The Future Human with Mauro Biglino and Alex Gómez-Marín

Welcome and Introduction

Welcome everybody, welcome to this edition of The Future Human, where we will be in conversation with Alex Gomez Marin, the director of the Pari Center, and Mauro Biglino. Mauro is an Italian biblical scholar, translator, popularizer, and best-selling author for Mondadori, one of the major publishing houses in Italy. During his career, he has directed and supervised the translation and publication of 17 books of the Old Testament for Edizioni San Paolo, Italy’s main Catholic publisher. His books take the reader by hand and accompany them through a fascinating narration of biblical verses, which are analyzed in their original form in ancient Hebrew.

He will be in conversation with Alex, who is a Spanish physicist and neuroscientist. Since 2016, he has been the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory in Alicante, where he is an associate professor for the Spanish Research Council. He is also the director here at the Pari Center.

Today, Alex and Mauro will be in conversation around the literal translation of the Bible and the oldest secret in history. There will be about an hour of dialogue between Alex and Mauro, and then we will open it up to the audience for questions and comments. With that, I will hand it over to you, Alex. Welcome.

Thank you, Eleanor, as always. Thank you everybody for coming, and special thanks to Mauro for accepting this live conversation in English.

Jumping into the Topic: The Book and Ontological Shock

To jump directly to the topic: two months ago, a friend of mine unexpectedly gifted me this book—a topic I would not particularly seek out. I read it in two days, and I had, really—and this is not just a metaphor—an ontological shock. Yes. [Laughter]

Because, Mauro, what you’re translating as literally as you can, without interpretation—as you said, respecting the Bible—if that is true, let’s say accurate or more accurate than other translations or interpretations, then many things are upside down. Many. And let’s start perhaps with the most important one, which is the word Elohim, which is usually translated as God. But if Elohim is not God, then the Bible is another thing.

Right, right. It’s a big summary of my ideas. Sure.

There are many words in this book—Hebrew words, right? Elohim, Yahweh, Olam, and so on. And many topics, like the Garden of Eden, the burning bush, sacrifices to the gods, the chosen people. But let’s begin and see how far we can go with the problem of this word Elohim—whether it means god or gods or something else—and what you discovered translating when you were asked to translate as literally as you could, without putting any, if possible, interpretation. What did you discover when translating the sacred texts?

Mauro’s Method and Approach to the Bible

Oh yes. First of all, I want to apologize to your audience for my English, which is very, very basic. So I hope to be able to make myself understood by your audience.

But first of all, let me start with an argument. I want to say that my method, my approach to the Bible, is to pretend that the Bible literally tells us what is written in the Bible—without introducing allegories, metaphors, and so on.

I noticed that if we read the Bible literally, without allegories and so on, the Bible has a lot of things. If we read the Bible with theological lenses, the entire Bible does not make sense. This is why I prefer to read literally the Bible and to pretend that the Bible is really what is written in it. Do you understand? Yes. Is it clear? Yes.

It’s important to know my method, my approach, in order to understand what I am saying in this conversation.

The Term Elohim: Plural or Singular?

In effect, the term Elohim is the most important because Elohim is a plural term in the Hebrew language, but it is always translated as God—singular. But this is clearly a mistranslation; it is clearly a mistake, a theological mistake, because the theologians need to say that in the Bible there is God. But it’s important to say that the Bible doesn’t speak about God.

I want to be clear: I don’t speak about God. I don’t want to say that God does not exist. God is not my concern. I’m only reading the Bible and telling the public what the Bible really says. This is important to know. I’m not an atheist; I’m not a dogmatic. I want to have an open mind, and I recommend reading the Bible with an open mind. And also, if the Bible does not speak about God, that doesn’t mean that God does not exist. I always want to clear this fact because it’s important. We talk about a book, not about a religion. The religion is a construction on this book. This book was not written in order to create a religion, but only to narrate the relationship between the hero of the book and his tribes—the tribes of Jacob, not all the Hebrews. That is important to know, but only about the tribes of Jacob. The other Hebrews were enemies, were considered enemies—always. This is important.

No, if you have a question—yes, many, but I want to let you unfold it slowly. Let me just mention, towards the end, I want to ask you about the nevertheless big consequences of your translation of the Bible—regardless of whether you’re saying something or not about religion. But if you unmount this book, at least three main religions crumble, right? And that’s something to bear in mind. And it’s fair to say that’s not your intent, but that’s a consequence of your work.

Yes, that wasn’t my intent, yes. But it is a consequence of a method to approach the Bible. It has consequences for the religions, but not about the faith of the singular person, the individual—because if God exists, God exists, and the faith can refer to it. I want to say that the god of the religions is not in the Bible.

So you say there’s no consequences? The consequences—after translating 17 books for San Paolo Edizioni, when I started to speak in public, to narrate in public my findings, they immediately showed me the way out. They immediately fired me. And so, since 2010, I continued by myself to translate and to write and publish books. I published 16 essays on these topics because this topic is very interesting for many causes, of course. One of these is the problem that these translations create for the religious.

Controversy and Translation Challenges

And to get this out of the way: something very interesting, and it’s starting to be a common pattern amongst the people I talk to here—when you go and check Mauro’s Wikipedia, which is something you shouldn’t do; you rather buy the book and read what the author has to say—we find the usual words: conspiracy theory and pseudoscientific speculation, right? Which to me means very little, and even less coming from Wikipedia. But of course, what you’re doing is unpopular, I suppose, on many sides. And I don’t want to dwell a lot on it; I just want to make it explicit and then continue with the translation of the word Elohim.

And you said it’s clearly a mistake. So what—um, so theologians perhaps disagree because they do their interpretation, but what about translators? What about philologists? Do they agree? Is it clear? Is it unequivocal that the proper translation—or that—or maybe you should explain that first. The point here is that it’s found in plural. We haven’t spoken about the singular versus plural.

And then let us know if there’s controversy—and not amongst theologians, but amongst other translators.

Oh yes, they read that, but I want to say a thing: my books are studied in theologians’ universities. I know that for sure because it’s necessary to know that no one in the world knows exactly what Elohim means. No one in the world—no scholar. Elohim is translated in many ways because no one knows the real meaning of the term Elohim. So in my books and in my videos on my channel, Mauro Biglino Official Channel, I always recommend not to translate this word. It’s better to leave it as it is. It’s better to leave it in Hebrew.

But what is fundamental is to read carefully the context in which this term is used, because it is the context that allows us to understand what the Bible says and what the Elohim means. And the context tells us clearly that Elohim were many individuals in flesh and blood. So it is absolutely clear. The Bible tells us also the names of several of these Elohim. And the hero, the protagonist of the Bible—Yahweh—it was just one of the Elohim, one of multiple Elohim, just like the others. And Yahweh needed to fight against the others in order to conquer lands, to rule over.

Why Other Translations Differ

Now, how come other translators didn’t come across that? Or perhaps they did—it’s just that you’re putting it today in another context, to another lens. Maybe you’re offering a more complete picture because, as I said at the beginning, having read your book, it’s not just about Elohim; it’s about many other things. But how come they didn’t pick up this fact? Because you said it was clearly a mistake, and I asked you how clear that is. But also, the word “mistake” is interesting: is it simply a mistake? Is it deliberate? It surprises me that I didn’t know that, and that new translations of the Bible are not done with this more literal translation. Why didn’t this—why didn’t I know about this until this friend gave me the book?

But I think it derives from the fact that the religion and the theologians use the Greek Bible and the Latin Bible, in which Elohim is translated in Greek as theos, in Latin as deus. I have a classical background, so in my studies, I studied ancient Greek and Latin. And this factor was verified by the Catholic publishing house before giving me the task to translate—because without knowing Greek and Latin, it’s too hard or impossible to translate correctly the Bible.

So in my translation, I point out these three languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. And this is fundamental in order to understand this fact. Yes, but I know that if Elohim is a plural term, for the theologians it is very difficult, very hard to explain to the people the meaning of the religion. And so they necessarily have to say, to try to demonstrate, that Elohim is singular.

But in this book, in one of the chapters devoted to the Elohim, I demonstrate that in the Bible there are at least 23 Elohim. And so it is clear in the Bible: they are named, they are fighting each other, they were ruling over various nations, and Yahweh had one of these nations. Yahweh had the people of Jacob, which was assigned to him by the chief of the Elohim, that in the Bible is named Elyon.

Broader Implications: Plural Elohim and Biblical Context

Yes, and I understand better now that the whole discussion doesn’t hinge only on singular versus plural, because I’ve tried to find the counterarguments to your translation, and some people say, well, you can use the plural but it means singular—I mean that. Or, as you already mentioned, well, you read it allegorically. I’ve also asked some of my friends who can read Hebrew: how do you read the Bible if you do? And they say, well, we don’t pay so much attention to the words; it’s more about the vibration. And I respect all of that; I think this is all fine.

But what you’re saying here is not only that it appears as plural many times—so it’s not God but gods—but that these gods are very peculiar creatures that do all sorts of things that don’t look like god-like stuff. And as you go on through the book—and maybe you can pick which ones you want to emphasize; otherwise I can do it—it’s, it feels really unbelievable. That’s why I mentioned this ontological shock, you know, like the chosen people are not the chosen people; they are those ruled by a particular Elohim, Yahweh. And the gods like sacrifices of stuff that’s burned for some very weird reasons. And here there’s a bit of speculation: Adam is not made; it’s engineered. The Garden of Eden—I mean, I’m giving all these spoilers; I hope you don’t mind—of your book, but the Garden of Eden was a lab. It’s like, come on, what is going on here, right? What is going on? But perhaps what is going on is the truth.

The truth that I think the hierarchy of the church knows very well—absolutely. Because in the history of the translators, I’m not the only translator that understood this topic. Because you read my book: I introduced many proofs of the fact that Elohim is a plural. And in effect, Elohim is used with the verb in the singular and in the plural form. And in this book, I also demonstrate that if Elohim is a singular, the Bible doesn’t make sense—absolutely. The Bible has sense if we consider that Elohim were many individuals.

And in effect, the topic of Elohim is the most important in the book, along with many other topics, like Satan, angels, Elijah, the cherubim—and the so-called kerubim in Hebrew—and so on. But the most important is Elohim, because, as you said before, if Elohim means god, the Bible is one thing; if Elohim doesn’t mean god, the Bible is entirely another thing. It is a historical Bible that narrates us a small part of a bigger history, which is narrated all around the world.

The Bible is only one of the books that humanity wrote. And in the books of Asia, of America, we find the same concepts. We find the same concepts also in the Greek books, in the Latin books—in the Latin so-called mythology, and so on.

In two of my books written for Mondadori, I compared the Bible with the Homeric books. And it’s clear that they narrate the same history; they speak to us about the same individuals that in Hebrew are Elohim, in Sumerian and Assyrian are Anunna or Anunnaki, in Greek are theoi—but they are the same individuals.

Nature of the Elohim: Not Gods, Not Humans

Now, the same needed—yeah—characteristics. Who are they? They’re not gods, but they’re not humans. And so here we are again: here’s again the theoretical physicist and neuroscientist with a Hebrew translator about what extraterrestrials, other species—and I know this is now speculation; that’s not literally reading from the Bible—but you triangulate from many, many aspects of the lives of these Elohim as to what they were. So what do you think they were?

It’s a very interesting argument, but the Bible doesn’t tell us where they came from. Reading carefully the Bible, we can understand that they were not humans. They made the humankind; they made the humankind and they intervened with a surgical intervention. And this is said also by many rabbis, who say that the Bible knows things 4,000 years ago—the Bible knows the cloning. It’s enough to read the method with which were formed—not created—Adam. Indeed, and I repeat, it is written by many rabbis who know the truth.

You know how—if that enrages, that upsets more than upsets theologians, you can imagine how much this should upset scientists, especially biologists, right? If now you’re suggesting—or even saying—that the human race is not created by God—they’ll be happy about that—but you’re saying it’s not just a product of evolution, natural evolution, but it’s engineered by some sort of creatures more advanced than us. That’s why immediately the hammer of conspiracy theory falls upon us. So what else can we say from this—from the text, and also from other lines of evidence—about such a big claim? Here we have another big headline, right?

Right. I think there were—or there have been—another kind of intervention between the evolution and the creation: an intelligent intervention on the Homo sapiens in order to produce another species able to understand and execute orders. And so it’s clear in many books all around the world. All these books—I think of the Hindu books—tell us more clearly than the Bible. And in India, this is not a problem; it is not a problem—the multiplicity, the number of the Elohim, which in that land are called Deva. Absolutely, it is not a problem because they don’t have a monotheistic religion. On the contrary, we have a monotheistic religion which can’t accept this fact. But in the Bible, it is absolutely clear; I have no doubt.

Obviously, I pretend, as I said, that the Bible tells—or told—us the truth. I’m not sure of that, of course, because it’s an ancient book, and with ancient books it’s necessary to be very careful when you read it. But given the fact that the theologians tell us that this book is the book of God, I suggest reading this book carefully, with an open mind—just like we read other books, just like we can read Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, Veda, and so on—with the same open mind. And we can understand that they tell us the same history, the same mystery.

Truth in the Bible: Literal Meaning vs. Revelation

Now, when you say “truth,” I guess you don’t mean revelation; you mean that what was written is what they were trying to mean, right? That’s what you mean by true.

Yes, right—because some people may think you’re saying that the Bible is the truth, but you think the truth in the sense that what these people bothered to write—so painfully, I suppose—it’s what they were seeing or what they were being told by their people, right?

In absolute, yes. In this book, yes.

Now, more things here: when you were mentioning other traditions, and you’re mentioning polytheism probably—and that’s again, I express my ignorance in all these matters—when in India, for instance, I suppose they don’t have a problem with the Devas or these many gods. Perhaps they don’t, but do they have a problem in taking them not seriously but literally? Do they take them literally as you’re doing of these Elohim?

But I think that it is not possible to talk about polytheism because these individuals were not considered as gods, but individuals—dangerous individuals to whom it was necessary to worship because of their knowledge, because of their technology, and so on. But they weren’t spiritual gods.

The Bible—but not only the Bible, I would say, in all of the Semitic thoughts—there aren’t concepts that are transcendental concepts like spirituality, omnipotence, omniscience, and so on. And also in the Bible, for example, there is a term El Shaddai; it is a term used by one of the obvious Elohim, and he used this term to present, to introduce himself to Abraham, and said, “I am El Shaddai.” This term Shaddai is always translated as omnipotent, but it doesn’t mean omnipotent. El Shaddai—the same scholars write that—means the lord of the mountain or at least the lord of the desert. There is no omnipotence in the Bible—never.

And actually, I had heard this from theologians in the U.S., specifically I think it was David Griffin, who passed away last year, that the Almighty—the word Almighty—was a big mistake. He was also trying, from his point of view—which is a very different one than yours—from process philosophy, to correct and to try to think of a theology that can work without omnipotence and omniscience, within a process philosophical point of view. So it’s fascinating to see this also coming from another totally different approach.

But it’s interesting to read in the Bible that when Yahweh wants to conquer a land, he needs to fight. So it’s clear it is not omnipotent, but it is as powerful as the other Elohim. And this, for example, is clearly written in the Bible of the Judges, where it is written that Yahweh is as Chemosh, the so-called god of the Moabites, and it is written that it has the same power. But it is not necessary to have a particular translation; it is the normal translation by theologians—either this part of the Bible—yes, because it’s too hard to explain, but it’s clear; it’s under our eyes in the Bible that we have at home. Yes, not in my translations. Yes.

Scientific Hypothesis and Contextual Reading

Yes, I was thinking of your translations—or at least the beat that you articulate in your books—for us who don’t know, to be able to follow with the Hebrew text and then underneath the translation, your commentary over and over, covering so many aspects. I was thinking of it as a scientific hypothesis—and I don’t know if it can be falsified or how one would falsify it—but in the sense of, well, here we have all these pieces of data, this evidence, and here’s another explanation that tries to best explain what’s going on. And there again, not knowing a word of Hebrew except the ones I’ve learned from you and these main ones, I would agree that if, again, the garden was not the garden—you speak about the tree, the trees; that’s very interesting—everything is so interesting. These two trees—there seems to be only one. The burning bush—maybe there’s another way of translating what that thing was. How these Elohim behaved: they seem to behave as greedy, as angry—so that doesn’t feel very spiritual at all. Well, all of these disconnected—they are not disconnected—facts, but all these parts of the history of the story put together under the overarching hypothesis—well, at least it should be entertained. And that’s also a premise of all these conversations I have with people: well, what happens if we entertain this? Where does it bring us? And how likely is it that it is the case?

If I understood your question, I want to say that if we put together all the topics you quoted, the Bible is clear. It’s not necessary to introduce any other concept. For example, the burning bush: the term in Hebrew means mountain bush. Crushed? I don’t know how to say in English—yes, please help us. Yes, that’s correct: crest, top of a mountain. Thank you.

And so Moses didn’t see a bush burning, but the rocks on which perhaps there was some substance that was burning without burning the rocks—like just like if we put gasoline on the rock; we see the gasoline burning, but the rock doesn’t burn. I see, and that makes sense. And in the other part of the Bible, the term Sinai is the name of a mountain; it is called the Sinai. So it’s not necessary to make particular translations; it’s necessary to read the entire context—because often the meaning comes out reading various books.

For example, if you mix the Book of Genesis with some chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, you clearly understand the meaning of the term ruach, which I devoted a chapter to in this book. Yes, because ruach is always translated as spirit of God. In many situations, it doesn’t mean spirit; it is a real, concrete thing. Because it’s necessary to say that Hebrew is a polysemic language, and so it’s only the context that allows us to understand which is the real meaning in that verse.

Because in some verses, ruach can be the spirit—can be the spirit of God. But in other verses, clearly it can’t be the spirit of God; it must necessarily be another thing. Because Elijah got on this ruach; Ezekiel got on this ruach. This ruach rises from the ground, comes from the north. So it’s impossible that in that case ruach means spirit of God—because if that were true, we must have the spirit that is to the north, but it isn’t in the south, in the east, or in the west. And that is ridiculous, of course.

Ruach as Flying Machines

Now, when I was arriving at this chapter—I think it was towards the end of the book—about ruach, and that must happen now—should be happening now to many of the audience listening, and maybe those who will listen later—it’s like, oh no, no, no, no, no, Mauro is talking about—no, really? Please, please, are you talking about a UFO, a UAP? Oh my God, here we go—even more controversial. And given what’s going on in the U.S. right now with the hearings and so on, given the bad press of ufology and so on—well, Mauro, you seem to be indicating that it was an unidentified—um, an aerial phenomenon.

Oh, I would say a thing: in the Bible, those are not unidentified aerial phenomena—because they are clearly identified phenomena. There is no doubt. The ones today are unidentified aerial phenomena or UAP, but those in the Bible are clearly identified, are described. It’s enough to read the Book of Ezekiel—but it’s necessary to read it with an open mind, as I said before, without the theologians’ lenses. And it’s clear that ruach is a flying machine—but clearly identified, clearly described.

In today, we see lights in the sky, and so we unidentified these lights. Ezekiel saw this ruach very, very close; he got on this ruach; Elijah got on this ruach. So it’s absolutely clear. In Ezekiel—I recommend, if you don’t want to read all the Book of Ezekiel, I recommend to read chapter 1, chapter 3, chapter 8, chapter 10, chapter 11. And it is written that when the kavod or the ruach of Yahweh, when it arises from the ground, produces a loud noise. And Ezekiel in that case doesn’t see—cannot see—the kavod because it is behind him, but he hears clearly the loud noise produced by the kavod of Yahweh when arising from the ground. So it’s clear. And they are not my translations; my translations are others. And in the book, I always indicate the verses in Hebrew and the literal translation—so everyone can verify what I am saying. Everyone can verify.

As a joke—but that’s serious—I don’t know what people would like to believe now that there’s this third ingredient in the menu, because those who hated the idea of God the Creator maybe really scared about—well, if the alternative is these flying things, well, I rather now prefer the old story told. But leaving that aside, and related to this question of the ruach: where are the Elohim today? If they were here—whatever they were—where are they today?

I don’t know. I don’t know because my concern is the Bible. I don’t want to make strange hypotheses. We can—if all hypotheses are possible—I am open to all hypotheses, but I don’t tell the truth. I don’t know where they are. There is a church, a pastor in the USA, which describes that the Elohim are here and are the real governors of the Earth. But I don’t know. So I prefer not to answer—or better, I answer: I don’t know. It’s not a problem; I don’t know because in the Bible it’s not written.

Where Are the Elohim Now?

Okay, let me ask it differently then—and that’s very fair, Mauro. If those people saw them, interacted with them—you even describe that they may have had relationships with women and so on—well, if that was this usual exchange, communication, why don’t we see them now? Where are they? I mean, not what are they, but— no, that’s what I just asked you that—not where are they; why don’t we see them as these people, these ancient humans, used to?

Because perhaps—perhaps—they were or they are just like humankind. So that is written in one letter of Saint Paul, in which it is written that if you encounter an unknown individual and he asks you something—perhaps to come to your home—it’s better to receive him because he could be one of them. It is clearly written in Greek.

So it is in Genesis, because in Genesis 6 it is written that they mixed with the daughters of the Adamites. So if they could mix with daughters of the Adamites, it could mean that they were or they are very similar to us—and so, if that is true, it’s impossible to recognize them.

Jesus and the New Testament

Let me move to another one because so far we’ve been talking only about the Old Testament. I know it’s a big—we could talk an hour about what I’m gonna ask you now—but what about Jesus? What about the New Testament? Who was Jesus? And—well, it’s not a problem to offer possibilities because we’ve been told a fiction; we’ve been told a regular man; we’ve been told a man who also has a god; we’ve been told even if he was a mushroom—I’ve also come across that hypothesis, a serious one actually. So who was Jesus, in your expert—from your point of view?

This is a topic very sensitive—very, very sensitive—and it’s hard to try to explain in a few words. I know, I know. And by the way, we could say—if somebody doesn’t want to hear it, they can just—they can just leave now; no problem. It’s sensitive; we want to hear what you have to say, to the degree that this is complex. And I understand.

Yeah, I can—I can tell two words about this topic. The Gospels are the prosecution of the Old Testament. And in the Gospels, the authors talk about Gabriel. Gabriel is not an angel; Gabriel is not a spiritual entity. According to a Jesuit—this is a cardinal in France—Gabriel was in Hebrew an ish, i.e., a man. In the Book of Daniel, it is clearly written that Gabriel was an ish. And Gabriel encountered Mary, and Mary becomes pregnant.

So Jesus could be—I prefer “could be” because I haven’t the truth—could be the son of one of them, the one who was prophesied before by Isaiah and so on. And it could be a product of this interbreeding between one of the Elohim—because Gabriel in Hebrew means “power of an El”—El is a singular term—or of Elohim. So Gabriel is a power of an El; it is not a name of a person—it is a function. It is a function present in the Old Testament, and it is also present in the New Testament.

So we must know that. And if Jesus is a son of Gabriel and Mary, Jesus could be one of them.

Now, and this allows me to ask you something that to me is very important, that I don’t understand of the whole story so far. Later, maybe Jesus can help. All these Elohim that they sound like more advanced than us—in the sense that they can do things that these humans couldn’t, and they have this ruach, and they do these things with us, supposedly—but they all seem very kind of petty psychologically, you know, like angry and greedy. They never sound—at least from what I’ve read from you—they never sound like elevated. And I don’t want to say they’re spiritual, but they don’t sound like elevated beings. But Jesus sounds like that. So are there Elohim or descendants of Elohim—and we’re in the speculation mode totally now—who feel like, sound like spiritual beings, like more evolved beings?

Yes, this is why before I said that this is a hard argument—because it needs many times to explain. Because Jesus is clearly different from Yahweh, that is presented as father of Jesus—as a godfather. He is another kind of individual; as written in Bible, he is called ish milchama, i.e., man of war.

So they didn’t concern with religion, with spirituality, with the transcendence, with omnipotence, with omniscience, and so on. On the contrary, Jesus tells us a new message—a message which is completely different from the message narrated in the Old Testament. But without the Old Testament, Jesus could not exist.

Progress on Translations and Relationship with the Vatican

We’re running out of time; I could talk to you for so long. Let me just go for two more easy questions, Mauro. So one is practical: remind us the percentage of the corpus you have translated. How much more is left? Will you do it? Can you do it? Who can do it? Because when my friend gave me this book—my friends call Alex, like me—I said, well, is there a Biglino Bible? Is there a Bible complete translation? And I know the Bible has many books, and in some cases some books are included, others are not. But what’s the bar—the percentage of what you have translated, or others that do it like you? And what else is needed—maybe philanthropy, money? Or are these books available? My big question is: can we expect to have a complete new literal translation of the Old—and why not the New—Testament?

I translated—for me, only for me—almost 25—the New Testament—new—five—25 times the entire Old Testament. In the New Testament, in regard to Old Testament, I translated 21 books. And if you consider that the Old Testament of the Hebrews contains less than 30 books, the percentage is very high, you know. But I have in mind to translate the entire Bible and to publish my translation. I—I’m not a mad fool, and he’s—he’s a—I think that fascinated me—yes.

All right. And there’s no problem in accessing those texts? I mean, that maybe goes back to the question where we started, because ironically, you were asked—maybe that’s not accurate enough—not by the Vatican, but as I understand, by the publishing house of the Vatican, to translate those books—specifically to do it literally. And then they didn’t like that translation—maybe that’s inaccurate too. Now, do you need their intervention? What’s your relationship with the Vatican, if any, about that?

I was very appreciated as translator; in effect, they published 17 books translated by me, with my name—17. These books are in the faculties, in the universities of theologians; are studied, of course. These books are dangerous for them, but they want to know what I said, what I wrote.

And I don’t remember the question—well, your relationship with the Vatican: do you need their texts? Are you in good shape with them? Some people inside—I mean, maybe that’s secret—but they write to you and they say, well, good work; we already knew that; this is not what we want people to hear, etc.

Today, I don’t have a public relation with the Vatican because I was fired, and so I’m continuing to work by myself. But I know I am in relationships with some individuals—some individuals of the Vatican—that they want to be public—but they have personal contact with me. I see. And I’m so glad of that because this fact increased my determination.

The Future Human and Domestication

Yes. Well, thank you for sharing that. Okay, my last comment question: so here in The Future Human, we explore the future human, but to do that we need to see where we are—our place—and very importantly, also—that’s why we’ve also been reflecting each other—it’s—uh—the few often someone says that the man wants to do as the—as god.

Can you—froze there—the man want—and if the Elohim came from other worlds, we are—we are like them. We want—we want to explore—to explore other—other worlds.

Um, all right. So you jumped already into what I was going to ask you, because I was saying we want to create or fabricate other species—yes—just like they made us. Without—well, look—um, all that may sound too crazy, but if you think what we do with cats and dogs—you don’t hear domestication; we’ve domesticated many species. And now with AI, many people talk about hybridizing with the machines—yes. Well, these things can have their moral derivatives, but we entertain them. Well, why not entertain them in a wider context of what we discussed today as to the future human?

Yes, but what is interesting is that human species has many characteristics of domesticated species—many characteristics. And the question is: who domesticated us? Because no one species domesticates itself. It’s necessary—there is another. But many, many, many biologists say that we have typical characteristics of a domesticated species. Thank you, Mauro. I’m possible that in the Bible—uh—is basically present a possible—a possible truth about our origins—origins.

Yes, and that’s precisely why I wanted to be in conversation with you. Thank you so much for sharing. I’m frozen, and you are frozen too. Thank you very much for sharing this with us and for doing it in English. I should understand because you were frozen. Yes, I’m saying thank you for sharing this with us, for doing it in English. And I’ll open it up to the rest of the—the—the audience for their comments and questions, and for about 25 more minutes, if you don’t mind. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I hope the audience understood what I said. Yeah, I think it was very clear, and we will hear from them now. I think you were very clear. Thank you.

Audience Questions and Comments

Question: You can use the raise your hand function at the bottom of your screen under reactions. I see we already have quite a few hands up already, and so I will invite Virgin to come in. Please come on with your question. I would just ask you if you could speak slowly, just to make sure that Mauro understands your question. Thank you.

Thank you, Eleanor. Yes, your English is very, very good, and you were very clear. Um, I just want to make one comment because I’ve done seven years of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew many, many years ago, and I remember my struggle with Hebrew was that we don’t know what the vowels are. So I can say to you him, hum, and hem—three different ways. And so that was all my struggle when I had to produce a paper. I think it is subject to many, many different interpretations. And then you have the whole faith tradition of 2,000 years. So looking at it as I did 40 years ago, I realized there are tremendous difficulties in translating the Old Testament, but a lot less in the New Testament. And we have a wrathful god; we have a judgmental god; we have a god that’s angry. And then, you know, you can come up with what—like Iain McGilchrist thinks that goodness, beauty, and truth are important. And so I think that—um—I understand your work; I think it’s quite laborious thing that you’re trying to achieve because we don’t know where all the vowels are in Hebrew, so we can come up with different interpretations. But I like to look at the faith tradition and a sense of people, and that has led to terrible things as well. So I think we just always have to continually evaluate. But thank you. Leave this with some other comment. Thank you to you.

In effect, it is right: the ancient Hebrew was written without vowels—yeah. The vowels were put by the Masoretes between the 5th and the 9th century after Christ. But not to—to be—um—accused—yes—to choose my—my Bible. I translated the Masoretic Bible that you know is the official Bible of the tradition—the majority Bible is considered the official. I know there are many Bibles in the story: the Masoretic Bible, the Samaritan Bible, uh, the Greek Bible, the Syrian Bible, and so on. But given that the theologians tell us that the true Bible is the Masoretic, I use that.

Well, that depends if you accept that that’s the only true Bible. But I only read the text of Qumran; I read the Old Testament in Greek and so on, of course. But when I speak in public, I prefer to speak about the so-called official Bible. Thank you. Thank you, Virgin, for coming in.

Jeremy, would you like to join the conversation?

Yeah, thanks. Um, thank you; thank you very much. Uh, very interesting. Um, I really enjoyed it. Uh, I think that one of the questions—what I’d like to hear more about, and I don’t know—again, it’s time, and I’m sure it’s complex—is the sense of the spirit or—you know, in—in David Bohm’s work, Science and the Spirit, for example, there’s these—these subtleties. And—and I suppose in the narrative as I understand it—which is limited—uh, you know, in reading Bohm and in reading McGilchrist, my spirit leapt and was aligned very much to the way that I understood—um—the teachings of Jesus—uh, certainly not maybe conventional religious teaching; I’m sure—I mean, I don’t regard myself as a conventional religious person. But you know, the Holy Spirit is in a sense where Jesus says that he leaves. And I think in the narrative, those people that—you know, you have this thing—the mystery of the resurrection, in a way, where—you know, he comes back. And so I think none of what you’re saying really rocks my world, to be honest, as a person who follows in the way of Jesus. I don’t see that anything you’re saying really rocks my world because—um—I walk in the spirit of Jesus, of that risenness. And if he was—you could call him an alien who came down, or if he was sort of married off with—um—maybe someone from a higher order that we don’t know about—I think that his message of love and peace and non-violence, as in the Sermon on the Mount and those things, are what we follow in the world. And certainly I think there’s been corruption and contention and the kind of war that’s gone on around with many theologians. I just wanted to say I appreciate that. And my question is: so what would you say the Holy Spirit is? And isn’t that what Jesus really gave? And how does that relate to love and joy and peace and patience, etc.? Thank you.

There are many studies of the Jesuits in which it is written that the Holy Spirit is a Christian transposition of the Gabriel of the Old Testament. And one of these Jesuits is a cardinal in France; he is a theological scholar, and he writes clearly that Holy Spirit is the translation—the—see, yes—the translation of the Gabriel of the ancient Testament. But this is a question of faith, and I prefer to not enter in this question—because the Bible is an historical book, and I want to—to say, to narrate to my public what it really writes.

Okay, so thanks very much, and I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you to you.

Thank you. Niels, would you like to come in?

Thank you much. Support—you talked about this, but very deep meanings in me from a long life of experience of the spiritual. Um, I have one question about ancient Hebrew. I’ve got a friend who was an ancient Hebrew scholar, and he mentioned that the—the word Yahweh is consists of two letters which—this each describe a different direction. Is that—is that true? I—I understood from you that Yahweh is just one of the Elohim—so it’s like a—uh—an offspring of the same family, so to speak. That’s how I would like to see that. So—uh—it’s—it’s very important for me because I have—I have developed some software, and that is like a process, and that process is like a mind—if I can just say that. And that mind comes about by combining two directions—in the sense that the mind is—is from the future to the—to the present, and the other direction is the direction that we live. And—and this was an incredible experience for me to—to just try this out; it came like an intuition, and then I tried it out, and it had a huge impact. So that’s a—I’ll just say that. I had—I have always felt—felt this spirit in my life, and the way it manifests itself is like perfection. And I’ve had experiences of producing perfect things in—in my life at various stages—without—without any input from myself, so to speak. That’s all I want to say, but I—I found—I like the word that the Elohim is—I also—you mentioned El Shaddai—in—in the—in our understanding from the—our Bible is—is the god of—of prospect and—and a helping hand. And so in a sense, to me, that’s—that is—that is actually what the Holy Spirit is—you know, Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit as the helper who would come, and he will only come because I have to leave you. So by his resurrection, the Holy Spirit was then imparted to all mankind—that’s how I see it. So that—I will stop now.

Okay. I would like you to—to say something about that. I—I heard with open mind what—what—uh—what you said. Yes. But I prefer to remain strictly—strictly—united with the literal meaning of the Bible—yes—without any theological interpretation. Yeah. And I—I appreciate your experience that I’m sure is—uh—is very important for you, and I—and I don’t—don’t want question it—absolutely. Yes.

But—but how did the Bible come about? It was oral kind of tradition that—that carried that through from—from experiences. So I’ve experienced—without the experience, there would be no—there would be no theology. It’s a—it’s uh—it’s supposed—all is possible, of course. Yeah. But no one in the world knows when the Bible—um—was written. Yes—was written. No one knows when it was written; no one knows when it was read—because it was written without vowels. So it’s extremely difficult to reach the real meaning of the Bible—yeah—and—and it’s difficult to come to understand the real message of the Bible. Yes. So it’s important—it’s important for you—your experience; I’m absolutely sure. But perhaps you could say something about Yahweh, since Niels asked, and we didn’t talk about that.

It is a name which was pronounced when the Hebrew language did not exist—yeah—yes—many centuries before. So no one knows the real meaning of this term. The scholars have made many hypotheses about this term, but I prefer to leave it untranslated—because each translation is a product of one scholar or two or three or four—yeah—yes. And it’s not sure—absolutely—because—because we don’t know in what language it was pronouncing the first—the first time. And it was written—and it was written several centuries after it was pronounced. And the vowels—in the vowels were put many, many, many centuries after it was written. So about Yahweh, we know something—basically, we don’t know.

Okay, thank you. I’ll just say that I’ve been reading the Bible for many years—for 60 years—and okay, I take it literally, and—and I’ve made up my—my own interpretation of things, and—and there are many contradictions, and—and you have to overcome those. So I found that it’s—it’s literally the literal thing speaks to me in my experience; it’s—it—it grows. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you to you—very much.

Glenn, come in.

Hi—uh, I’m you myself; can you hear me? Yeah—and yes. All right. I have two questions. Uh, one pertains to—um—Jesus’s miracles, and the second pertains to Immanuel Velikovsky. So the first question I wanted to ask is—um—the so—these miracles that we know from Jesus—you know, like splitting the water and the fish and—uh—I don’t know, turning something into wine and stuff like that—do you think he had like high-tech gadgets that he used to do that, or do you think it was—did you—do you think it came from a—uh—maybe like a—uh—like a telepathic or telekinetic or something like that—you know, from—from the mind? Did he do it from the mind, or did he have—like in Star Wars—like a laser beam or something like that with what he could do it? And—um—and the second question to Immanuel Velikovsky: I was wondering, have you—um—studied him or did you—um—like in your studies, did you—um—did you research him? Uh, because I—I know that I think that kind of ties into because he was a close friend—as I understand—of Albert Einstein—uh—which then would tie into David Bohm and to David Peat. Um—so yeah, those are my two questions.

Yes. I start with the second. In brief—let me say that if Velikovsky is proved, all the history falls down; all the history falls down. So we don’t know—uh—Velikovsky—Velikovsky is very appreciated and is also very contrasted—is the theory. So I don’t know—I don’t know—answer completely to your—to your question. And the first question: the miracles of Jesus—in one of—of my Italian books, I examined some of these miracles, and they didn’t were miracles—because—um—Jesus speaks to his—to his servants—to his apostles—to his servants—and excuses us—so Jesus at one point says to the apostles: is it possible that I have to explain everything to you?

So there is a—there’s a chance that actually he was trying to say to them that there’s some things he cannot really explain and—uh—it can—and couldn’t really show them at their stage of development, I guess. And also with the Gospels, we need to pretend they are true—because we don’t know who wrote—who wrote this Gospels—because they—because—um—not—not Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John wrote this Gospel person—this is the Gospels. We have only transcriptions belonging to a time after the life of Jesus. We have more than 20,000 of transcriptions, and there aren’t two equal. So we must pretend—it’s difficult to—to have—uh—for sure a truth by the Gospels.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you to you.

I’m sorry for English. Uh, Gina—oh no, I saw Gina disappeared, but maybe that was the message—no, here I am. Okay.

Hi. Thank you so much for this—uh—important lecture. I don’t know if you’re gonna have time, but I wanted to ask if you’ve studied any of the Gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi—um—and if you have any—uh—correlation with some of those gospels—um—particularly related to the Elohim or the origin stories.

The Gospel—the Gospels like the one of Thomas and the other like that—have not—have no connection with Old Testament—because as a pro—a product of another—a way of reasoning—are not Jew’s Testament—are not in the history of the Jews—of the history reasoning.

Yeah, just so to make sure I understood: you’re saying that they’re totally different and that they’re—they’re not the same, but some of the stories overlap? No, they’re—they’re aware—at that time—54—at least 50 forms of Christianity—they fought one each other. And each of these forms of Christianity told that they had the true verbs—the true phrases of Jesus. But we—but we don’t know when—way—what they are.

Well, thank you. Do Eva, would you like to come in and ask your question? In Italian—I—I—I could explain better—more better than that, but it’s impossible. I understand a little, but I don’t know if I could—that Eva, you’re muted. Okay, there you go.

Thank you. Thank you very much for this very fascinating and very multidimensional conversation. I come from a very different background—as a Jungian scholar and a Kabbalist—so it’s a different background, but I was—I won’t—and I’m certainly not a Hebrew scholar, and I very much appreciate the—uh—incredible scholarship that has gone into this. I had a question that I posted over here—if you remember way back—and it might have been the 60s when this book Chariots of the Gods came out by Erich von Däniken. He speaks of the—uh—uh—children—the children of the gods—what—and I think it overlaps to what you’re speaking about—um—intermarrying with the children—I think the women, children of the humans—and that there were two different people. That he—it was fascinating; I remember finding out about it in the 70s. And the other one is Elizabeth Haich’s book Initiation, where she has a—her memory of—uh—ancient Egypt—of an initiation. She also speaks of what you’re talking about: that there was an intermarriage between the sons of gods and the daughters of men. Um—are you familiar with these—uh—particular—this episode is narrated in chapter 6 of the—of Genesis—when the author tells us that the sons of Elohim took the daughters of the Adamites because they were tovot—means beautiful, of course, but it means also useful for interbreeding. And they did it—yeah—so one number—and uh—from uh—from—uh—these unions became the giants. So is that is written in the sixth—uh—chapter of the—of Genesis. But if uh written also in the Ethiopic Book of Enoch—that is not accepted by the Catholic church, but is accepted by African church.

And did the—and is it—would you agree that the sons of gods, when they intermarried with the daughters of men—that they polluted—that they—uh—the consciousness was lowered? Does that make sense to you? But the—reading carefully the Bible—I don’t find any questions in these alloys. They were men of war; they’re making war—making wars. Okay. And they—they didn’t concern with the religion, with the spirituality, with the events—with the sky. Is—my study fix—fix with the study of Erich von Däniken—mm-hmm—and the Graham Hancock too. I have been at home of Graham Hancock—yes—we talked about—for more than two hours—yeah—yeah—and—yeah—civilization before ours—that was before the war—like one—the war like Elohim—before the war—because you said the Elohim were warlike—yeah—well, men of war—yeah—foreign—also the Elohim of the other nations—like Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hindu culture, and so on—the Greeks, the Romans—they were always the same.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much. That would explain a lot of where we are. Is that—for example, in the Bible there is a term nefesh—means neck, breath—only neck and breath. And the theologians translate—as translated it as soul—but it doesn’t mean soul; in thus it means neck—so—so person—so person breathing—foreign.

Closing Remarks

Alex, I will hand it back to you now. All right. Well, gratitude, Mauro, to you—for your time, your scholarship, your great effort, your generosity—and also to Elizabeth and Sebastian, who are behind the scenes, who also make this possible. Yes. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation.

Well, this is not only fascinating and interesting; this is a very important and very urgent topic—I think that with respect to the topic, but also with respect to what we did today. It’s very important that we give us permission to talk—to talk about these things, about anything. And I think only if we can talk about things, we could think those things—and then we can feel them, and then we can know them, and then we can talk again. So thank you; thank Pari Center; thank all of you who are here for just entertaining these thoughts. Uh—it’s—it’s an obvious thing to say, but it’s—it’s in danger of extinction: the ability to talk. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to you. Thank you to all. Thank you for having me with you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alex; this was wonderful. Thank you, Sebastian; thank you. Thank you, Mauro; thank you, Sebastian; and thank you, Alex; and thank you, everybody that joined us today. And we look forward to seeing you at our next online event. Thank you. Bye-bye, everybody. Thank you.