DIALOGUE IN BELLARIA
Sitchin & Vatican Theologian Discuss UFO's
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 upbringing, 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 and the author
of several books. Appointed in the
Vatican to deal with the issue of UFO's 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:
A researcher of ancient civilizations, a biblical archaeologist, a
descendant of Abraham�
The
Monsignor and I almost met for such a dialogue last 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 USA, on March
31st, 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
UFO's.
"There must be something in it."
The hundreds and thousands of eyewitness reports leave no room for
denying that there is a measure of truth in them, even allowing for
optical illusions, atmospheric phenomena
and so on. As a Catholic theologian
such witnessing cannot be
dismissed. "Witnessing is one
way of transmitting truth, and in the case of the Christian religion, we are
talking about a Divine Revelation in which witnessing is crucial to the
credibility of our faith.�
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.
'"Cardinal Nicolo Cusano (1401-1464) wrote that there is not a
single star in the sky about which we can rule out the existence of life, even
if different from ours.�
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
something 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 contents 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, Balducci, "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.
�
Z. Sitchin 2002
Reprinted with permission
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