Belzebù e i Carri Celesti | Mauro Biglino

[Music] Good morning. We are living in a truly fascinating period from the point of view of knowledge because all the news that gradually comes out - which is almost even difficult to keep up with - forces us to always ask ourselves new questions about the history of man, so asking ourselves questions is not only a right but it is a duty, just as we obviously do with ancient texts, now we also see it with some curiosities, even with illustrations that help us a lot to reflect on the presumed certainties we have. Sometimes when we think about the Bible we think about large systems and then, in reality, we realize that sometimes a line is enough, a small step is enough, a small story is enough to make us understand - without the need to make great theological, philosophical or metaphysical - make us understand how things probably were on a daily basis.

Here we are in the second Book of Kings; in chapter 1 it begins like this "After the death of Akab, Moab rebelled against Israel". Now, Akab was a King of Israel, husband of Jezebel who was a princess - his name among others would also have the meaning of lover of Baal - and this king, pushed by his wife, dedicated himself to the cult of the so-called phoenix deities. It is said that "Moab rebelled against Israel": Moab was a relative of Israel because he descended from Abraham's nephew Lot and the interesting thing is that this story of the struggle between Moab and Israel finds an extra-biblical confirmation, an extraordinary confirmation of which we have already mentioned, which is the stele of Mesha - Mesha was king of Moab - which tells precisely of this story, that is, of the conflict he had with those he calls "those of Yahveh" and tells of his victories and the sacrifices he made .

I have spoken at length about the stele of Mesha: I examined it line by line in the official translations in this book here and it is interesting why? Because this stele represents historical, archaeological, extra-biblical confirmation of the biblical stories. So already this first line which is apparently so insignificant, in reality carries with it a value that is extraordinary also because the Bible talks about Mesha , in fact it then talks about it here in the following chapters, therefore Mesha is a king known from the Bible and is a king known by archaeology: so there is this cross-confirmation.

I was saying Ahab, husband of Jezebel; these have a son, Ahaziah who will then succeed them in the kingdom, and the second book of Kings continues by saying "Ahaziah fell from the window of the upper room in Samaria and was injured. Then he sent messengers with this order: go and ask Baal Zebub, God of Ekron, to know if I will survive this infirmity of mine. " Now, this is interesting why?

Because in the meantime this figure of Baal Zebub is introduced who, combined with Baal Peor, is a figure who then passed into Christian tradition in demonic form. Baal Peor was a deity called so because his sacrifices, sacrifices or in any case the rites better, which he asked for were celebrated on Mount Peor but Peor also means "opening" means "exposure". I had already explained it but I remember it so as not to oblige you to necessarily go and look for where I explained it, because he made sacrifices, or rather, he asked for rites in which sexual activity was involved: often the Israelites abandoned Yahweh to go from Baal Peor called by the Moabite women to celebrate these sexual rites and Yahweh obviously punished them very harshly.

Baal Peor was then transliterated into Beelfegor and became the Belphegor of the medieval demonic tradition and therefore one of the little devils, in reality, was one of the Elohim of the time, one of the Elohim rivals of Yahweh so much so that here it says "Go and question Baal Zebub, another deity, another Elohim who is in fact defined here as Elohim of Ekron: Ekron was a town that was part of the Philistine pentapolis. So this king of Israel sends to ask this Baal Zebub. Now, Zebub is an epithet that is translated as, therefore, Baal Zebub, "lord of the flies".

used with a certain sarcasm because Zebub indicated the Principality therefore Baal Zebub meant "lord of the principality" therefore a powerful Elohim who, among other things, was also linked to the power to heal as well as other of the so-called divinities of the time: we remember that in the Bible there were the so-called Rafaels which means "El who heals" so let's say Els specialized, we would say, in the medical field. Then Ahaziah sends his men to question this Baal Zebub to find out, in short to have the possibility of recovering from this accident which occurred to him when he fell from the window in Samaria but an angel of Yahweh said to Elijah the prophet "Come, go and meet the messengers of the king of Samaria and say to them: Is there not an Elohim in Israel that you should go and consult Baal Zebub, Elohim of Ekron? ".

Here, once again, Yahweh and this Elohim are placed on the same level; you don't say: that other person doesn't exist or that other person doesn't have powers, you say: why do you go to that other person since I'm here? And this is one of those simple, immediate, frank, I would say almost naive, statements that make us understand how the Elohim were placed on the same level. Even this king of Israel goes to ask another because evidently, let's say, due to the accident that had occurred to him he trusted the other one more.

Then the Messengers go and then return to Ahaziah and "Ahaziah says to him: why have you returned? They said to him: a man came to meet us who said to us: return to the king who sent you and tell him: thus says the Lord: there is no 'Is there a God in Israel that you should send to consult Baal Zebub, the God of Ekron? ' Here in the Bible the term Elohim is always used.

Then it happens that Ahaziah sends a group of 50 men, they meet Elijah, Elijah invokes the intervention of Yahweh who burns them with a fire from above and this is repeated a few times until the last group, so to speak, is saved, he is pardoned but Ahaziah, who therefore has no way of having contact with this healing Elohim, dies. So here we really find ourselves faced with one of those stories that appear to be fairy tales, which appear insignificant but which, in reality, help us to understand how the Elohim were considered: that is, they were all considered, at least those at this level, absolutely equivalent, just as the Elohim of Moab, the first one we mentioned, was an Elohim who reigned over one of the relative families of the Israelites. So here we really have another snapshot of the distribution of the power of the Elohim in that territory.

Elohim who fought among themselves, had the same characteristics, had the same prerogatives and also had substantially the same powers. So we are faced with a situation that appears very clear. Among other things, the speech of Elijah who then fights, has a clash, has a challenge with the so-called prophets of this rival Baal, what does he do?

He manages to win this challenge in a very astute, very wise, very knowledgeable way: I spoke in this book, in an entire chapter, about Elijah, when Elijah manages, through his knowledge, to set fire to an entire altar made of stone with over the victim, something that the prophets of Baal, that is, of the lord, of the Elohim, rival of Yahweh, cannot do . So these types of stories are those which, beyond the great discourses of theology or metaphysics or monotheism, are those which help us understand everyday reality and show how the biblical authors actually spoke about these things with absolute tranquility. But there is more, there is a curiosity: there is a woodcut published here, at the opening of the book of Kings.

This woodcut is from 1625 and represents precisely on this side the fire falling from the sky invoked by Elijah while on this side there is the representation of Yahweh and look at how Yahweh is represented. This woodcut was placed in a popular version of the Bible which had previously been approved by Pope Sixtus V and Yahweh is represented comfortably lying on a celestial chariot, that is, on a flying chariot with wheels. So we are in 1625 and it was represented with absolute tranquility God in this way, that is, on his flying vehicle: something we have talked about many times.

The interesting thing is that this woodcut belongs to a period in which Europe was witnessing, starting from the previous decades and therefore from the end of the 1500s, a series of phenomena which occurred in the skies and which were represented graphically: I am thinking for example of the flying spheres in the sky of Basel; I think of the flying cylinders in the skies of Nuremberg; I think of that beautiful image of a flying object that was seen in the skies of Arabia and which was published in a book published in Basel, if I remember correctly, in 1577 (I was lucky enough to see a copy of this at a restorer). So we are faced with representations of celestial phenomena, what we now call UAP, that is, unidentified aerial phenomena that the Pentagon told us about and, let's say, the Pentagon cleared them; it finally gave us the opportunity to ask questions and finally it gave us the opportunity to review even the ancient texts in the light of what they told us without having to hear or listen to those simplistic answers that were given to those questions that now require true answers, concrete answers; they require at least hypotheses of response that have a bearing on reality, that reality that the ancients represented to us with what we would perhaps even call excessive naivety but which for them was nothing other than realism because they did not ask themselves the problems that we ask ourselves today and therefore they told things as they saw them without the need to hide them as unfortunately was done with us until very recently because now the situation has changed, we have already seen it, and therefore even simple stories like these can be reviewed at the light of new hypotheses, new awareness and new possibilities to ask questions that open up a truly fascinating world to us. Bye, thanks and see you next time.