Table of Contents
Paul Wallis asks whether New Testament scenes usually preached as unique miracles belong to a wider family of contact stories. Angel, he says, means only a messenger and does not name the being’s kind. Elizabeth’s late pregnancy matches the pattern, as do Abraham and Sarah, and eastern birth tales in which light falls from overhead onto a mother. He leans toward Luke using a familiar device so Greek and Roman readers would hear that Jesus mattered, because the other gospels never mention that conception. Pressed literally, the magi’s light must steer near the ground, Paul’s uncertainty sounds like abduction or an out of body trip, and John’s cube sounds like a supplied craft with a chosen crew. He does not read the other sheep as beings from another world. The stronger visitor claim, for him, sits in Hebrew memory, while the gospel writers mostly dress Jesus in worldwide tropes. Newer vocabulary changes how the pages sound. It does not prove the events.
Key points
- Wallis lists annunciation, magi, ascension, Paul’s third heaven, and Revelation’s cube as the New Testament scenes that invite a contact reading.
- Angel means messenger, and the anomalous pregnancies of Mary, Elizabeth, and Sarah share one pattern also found in eastern birth stories of light.
- He thinks Luke used a trope to state Jesus’s importance, because the other gospel writers do not know the scene.
- A historical Jesus remains plausible to him because imperial Christianity visibly reshaped an earlier, inconvenient movement.
- Taken literally, the magi’s light must fly low, Paul’s vision resembles abduction, and John’s cube resembles a supplied craft.
- He refuses an extraterrestrial reading of ‘others not of this fold,’ and he locates the stronger visitor claim in Hebrew memory rather than in the gospels.
Short quotes
Jesus is taken up into the sky and into the clouds after his death
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on the New Testament
The ascension is one of the five New Testament scenes he flags for a contact reading. Watch at 1:08
I lean to suggesting that it is a Trope that Luke is using
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on the New Testament
He thinks the virgin conception story is a literary signal of importance, not a unique report. Watch at 7:24
I don't take that as an ET story
Paul Wallis, Paul Wallis on the New Testament
He reads Jesus’s other sheep as gentiles, not as people from another world. Watch at 26:07
Video by Paul Wallis. Watch on YouTube.