What happened
The Book of Ezekiel opens with the most famous 'flying machine' passage in the Bible. A priest deported to Babylonia, Ezekiel says he was standing among the exiles by the river Chebar when a storm wind blew in from the north carrying a huge cloud wrapped in flashing fire, with a core that glowed like polished metal. Out of it came four winged 'living creatures', each with four faces. Beside each one stood a gleaming wheel built like 'a wheel in the middle of a wheel', with towering rims covered in eyes. The creatures and wheels moved together, never turning as they went, and rose off the ground as one unit. Above them hung a crystal-like platform supporting a sapphire throne and a figure surrounded by rainbow brilliance. The book dates its visions to 593-571 BC. The passage became the foundation of Jewish Merkabah ('chariot') mysticism, and in the twentieth century it became the founding text of the ancient-astronaut movement.
The original account
And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire. ... The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. ... And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
Ezekiel 1:4, 1:16, 1:19, King James Version (public domain)
The official explanation
Biblical scholars read the chapter as a prophetic throne vision, not a report of hardware. The 'living creatures' and wheels (later called ophanim, a class of angels) carry the divine throne, and the imagery draws on temple cherubim, Mesopotamian composite guardian figures and the storm imagery long used for Israel's God. Jewish tradition treated the passage as so holy and dangerous that study of the 'Work of the Chariot' was restricted. Most scholars hold that the book substantially reflects the historical Ezekiel, though with later additions by his followers.
The anomalous case
No ancient text has been argued over by engineers like this one. Josef F. Blumrich, who headed NASA's systems layout branch at the Marshall Space Flight Center, set out in the early 1970s to refute Erich von Daniken's claim that Ezekiel saw a spacecraft. Instead, by his own account, he became convinced the text described a real craft, and in The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974) he reconstructed a lander with a central body and four helicopter-like rotor units. Blumrich highlighted features the prophet stresses again and again: the vehicle moves in any direction without turning, lifts straight off the ground, arrives in a storm of wind, cloud and fire, and is accompanied by noise. Earlier writers, including Morris Jessup in 1956 and Arthur W. Orton in 1961, had already floated the same reading. Supporters note that Ezekiel insists he saw these things while awake and repeats the encounter later in the book, which reads more like testimony than allegory.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
How it has been read
A visionary theophany of God's mobile throne, written by an exiled priest to show that Israel's God was not confined to the ruined Jerusalem temple. The wheels, eyes and fire are symbols of omnipresence and omniscience, and the scene shaped later Merkabah mysticism and the throne imagery of the Book of Revelation.
Von Daniken (Chariots of the Gods?, 1968) and NASA engineer Josef Blumrich (1974) argued that Ezekiel described a landing spacecraft, with the 'wheels' as rotor or landing assemblies and the fiery cloud as exhaust. Critics such as Ronald Story replied that Blumrich adjusted his biblical quotations to fit the spacecraft model.
Documents
- Ezekiel 1 (King James Version) scripture, biblehub.com
Sources
- Ezekiel 1 (KJV) Bible Hub
- Merkabah mysticism Wikipedia
- Ezekiel's Vision My Jewish Learning
- The Spaceships of Ezekiel Wikipedia
- Book of Ezekiel Wikipedia
- Are UFOs Mentioned in the Bible? Part 1 The John Ankerberg Show
Witness reports elsewhere
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