by Zecharia Sitchin
2005
extracted from AtlatisRising Number
54
from
AtlantisRising Website
The death of Pope
John Paul II has occasioned widespread discussions about his own
stand and the Vatican’s position regarding a variety of subjects,
from purely theological to social issues. Completely lacking has
been any reference to an issue of concern to many, and especially to
those interested in the subjects of UFOs, Life on other planets, and
Extraterrestrials in general, and in Zecharia Sitchin’s
writings in particular.
As it happened, in April 2000, Sitchin engaged in a public
discussion of those very issues with a leading theologian of the
Vat-ican, Monsignor Corrado Balducci, during an international
conference held in Bellaria (Bimini) in Italy. The dialogue
was reported at the time on the Zecharia Sitchin web site (http://www.sitchin.com/).
Here is the full text of that report.
|
Dialogue in
Bellaria
SITCHIN AND VATICAN THEOLOGIAN DISCUSS
UFOs,
EXTRATERRESTRIALS, ANGELS, CREATION OF MAN
In what must be a historic first, a high
official of
the Vatican and a Hebrew scholar discussed the issue of
extraterrestrials and the creation of man, and though different from
each other in up-bringing, background, religion and methodology,
nevertheless arrived at common conclusions:
• Yes, extraterrestrials can and
do exist on other planets
• Yes, they can be more advanced
than us
• Yes, materially, man could
have been fashioned from a pre-existing sentient being
The
Participants
The high Vatican official was Monsignor Corrado Balducci, a Catholic
theologian with impressive credentials:
-
a member of the Curia of the
Roman Catholic Church
-
a Prelate of the Congregation for the
Evangelization of Peoples and the Propagation of the Faith
-
leading
exorcist of the Archdiocese of Rome
-
a member of the Vatican’s
Beatification Committee
-
an expert on demonology
-
the author of
several books
Appointed in the Vatican to deal with the issue of
UFOs and extraterrestrials, he has made in recent years
pronouncements indicating a tolerance of the subjects but he has
never before met and had a dialogue with a Hebrew scholar, and gone
beyond prescribed formulations to include the touchy issue of the
creation of man.
The Hebrew scholar was me—Zecharia Sitchin:
The monsignor and I had almost met for such a dialogue the previous
December, but it did not come about. This time we were scheduled to
meet in Bellaria, Italy, at a conference whose theme was “The
Mystery of Human Existence.” I arrived there with my wife and a
score of fans from the U.S.A., on March 31, scheduled to address the
audience of over a thousand the next day. The monsignor was nowhere
in sight but he was there the next morning to hear my presentation.
“I drove the whole night from Rome to hear you,” he said.
Sitchin’s Presentation
My talk, ably translated by my Italian editor Tuvia Fogel, included
a slide presentation that added a pictorial dimension to the
evidence from ancient times in support of Sumerian texts, on which
my eight books based the following conclusions:
-
We are not alone—not just in the
vast universe, but in our own solar system
-
There is one more planet in our
solar system, orbiting beyond Pluto but nearing Earth
periodically
-
Advanced “Extraterrestrials”—the
Sumerians called them Anunnaki, the Bible Nefilim—started to
visit our planet some 450,000 years ago
-
And, some 300,000 years ago, they
engaged in genetic engineering to upgrade Earth’s hominids and
fashion Homo sapiens, the Adam. In that, they acted as
Emissaries for the Universal Creator—God
The Dialogue
“We have much to talk about,” Msgr.
Balducci said to me as he came forward to congratulate me on my
presentation. “I have great esteem for your scholarship,” he
said.
We returned to the hotel for lunch. Our
table was surrounded in a semi-circle by my American fans, intent
on not missing a word of the forthcoming dialogue. In the hours-long
session, Msgr. Balducci outlined the positions he was going to
state, from a prepared text, in his talk the next day. While my
approach was based on physical evidence, his was a purely Roman Catholic
theological-philosophical one, seeking the spiritual
aspects. Yet, our conclusions converged.
Msgr. Balducci’s
Positions
-
On UFOs.
The hundreds and thousands of eyewitness
reports leave no room for denying that there is a measure of
truth in them, even al-lowing for optical illusions, atmospheric
phenomena and so on. As a Catholic theologian such witnessing
cannot be dismissed.
-
On Life on Other Planets:
-
“That life may exist on other planets is certainly possible...
The Bible does not rule out that possibility. On the basis of
scripture and on the basis of our knowledge of God’s
omnipotence, His wisdom being limitless, we must affirm that
life on other planets is possible.”
Moreover, this is not only
possible, but also credible and even probable.
-
On Intelligent Extraterrestrials:
-
“When I talk about extraterrestrials, we must think of beings
who are like us—more probably, beings more advanced than us, in
that their nature is an association of a material part and a
spiritual part, a body and a soul, although in different
proportions than human beings on Earth.”
Angels are beings who
are purely spiritual, devoid of bodies, while we are made up of
spirit and matter but still at a low level.
-
“It is entirely
credible that in the enormous distance between angels and humans,
there could be found some middle stage, that is, beings with a
body like ours but more elevated spiritually. If such intelligent beings really exist on other planets, only science
will be able to prove; but in spite of what some people think,
we would be in a position to reconcile their existence with the
redemption that Christ has brought us.”
The Anunnaki
and the Creation of Man
Well then, I asked Msgr. Balducci, does it mean that my
presentation was no great revelation to you? We appear to agree, I
said, that more advanced extraterrestrials can exist, and I use
science to evidence their coming to Earth ...I then quote the Sumerian texts
that say that
the Anunnaki (“Those who from heaven to Earth came”)
genetically improved an existing being on Earth to create the being
that the Bible calls Adam.
My conclusion regarding your presentation, Msgr. Balducci answered,
is that more than anything else your whole approach is based on
physical evidence, it concerns itself with matter, not with spirit.
This is an important distinction,
“because if this distinction is
made, I can bring up the view of the great theologian, Professor
Father Marakoff, who is still alive and is greatly respected by the
Church. He formulated the hypothesis that when God created Man and
put the soul into him, perhaps what is meant is not that man was
created from mud or lime, but from something pre-existing, even from
a sentient being capable of feeling and perception. So the idea of
taking a pre-man or hominid and creating someone who is aware of
himself is some-thing that Christianity is coming around to… The key
is the distinction between the material body and the soul granted by
God.”
From
Anunnaki to God
Yes, I responded to the Vatican theologian, in my writings I
deal with the physical evidence but already in my first book (The
12th Planet), the very last sentence of the last
paragraph raises the question: If the extraterrestrials “created” us,
who created them
on their planet?
From this my own thinking and the con-tents of my subsequent books
evolved toward the spiritual or “divine” aspects. The Anunnaki, I
have explained, were just emissaries (and that is what the Hebrew
word Malachim, translated ‘angels,’ means). They thought that it was
their decision to come here for selfish reasons and to fashion us
because they needed workers but in truth they only carried out the
Almighty God’s wishes and plans.
If such extraterrestrials were so involved, Msgr.
Balducci said, even by your own interpretation they had to do with man’s physics,
body and rationality: but God alone had to do with the soul!
My second book, that deals with man’s aspiration to ascend the
heavens, is titled
The Stairway to Heaven. I told Msgr. Bal-ducci,
“It seems to me that we are
ascending the same stairway to heaven, though from different
steps,” I said.
We ended the dialogue as friends,
determined to stay in touch and continue.
|