There are two new books assessing the intersection of religion and astrophysics. Both are fantastic reads. First is Aliens and Religion: Where Two Worlds Collide, by Jonathan MS Pearce and Aaron Adair (Onus 2023), which explores the philosophical problems that “outer space” and the prospect of it being inhabited pose for all religions. But on its heels is another (due in July, which you can pre-order; I’ve looked through an advanced copy): Religion and Outer Space, an anthology edited by Eric Michael Mazur and Sarah McFarland Taylor (Routledge 2023), which explores the historical intersection of those two things. That’s what I’ll be talking about today.

Check out its whole table of contents. Some great stuff in there. But most pertinent to my latest work is its keynote chapter, “Outer Space in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature” by Catherine Hezser, a renowned scholar of ancient Judaism (she has written a plethora of fantastic academic monographs on that subject). This chapter’s title alone seals the deal: it’s official, people—in ancient parlance heaven means outer space. As I wrote in Jesus from Outer Space (Pitchstone 2020):

Key to [understanding the real origins of Christianity] is a fact not often known to the public: that the earliest Christians taught Jesus came from outer space. Not in a fully modern sense, but in an ancient sense. By the time of Christianity, Judaism had long incorporated what was then “modern science,” which taught that multiple spheres of heaven physically surrounded the earth, [usually even] with a spherical earth at the center, and that those heavenly realms were held up not by pillars as in more ancient teachings, but by gaseous or ether-filled spaces, extending all the way to the moon and beyond. All of that encompassed what we today mean by outer space. So the most accurate English translation of words that meant “the heavens” in antiquity is quite simply “outer space.”

Of course, the ancient people of Judea didn’t believe in an extraterrestrial vacuum (some then did, just not Jewish theologians). But that’s not what even we mean by “outer space.” We mean everything above Earth‘s atmosphere, all the space “out there.” And that’s what they believed too. Many imagined a thinner kind of material occupied the remainder of the universe, whether some kind of invisible fire or ether, notions we wouldn’t even abandon ourselves until the end the nineteenth century. And they imagined creatures of various kinds lived in every level thereof—which we would call space aliens today. Which only means they had different beliefs than we do about what exactly was in outer space. But they certainly had the same conception we do of what was outer space.

So we ought to refer to their ideas just as they would have understood them, and not obscure their beliefs behind inaccuracies. The modern idea of “heaven” is of an other-dimensional space that has no physical location inside our universe—and that idea bears no resemblance at all to what they believed back then. So “heaven” is an inaccurate and indeed misleading translation today. “Outer space” is much closer to what their real beliefs were. And this is exactly the point of [my] book’s title: when we translate the words of the earliest Christians to better reflect what they were actually saying, things look very different than you might have assumed.

Hence as I have noted for a while now:

The most accurate description of earliest Christian thought is that Jesus was an angelic extraterrestrial, who descended from outer space to become a man, teach the gospel, suffer an atoning death, and rise again to return to his throne among the stars, even more powerful than before.

And “on these facts most leading scholars agree.” Even, yes, Bart Ehrman himself. It’s pretty mainstream now (see Chrissy Hansen on the Pre-Existent Jesus; and further scholarship cited by Hansen and Ehrman; and by myself, in OHJ, Element 10, Ch. 4). Which opens up a new possibility for understanding how Christianity really began:

[W]hat if, in fact, Jesus was originally thought to have resided only in outer space? To never have visited Earth at all? What if even his incarnation and death were celestial events? We all agree the Christians originally believed Jesus was from outer space. So the only question is, in the original creed, how far did they think he actually descended from there to effect his cosmic sacrifice?

There is no reasonable doubt that the first Christians believed Jesus came from outer space, that he was an extreterrestrial who had lived there from the dawn of time, and who returned to live there again, after his most crucial existential deed was done: saving the human race from itself (or, at least, from their own creator’s bizarre wrath). The possibility that Jesus carried out that deed in outer space as well is simply the most likely alternative. There are others, of course—from the mainstream conclusion “he carried it out in Palestine” to the not-so-mainstream conclusion “he carried it out in the lost Garden of Eden,” somewhere in the distant East perhaps. But when we look at where ancient Jews typically thought great cosmos-changing historical events took place, the answer is: outer space.

Just think of Satan’s rebellion (which Jesus’s cosmic deed was even designed to reverse), or even the original sin of Adam and Eve: in apocryphal Jewish scriptures heeded as fact even by Paul himself, the Garden of Eden, from whose soil Adam was made and in which he and Eve sinned, was in outer space, and was the actual place from where they, too, would be cast down to Earth, like Satan, in a literal fall from heaven, to the inferior gardens of the world below, mere imperfect copies of the true Garden above—later to be returned to the one in outer space upon their deaths, where in legend Adam and Eve are in fact buried. This is simply the most viable alternative to the traditional understanding of what Christians thought happened with Jesus. So if that traditional understanding falls into question, the next most likely thing is this.

That is why I conclude it’s more likely Jesus was crucified and buried in outer space: once we recognize (1) that Paul, and the authors of 1 Clement, Hebrews, even 1 Peter—all Christian literature published in its first generation—show no knowledge of Jesus ever even having been on Earth, (2) and so evidently did other early sources (apart from its author’s adaptations of Gospel material, even the story told in the book of Acts seems to have no such knowledge; and in some early literature we find hints of other Christians concurring: see OHJ, Chs. 9 and 8, respectively; while the Gospels appear to be wildly mythical, not personal memoirs or researched histories: Ibid. Ch. 10; see also, e.g., Mark’s Use of Paul’s Epistles, Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb?, and My Rank-Raglan Scoring for Osiris), and (3) that the earliest sources seem consistently to think the only way anyone could know of Jesus having been crucified and buried at all is by finding secret messages in Scripture and being told so by divine Revelation (Romans 16, Romans 10, Galatians 1, even 1 Corinthians 15), when we realize all that, we must conclude they probably must have thought those things happened somewhere out of human view. And background facts establish the most usual place for such hidden but divinely world-changing events is, indeed, outer space. It was moved to Jerusalem (or, according to a variant of Eastern Christianity documented in the Talmud, Lydda: On the Historicity of Jesus, Ch. 8.1) after the Jewish War, when following popular fashion in Euhemerizing their divine man served a newly needed purpose: to reconstitute the faith after its failure to predict the world would then end, and kick that can down the road a bit.

But set that aside. Let’s pretend we have sufficient evidence to be sure Jesus really did exist and was witnessed executed and buried in Palestine under Pontius Pilate, as all faith-based creeds would have it (even though we don’t). It still follows that his devoted followers launched a religion around his ministry almost immediately after his death that preached he was an extraterrestrial, only visiting Earth briefly in a manufactured mortal body, like an environment suit for exploring Earth, which he cast off on his death, hopping back into his real, extraterrestrial body to ascend back to his abodes in space, to return from space again someday ahead of legions of alien invaders under his command. Jesus, quite simply, was a space alien. Or so his first followers taught.

The usual anachronistic objections follow. “No one said Jesus came from outer space.” Yes, they did. “Heaven is not located in outer space.” Yes it was—back then. Our notion of heaven being in another dimension is a modern idea; no such concepts existed in antiquity. To them there was only one world, just the Earth and the space below it (the underworld) and the space beyond it—literally “outer” space, a.k.a. “the heavens.” But surely being from heaven is not the same thing as being a space alien—after all, space aliens are (presumably) naturally evolved animals like us, not God’s angels. Not back then. Back then, to Christians, all creatures were made by God, and creatures in the heavens were greater in glory. And in fact, beyond the moon, they were the perfect agents of God’s will, his servants, his messangers, a.k.a. “angels” (the background facts establishing all this are extensive: OHJ, Elements 34-42, Ch. 5).

Even Satan and his demons were extreterrestrials, in the understanding of that time not residing in the underworld (that was a Medieval retcon of what began as their predicted fates in the future, not the present), but rather in the sky, beyond what we now know to be the atmosphere, occupying the vast space between Earth and the moon—essentially living in castles and gardens flying aloft, in low and high orbit (as many sources attest, Ibid.). Possibly, in fact, they were regarded as living on the Moon, that being the “planet” of the corrupt lower sphere or “firmament” holding up the purer heavens above, each occupied by yet another “planet,” including at one level—it varied which—the Sun (Ibid.). Plutarch, for example, attests the Moon as the abode of the dead, prior to any ascension to greater status that is their due (see his essay On the Face in the Orb of the Moon).

Alas, no extant source outright says this—they just mention Satan and his dark lords and minions (the legion of angels that fell with him, and their progeny, the demons) residing in the sky or firmament, presumably occupying castles and abodes there, but where precisely (whether upon magical clouds or on the surface of the moon) is unclear. But either way, that’s where they live, and battle, and contend for power; and it’s the base of operations from which they launch their machinations upon Earth below. The space they occupy up there was vaster than we now know the atmosphere to be; and although many of the ancients imagined the atmosphere (hence “the sky”) indeed extended all the way to the moon, that still means they were imagining what we mean today by “outer space,” whether filled with air or some other breathable gas. They ruled not merely from the skies, but from low and high orbit. And above them, the angels occupied their own abodes, whether in divinely constructed space stations, or upon the various planets.

So it was space aliens, all the way up and down the line. Satan? Space alien. Michael? Space alien. Jesus? Space alien. By living beyond the Earth, they were literally extra-terrestrials. That is not undone by their being created by God, or serving him (or battling him). That is not undone by their being immortal superbeings. They are still extraterrestrials. And their abodes are still outer space. Notably, the more-or-less-godless Epicureans, one of the few intellectual groups to then propose outer space was a vacuum (getting yet one more of many more predictions right than any ancient holy text can claim), made this idea even more explicit, proposing that “the gods” were just advanced extreterrestrials—otherwise ordinary beings like us—living on other planets orbiting (or orbited by) distant stars, and we just receive in our sleep and trance states images of them that they transmit, like a cosmic television broadcast. The more pious differed only in not countenancing such a godless narrative—for them, aliens were superbeings, the created host of the One True God, and space was not a vacuum, but a livable, occupiable, if more rarefied and perfect place God’s creatures can reside, and stars were not distant worlds, but the lamps of the highest heaven, perhaps even angels.

And now Hezser confirms my take: ancient Jewish and Christian believers “clearly differentiated between life on earth and outer space as another sphere that surrounded them” and thus “identified outer space with the heavens.” She identifies apocalyptic heavenly ascent narratives (from Revelation and the Ascension of Isaiah to various other “ascent to heavens” narratives of the likes of Enoch or Ezra, or even as alluded to by Paul in 2 Corinthians 12) as stories of “travellers to outer space” who “enjoy the privilege of seeing things that ordinary humans cannot and telling others of their experiences,” which tales including “space travelling angels and humans.” She says Revelation 12 depicts a “space war,” and tales of Satan’s prior war in heaven would be such as well. And “while ancient readers and audiences may have considered human space travellers to possess superhuman qualities, the Jewish and Christian authors of the texts present them as intermediaries between the known human and the unknown divine spheres.”

Hezser explains how “Ancient Jewish and Christian views of outer space” differed from our modern views today, but this does not change the fact of what part of the universe they were imagining the contents and qualities of. When anyone came from heaven, they descended physically from above, flying great distances down to Earth. When anyone visited heaven, they flew into and above the sky into the great beyond, physically moving upward and seeing, and reporting, what’s in outer space—in human myth, the earliest astronauts. The Epicurean wit Lucian would poke fun of this whole idea by imagining a ship sailing into space to land on the moon—the first “space ship” in human imagination (unless we include Ezekiel’s chariot, although that appears to have been, actually, just another flying creature).

As Hezser points out, in all these narratives we find every level of outer space is occupied by places to stand or sit or reside, whether castles or gardens or temples or other kinds of abode. And the means by which mortals get to fly into outer space vary, from being carried by angels (fallen angels and their demons could obviously also serve) to simply being blown up there by a powerful wind (as happens to Enoch). Sometimes, a literal ladder is found (magical or otherwise) that one could just climb (making literal an idea that began only in imagination). We also know flying was one of the claimed powers of human magic (not only in Christian literature depicting the magician Simon demonstrating the point, but all across ancient references to magic, as discussed in Arcana Mundi, Magic in the Ancient Greek World, and Daughters of Hecate). And Elijah flies into heaven by divine miracle (on either a ghostly horse-and-chariot or a whirlwind).

Hezser recounts how in Talmudic legend, at least four Rabbis found a way to fly into space (visiting the Garden of Eden there) in some manner resembling Elijah’s, and all but one were driven mad by the experience (in Lovecraftian fashion), or simply abandoned Judaism—evidently having seen things there not compatible with Jewish belief. Space journeys could also be direct physical ascents or psychic adventures, the soul leaving the body and flying into space on its own, something akin to astral projection in modern spiritualist lore. Paul was unsure which occurred in the account he relates—possibly, I suspect, because he did not believe in a soul separable from the body, a common but not universal view among Jewish intellectuals (see my discussion in “the Spiritual Body” in The Empty Tomb), but that he could not be sure which was the case tells us he knew both kinds of space-traveler tales (and that his readers could be on either side of the matter).

So this isn’t just some fancy of my own contrivance. It’s official now: Jesus came from outer space. Jesus is an extraterrestrial. As is God, who resides on a distant planet or space station. And ascending heroes of Jewish legend are astronauts. And Jesus, our alien overlord, visited Earth (or at least the lower realm of the firmament) in a disposable environment suit. And these things are all true of early Jewish and Christian belief regardless whether Jesus existed or didn’t. But realizing all this does make the possibility that he didn’t more credible. Because it is a key component of our background knowledge that indeed changes our estimates of what’s likely or plausible in ancient imagination.