and the cherubim, while already using both words for one material phenomenon.
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Short quotes
translated this term with the word doxa which is translated in modern languages as Glory
Mauro Biglino, Kavod as a heavy object
He is tracing how a Greek word for opinion became the church word glory. Watch at 6:22
blessed but in Hebrew the correct reading is berum and berum means to rise from the ground
Mauro Biglino, Kavod as a heavy object
A misread Hebrew verb, he says, is about lifting off rather than a blessing. Watch at 16:25
conclusion we are looking at something local physical material objective so to return for a moment to the point where
Paul Wallis, Kavod as a heavy object
Wallis reaches the same reading, a thing with a location rather than a mood of holiness. Watch at 24:05
the reason that Ezekiel is called apocalyptic literature is because what he describes is mystifying he simply
Paul Wallis, Kavod as a heavy object
He thinks the prophet writes like someone staring at an event he cannot name. Watch at 32:28
in such shock because he Ezekiel has never had an experience like this before
Paul Wallis, Kavod as a heavy object
After the flight, shock is what Wallis thinks the narrative is trying to show. Watch at 34:40
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