When I finish a recording, I always take a few minutes of silence to check if I have kept to the point that really matters to me: not replacing one dogma with another, returning to the text, letting it speak, and then reasoning.
That’s what happened in my recent conversation with Paul Wallis on The 5th Kind. Paul recalled my work on interlinear biblical texts for Edizioni San Paolo: a technical job, repetitive at times, but revealing for that very reason. When you translate word for word without “adjusting” the text to make it sound more edifying, you realize that many theological certainties are based on interpretative choices, not linguistic data.
The part I appreciated most, however, was our actual convergence, born of two very different paths. Paul comes from years of ecclesiastical and academic life: his method involves hermeneutics, form analysis, source study, and systematic comparison with Near Eastern literature and parallel traditions. I come from language: grammar, lexicon, context of use of Hebrew terms, and a simple obsession—not to make words say what they do not say. Different approaches, then: one “from the outside” (the text in its cultural ecosystem), the other “from the inside” (the text in its linguistic mechanics). Yet the outcome is surprisingly similar: read without theological filters, the Bible tells a different story from the one that doctrine has constructed.
In these lines, I want to give you the essence of the conversation precisely because, when two independent methods arrive at the same conclusions, I think it is worth pausing for a moment.
The starting point: reading without filters
I began with a premise that I often repeat and that some people find annoying: the point is not to “believe” or “not believe”; the point is to understand what is written.
If we read the Bible without theological filters, some things stand out with almost embarrassing clarity.
The first: Elohim is a plural. It is not a nuance. It is grammar. And when a theological tradition needs to systematically turn it into a singular, it means that there is an underlying problem: not in the text, but in the interpretation that is being imposed.
Second: in the lexicon of biblical Hebrew, there is no term that corresponds to our “God” understood as a transcendent, omnipotent, absolute creator. The text speaks of specific figures: Elohim, Yahweh, Elyon, and also other names related to national or territorial deities (Milkom, Chamosh, etc.). This leads to a simple consequence: when we translate everything as “God,” we are already performing an interpretive operation, not a translation.
Third: the text is not “spiritual” in the sense that it has been described for centuries. It is concrete. It describes encounters, orders, movements, conflicts, alliances, punishments, and logistical operations. It is a book that speaks of power, territories, hierarchies, and often brutal relationships.
Paul was perfectly in tune with these three points. And from there, the conversation got to the heart of the matter: if Elohim is not the “God” of theology, then what are these beings? Inventions? Metaphors? Memories?
“Powerful ones,” not “gods”: what the text really says
When Paul asked me what I think Elohim are, I answered in the most straightforward way: the text describes them as powerful entities.
Not as ideas. Not as moral symbols. Paul often uses the phrase “the powerful ones.” It is useful because it forces us not to slip immediately into religious language. I added something that I consider crucial: the biblical authors are not “inventing” a pantheon for the sake of literature. They are recording memories, as is the case in many ancient cultures.
And here the convergence with Paul is evident: he has worked extensively on the parallels between biblical accounts and Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, but also extra-Eurasian traditions. I come from the Hebrew text. He comes from cultural comparison and the history of forms. The two paths, however, often lead to the same intersection.
And here I have insisted on a passage that, for me, sweeps away many ambiguities: the Bible does not speak of a universal God. It speaks of a “ruler” assigned to a specific group.
If we take seriously the structure that emerges from Deuteronomy 32 and related texts, we find a picture of distribution: Elyon (the “superior”) assigns portions, territories, peoples; and Yahweh is assigned the “part” that concerns exclusively the family of Jacob. This is not theology. It is administration of the world in the ancient style: hierarchies, assignments, property.
When you put it that way, many react with annoyance because it undermines the comforting idea of monotheism as the “original heart” of the Bible. But we are not in therapy here. We are in the text.
Yahweh and morality: the problem is not “scandalous,” it is logical
Paul asked a clear question: if we read these stories as stories about “God,” enormous moral problems emerge. And why, despite this, have generations of translators continued to render everything as if it were a story of the good and just God?
Here the answer is uncomfortable but simple: if you translate Yahweh as “God,” you are forced to try to justify the unjustifiable: centuries of “theodicy” are proof of this. The text contains orders for total extermination, formulas for annihilation that include men, women, children, and even animals. If the source of those commands is “God,” then you have to turn genocide into ‘mystery’ or “divine justice.” If, on the other hand, you respect the hierarchy of the story and recognize that Yahweh is one of the Elohim—a leader, a military chief, a local ruler—then violence remains human violence (or that of powers described as such), and you don’t have to make it say that it is “good” just because “heaven” ordered it.
This is a question of method, not provocation.
It is not a question of “attacking” a faith. It is a question of avoiding a translation that forces ethics to bow to dogma.
Paul added a passage that I found very clarifying: “we become what we worship.” If you worship a violent god, you have to justify violence; and once justified, you practice it. It is a psychological and cultural chain that history demonstrates all too well.
For my part, I brought the issue back to the choice of translators and theologians: for centuries they have preferred to hide the plural, to standardize figures, to spiritualize what is concrete. Not always out of individual bad faith: often because the entire doctrinal system does not hold up if you leave plurality and hierarchy in place.
Shadday: when a translation invents an attribute
At one point, I gave an example, because theory without examples is just rhetoric.
The term Shadday is almost always rendered as “Almighty.” The problem is that it is not a translation but a theological label. And when Paul commented that it appears to be an “invented” translation, I nodded: it is a misleading translation that does not describe but constructs.
Paul also recalled an alternative philological hypothesis: Shadday could be linked to a semantic field of destruction. I added that the root shadad refers to violence, to devastation. From there, a reading as “The Violent One” is not a whim: it is an option consistent with a certain semantic use of the term. And above all: it is consistent with the story, where that entity presents itself in an intimidating way and, shortly thereafter, in the narrative flow, exemplary destruction takes place.
This passage is useful not so much to “win” a dispute as to show the mechanism: a theological translation tends to place a desired and necessary attribute (omnipotence, goodness, transcendence) on top of the text. A more bare translation forces you to remain within the register of the story.
Why leave some terms in Hebrew
Here we come to a point that emerged clearly in the dialogue and is also one of the reasons why my collaboration with a certain type of “confessional” publishing has broken down.
When I translated technically, word for word, I insisted on one choice: to leave some terms in Hebrew, not because they sound exotic, but because their theological translation erases the behavior they have in the text.
Elohim, Ruach, Kavod: these are three key examples.
If you translate Kavod as “glory” in a spiritual sense, the reader imagines a mystical aura. But when you read Exodus and Ezekiel, Kavod does concrete things: it moves, rises, produces noise, light, physical effects, even dangerous ones. It does not behave like a moral concept. It behaves like a physical phenomenon.
If you translate Ruach as “spirit,” the reader imagines an immaterial presence. But in the text, Ruach moves like wind, coming from specific directions, lifting, carrying. And if you “spiritualize” it, you lose the main clue: the authors describe observable dynamics.
Paul agreed wholeheartedly on this point and expressed it in a way that I like: leaving key words “untranslated” is an invitation to a more honest, but also more challenging, type of reading. I don’t give you a label right away; I force you to observe what is really happening in the story and what the context makes unambiguously clear.
Technology: not UFOs, but IFOs
When Paul drew attention to Ezekiel, the ark, the descriptions of sounds, movements, and perceived vibrations, I repeated a phrase I often use to confirm this: the Bible does not talk about UFOs, it talks about identified flying objects.
Not because I want to “modernize” the text by force, but for the opposite reason: the text describes, identifies, locates, and attributes functions. The object “is” something in the story. It is not a deliberately ambiguous “mystery.” The ambiguity comes later, when it is spiritualized.
And here I clarified a methodological point that I consider essential: I do not want to replace one dogmatic lens with another. I don’t want “technology” to become the new magic word. I want the word ‘glory’ to stop being the carpet under which concrete descriptions are hidden.
If, while reading, one notices similarities with technological phenomena, it is a matter of comparison, not translation. First comes the text. Then comes the question: “What does it resemble?”
Opposition: my answer remains the same
Paul asked me what kind of opposition I encountered when I began to speak publicly about the real meanings of terms and their behavior in the text.
The answer, in fact, is monotonous: yes, there was opposition. And my reply is always the same: let’s pretend that the text tells the truth and translate it literally. Let’s see what happens.
Resistance arises when you understand that what is at stake is not linguistic but cultural: if Yahweh is not “God” but a leader among others, then violence is not sacred. If Kavod is not “spiritual glory” but a phenomenon, then many liturgies become posthumous reinterpretations. If Elohim is not singular but plural, then the idea of original monotheism is not a given, but a historical result.
This shifts the center of gravity. And when the center of gravity shifts, many power structures tremble. It is normal for some people to react with annoyance, and I now accept this calmly.
“They are all inventions”: what to answer without resorting to propaganda
At one point, Paul raised the typical objection: “What if someone says it’s all fiction, all invention?” I replied as I always do: I follow the work of Israeli archaeologists who, year after year, publish findings and comparisons with the texts. It is a complex, controversial, non-linear field, but dismissing everything as “made up” is a shortcut. And here we need rigor: it does not mean that every detail of the biblical narrative is “news,” it means that the narrative moves within a real historical, geographical, and cultural world. There is a material context: inscriptions, archives, and artifacts from the Near East that dialogue with the themes, names, practices, and mentalities of the time. And if we broaden our gaze to Egypt, the picture becomes even more concrete and confirms exactly the opposite of the uniform monotheistic fairy tale that is often projected retrospectively onto antiquity. Above all, the comparative argument returns: if similar narrative structures and recurring images appear in distant areas of the world, in eras without global communication, the hypothesis that “everyone invented the same thing by chance” becomes fragile. It is not mathematical proof, but it is a strong clue. And on this Paul and I found ourselves, once again, in agreement.
Paul’s method: hermeneutics, sources, context
One of the most interesting parts of the dialogue, in my opinion, was when I asked Paul to explain his method. Because convergence on results is important, but it is even more important to understand “how” you get there, especially if you come from a world (theological and clerical) that, as a rule, defends traditional interpretation.
Paul described a research itinerary based on three complementary steps. First, form criticism, which establishes what kind of text we are dealing with, what genre it belongs to, what internal signs reveal its function and intention, and therefore what “reading rule” is legitimate to apply. Then source criticism, which asks where the passage comes from, whether it is the result of stratification, reworking, or editorial stitching, and what theological or political agenda may have influenced its current form. Finally, linguistic analysis, which goes down to the level of words and constructions, reconstructs their semantic field, attested uses, and nuances, and verifies whether the translation truly conveys the meaning of the text or bends it to a pre-determined interpretation.
Paul insisted, and I appreciated this point from a scholar of religions, on the risk of “interpretive” translation, which grows over time. The more a text is translated in a religious context, the more it tends to be “adjusted” to appear consistent with doctrine. And often the oldest, or most “brutal,” translations have value precisely because they do not try to make everything elegant. They render.
This is exactly the point that I have been trying to get across to you for years: translating is not preaching. Translating is not “saving” the text. Translating is exposing oneself to what is written
The ‘bags’ and “pinecones”: an example of convergence between text and images
I have studied and read with interest all of Paul’s books in the Eden series, because there we can appreciate another type of convergence: text, iconography, archaeology, and traditions dialogue with each other and lead us toward broader horizons.
I asked him what he thought of those recurring images, especially in Neo-Assyrian bas-reliefs, in which ‘priestly’ figures or winged beings appear holding two objects: on one side a small bucket-shaped container (often called a ‘bucket’ in museum descriptions), on the other an oval, scaly object, similar to a pine cone. The best-known scenes are in the reliefs of the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II in Kalhu/Nimrud, and in similar series from the Assyrian palace complexes of Khorsabad (Dur-Sharrukin) and Nineveh. It is a fascinating theme, and one on which often imaginative interpretations circulate; what interested me, however, was his ‘concrete’ proposal.
Paul recounts a very explicit episode: he was in Tamil Nadu, India, during a guided tour by his friend Pravin Mohan. He says that the guide pointed out ‘a particular version’ of the bag/pine cone motif in which ‘you can see what’s inside the bag’ and that ‘two vials’ emerge from inside the container. The point, in his argument, is that this iconographic detail forces us to change the question: not “what does it symbolize?”, but “what does it contain and what use does it imply?”. Hence the logical chain he explains: if there are vials, then there is a substance to be poured or applied; and if the figure also holds the “pine cone” object as a tool, then the gesture is operational (pouring, sprinkling, applying), not an abstract ritual pose.
The decisive step, however, was his connection with the “deep history” of Anatolia and related regions: tales of a catastrophe, a new beginning, and a subsequent “restart” of agriculture. Paul correlated widespread stories (Noah, Ziusudra, Armenian, Iranian, and Norse traditions) and iconography (reliefs, paintings, scenes). The result was a coherent hypothesis: those figures are most likely performing a gesture of manual pollination, selection, crossbreeding, in short, an agricultural technique.
Undoubtedly, this type of interpretation, beyond the specific conclusions of the studies still being carried out by Paul and his collaborators, is perfectly compatible with the concrete nature of the biblical texts. If you remove the spiritualist patina, the ancient world speaks of practical things: cultivating, building, organizing, dominating, transporting.
We can say that even today, manual pollination is still used in certain contexts. So, before elevating everything to symbolism, let us remember that many ancient images could simply be descriptions of procedures.
What I think of “God”: the answer that those looking for slogans don’t like
The conversation ended with a question that always comes up: “What do you think of God?”
Paul responded by distinguishing between Hebrew and Greek vocabulary: in the New Testament, theos appears as the word closest to our concept of ‘God’. He explained how his idea has shifted towards an image of ‘source of the cosmos’, which is more philosophical, less institutional, and less linked to the figure of the ‘king’ and the ‘puppet master’.
I have no reason to dispute his personal trajectory. But, from my point of view, what matters is another point: when we read ancient texts, using the word “God” in the modern sense is often a distortion. It is better to say “source,” “intelligence,” “principle,” if that is what we mean. And if we are talking about Elohim, Yahweh, Elyon, then it is more honest to use the terms of the text or translations that respect their narrative function (powerful, superior, rulers, leaders, etc.) instead of merging everything into an abstraction.
This is not a “spiritual” answer. It is a philological answer. And I know that some will find it cold. But I prefer the coldness of precision to the intoxication of misunderstanding.
A new project: bringing together two paths that lead to the same point
And here we are at the part that, I admit, interests me greatly for practical reasons as well: Paul and I are preparing a new joint work, a book written by two authors who have different approaches to study and different roots, but who love to engage in open discussion even when their ideas differ.
On the one hand, my insistence on language, grammar, the contextual semantics of Hebrew terms, and the need not to spiritualize what the text describes in concrete terms. On the other, his expertise in hermeneutics, the history of forms, and comparison with parallel literatures and traditions: Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and beyond.
Our promise is this: to take a few “key words” and a few “narrative junctures” and follow them on two tracks simultaneously. What does Hebrew say, and what happens when you put that story in a broader cultural context, without the confessional bubble?
Paul and I are convinced that it will be a work that will force the reader to do what theology often avoids, namely to look at the text as an ancient document, not as a catechism.
The text does not need to be saved, it needs to be read.
If I had to sum up the meaning of my conversation with Paul in one sentence, I would say this: when you stop defending an idea and start reading a text, the text allows new questions to arise.
The Bible, read without theological filters, becomes an archive of memories, conflicts, hierarchies, encounters, and concrete descriptions. The plurality of the Elohim, the “assigned” figure of Yahweh, the problematic nature of his morality, the need to leave some terms in Hebrew so as not to distort them, the materiality of words such as Ruach and Kavod: these are all signs of a text that does not demand devotion, but attention.
And here lies the most “subversive” part, if you will: philological honesty does not destroy the text. It destroys the superstructures that have used it.
We will certainly not ask you, our readers, to “believe” it; on the contrary, we will ask you to do what is simplest: open the sources, look at the words, and accept that sometimes the most correct translation is also the most disturbing one.
