Genesis Decoded: Ancient Hebrew and the Stories We Thought We Knew | Gil Rosen

Hey, one more thing before you go.Let me ask you something.What if a story that you've known your entire life isn't quite the story you think it is?For thousands of years, human beings have turned to ancient tests to understand where we come from, why we're here, and what it means to be human.We've sought that out for eons.But somewhere between the original words do their translations and the centuries of interpretation, something interesting happens.A story becomes tradition, tradition becomes a belief.And eventually that belief is something we rarely question.My guest today began asking those questions about one of the most influential stories in the human history, the book of Genesis.And what he believes he discovered challenges some familiar assumptions about humanities origin.Today's conversation isn't simply about religion, it's ancient civilizations or even the possibility of extraterrestrial life.It's about the stories that we inherit, the meanings we give them, and what happens when someone dares to read them differently.So stay tuned.This is going to be great.Michael Herst, and this is one more thing before you go.Today I'm sitting down with Gil Rosen.Gil is a technology executive, innovator, TEDx speaker, and the author of Alien versus Decoding Genesis.As a native Hebrew speaker who has spent decades working with technology, communication and the power of narratives, Gil becomes fascinated, became fascinated by the distance between the original words of Genesis and the interpretations passed down through the generations.His investigation led him towards some unconventional ideas about ancient, ancient history, technology, and human humanity's origins.Gil, welcome to the show.It's a pleasure to have you here.

Pleasure to be here.Thank you for the intro.It's going to be an interesting conversation.

You know, you have an interesting life, interesting journey in life.I think, you know, what an amazing opportunity for you to share wisdom, share wisdom from the ancients and, and give us a new, a new opportunity, a new chance to kind of understand it from a different perspective.

Yeah, well, you know, I was, I was born in Japan.It's also one of the first things I mention in my book because I think what it did for me as a, an Israeli of Israeli parents who traveled to Japan for work and stayed there for a couple years.I was born into an Israeli family in a foreign land and then brought back to Israel at the age of three and then at the age of 12 went back to Japan.So the early days of my childhood are, I would say, even as an Israeli, I always had this like, very exotic past as a, you know, somebody born in Japan.And the culture was also very present in the home.Japan in general.So I, I had this like cultural perspective which was wider.And you know, I grew up in the 70s, 80s and, and then there was no Internet.Right.So mo, most of us were pretty local.Even if you lived in a, in a metropolitan, in New York City, you're still a New Yorker.You didn't have an idea what's happening in London or Berlin.And it was not like global understanding.So as a child I kind of grew up with this.I would say I was never an insider, an absolute insider to the place I was at.In Japan I was an Israeli.In Israel, I was the guy from Japan.And then I moved back to Japan and I was back the Israeli.And after a couple years in Japan, we moved to London.And again, even in Japan, I went to an American school.So I actually experienced a micro American culture within a Japanese city.And that started my journey out of complete accident.I grew up in a secular family.Religion was there present from the traditional perspective because in Israel we celebrate the holidays and tradition is important even, even if you're not religious.So I was acquainted with the, the texts from a very early age, including also in school, in elementary school you are taught the Bible from, from day one practically.And of course you were brought up on these biblical stories from the age of zero.But unlike most of my peers, first of all, you know, I have kind of this outsider view and, and, and, and because I lived also in, in a different culture, for me, religious religion had a different concept for everybody was, it was what it is because this is where they were born and what their parents are.So you are what your parents are.It's, it's, it's a simple equation.Nobody is born in the States and becomes a Buddhist at the age of six because you are what your parents are.And, and, and for me, moving to Japan and seeing a completely different type of religion, completely different.The Eastern religions are very different from Western religions.First of all, you have little statues.You can be of more than one religion.So many Japanese are also, you know, they follow some things that relate to Shintoism and Buddhism and they don't compete with one another.They, they govern different aspects of their life.So they're also more open to these different, you know, interpretations and things that you're taught.And for them there is no one truth.I came with my truth to Japan and all of a sudden saw somebody else had another truth and a completely different perspective on life and good and bad.And are your deeds counted and is there a book where you're, you know, you're good and bad and somebody's counting.At the end of the year you have this, you know, this payment to make whether you did enough good deeds versus the bad things.And this is kind of the cycle of Judaism, for instance, right?We start every year with the repentance and Yom Kippur and then in the new year, so we have a software running within us that's the Judaism software.And all of a sudden I go to Tokyo and experience something completely different and they have a different software.And as a child and most of us, by the way, we don't realize we run on software.The software was installed in us by our parents.And until the age of 10, it is what it is.So for me, you know, without now getting all the way into my upbringing, but I grew up in, you know, vastly different cultures at different ages.It also instilled something else in me is the ability to adapt to changes, which is something I think is very important these days with every, you know, everything that's happening around us and the world is just changing all the time and rapidly.It's a very important quality these days.Irrespectively and I had by my parents, I was given the gift of being able to manage these different perspectives and also environments.Later on, after I graduated from a British high school in London, King, you know, shout out to King Alfred School, you know, a Christian British school, you know, private school, I, I moved to the back to Israel and I did my military service and again, again, complete change in culture, belief system.So, so I've always been a person who's lived with people with different stories.And that made me realize that the story is not how the world is, it's the story.Many people think that the world is, and there is one story, but when you grow up in all the, and you see all these different perspectives, you realize that it's your perspective, they have a different truth.You know, so these are not hard facts, these are stories.These are, you know, philosophers.Is there one God?Many gods and so on and so forth.And people who live in my neighborhood currently and you know, in the Judea Christian world, for them there's one God.One God,.

Right?

And, and from, you know, thereafter my, my military service and starting my career pretty early on in, in tech, I, I, you know, I, I drifted towards the, the marketing part of the world eventually.Now I'm a, I'm a chief marketing officer for a global technology company called amdocs.We're mainly in the telecommunication business and we serve all the you know, the largest telecommunication companies in the world, from AT&T T Mobile and so on.And, but the thing is that we in our industry, we also tell stories about our product, about who the company is and the value we bring.And, and all of a sudden I found myself after, you know, 30 years of, of professional work, many of which was always spent on telling a story irrespective of what the product is.It doesn't win on the facts.An Apple iPhone is not better on facts than Samsung.And the reason I buy it is not because of the tech spec.It's because what I feel for the product and what I feel for the product happens because somebody told me a story that made me feel bad.So we in the tech world always make people feel something about the software we provide.And it's a very intense profession to know how to create narratives that really talk to people or really professional about what they need.So you cannot bullshit.So the story has to be constructed very carefully and also represent the truth, but have the layer which is not the product itself.I always say, you know, if you know why the world needs storytellers, marketeers, in my case, you know, we would be sending the Excel sheet of what the product does to the customer.Samsung would sell the Excel sheet and Apple and you just look at the attributes and say, I want this is the better phone.But it doesn't work like that,.

Right?

It's like it's a package.We are a story whether we are a person or whether we're a product.Everything we choose is based on a story somebody sold to us.Sorry.

I think it's a brilliant opportunity, it's a brilliant perspective to be able to take your experiencing those different cultures, I'm sure helped you shape your understanding of the world in that regard.And, and I think that approaching life, I wish everybody would approach life that way,.

You know, so first of all I, I mentioned before that I got a gift from my parents because they, they're the ones that, you know, are responsible for these experiences, but it's not.I am now divorced, but my, my, my ex wife, she also was, had my similar upbringing.You know, when we met, it was what kind of brought us together.We both had the same kind of background.She also traveled and for her it was a, it was a really bad experience.You know why?Her parents moved her from one place to another.She was making friends.So the same circumstance I refer to as a gift because I think that if you take a tough circumstance but then learn to develop a muscle that maybe Other people don't.And it makes you tougher.You know, it's a very simple thing.If it doesn't kill you, it makes you tougher.And it makes you tougher, it makes you better for, for the, for the world and, and for me, that I understood over time that they actually gave me a gift.But it's also because of how you are able to experience something, right?Because some people experience the same type of circumstance, and for them it could be trauma.As I was only in elementary school still before my trip back to Japan, somewhere around the age of 11, I picked up a book by Eric Von Daniken, the Chariots of the Gods, which was the first kind of popular culture book that opened people's eyes to an alternative interpretation.That's it.It's just an option.It's not saying this is true.It's saying, hey, we have all these facts.Take a look and consider the possibility.And for me, it was very interesting because some of the things you were referring to were also in the book that I was reading and was part of my culture.So I got swept into the community, into the alternative history, potential alternative history and everything that's not mainstream.And then, you know, going to Japan and seeing all the different gods and all the different, you know, things also opened my eyes and I, I got, you know, and of course, this, this genre is becoming more popular.And later on, of course, I'm becoming, you know, I watch History Channel and I read all the books and Graham Hancock and Fingerprints of the Gods and he has an alternative view.And, and, and, you know, recently, you know, I'm progressing in my career, becoming what is called a professional storyteller, but, but very focused on my, my career, my, my tech career.But, but the discussion about UFOs, alternative history, Graham Hancock is gaining, you know, gaining popular, is becoming more popular.Netflix is doing all these specials and I'm, I'm looking at it and I'm, I'm, I'm realizing there's a missing angle and a very important missing angle.Nobody in this genre speaks Hebrew and the scripture.It's not the entire genre, the Old Testament, but it's an important part of it.And even more importantly, it's the foundation of Western civilization.The book of Genesis, irrespective of what religion you are, Judaism, Christianity or Islam, this is where the world is formed.This is how we are.The rules of the world happen in Genesis.Who God is, is introduced in Genesis.The seven days introduced in Genesis, like our culture, the, you know, the foundation of Western civilization.And I realized that somehow this story is part of this genre which I'm part.Which says, hey, there might be another story.And I saw all these things, but I never sat down properly to do it.So, you know, that's how I approach.

Well, I think you also took notice that people could look at the same things and arrive at different beliefs based on those experiences.We all love storytelling, number one.And depending upon whether or not we embrace that to a point, that allows us to become a part of a particular community, especially from a religious perspective.You have a.A unique approach to understanding how all that fits together in Genesis was always at the beginning, everywhere.And the religious aspect of it.How hard or how much do you think the religious aspect of it plays in.Into, like Chariot?I remember that book.I had that, but I still have that book.I bought it when I was very young as well, when it first came out.Do you think that religion plays well within that arena as well?Chariots of the Gods,.

You know, it's something I. I take note or I spe.I take special concern to let people know this is not about questioning their religious belief.It's not about that.And I tell you, I understood about the book and how people behave and react to it.I understood about my book more after I published it and after I started talking to people who read it because of the different perspectives I heard from them and I heard how they quote, unquote, digested what I was telling them.It was very interesting to see the different types of reactions and to kind of understand, based on what I know about the person who I'm talking to, why they reacted in a.In a certain way.And it kind of.It's kind of.It also helped me to explain my book in a.In a much simpler way that I didn't even manage to explain before I started writing.And I'll.And I'll do the test on you right now because I think that's the essence of the book.It's not about attacking religion or saying it's these things or it's not about that at all.Imagine the following.There must be a really good book that you've read along your life that later on you saw the movie.And when you saw the movie, the movie was completely different than what you imagined when you read the book.In fact, many people even kind of get angry.They're like, ah, it's not good.My imagination is much better than the book, than the movie.And what I tell people is that the Bible that they're reading, they're actually seeing the movie.And when they read the book, they read it after seeing the movie.So what they read has to connect to the mental image that the movie showed them.It's a different version or it would have been a different experience.If they have just read the book for the first time without ever seeing the movie, it would be a different book in the same way, it's a different book when you read it first from some anonymous author who wrote something and you directed the movie in your head and you know the words that you read and you know that the movie that you imagined makes sense.And when you see the movie, it's like, no, no, no.They see it in a completely different way.I did it this way or I thought about it in a, you know, that's what.Ha.This is what the, the religious, the religious institutions did to us.Not, I mean, of course they intended to, but not.This is what.When somebody tells you something, this is what happens.They imprint on you.They install in you the software as they know it.And what I do in the book, I take you to a joint reading of the text again as if you didn't see the movie and I open up the possibility that the text says something else.That's the journey of the book.The journey of the book is like a fresh restart on the book.That's the foundation of Western civilization.That's why it's important.I picked it because first of all, it is that it's the foundation of Western civilization.So many of the things that we do today go back to things that relate to the book.Many things, morals and even our daily cycle.The fact that we have a seven day week and we rest on the weekend is Genesis 1 and 2.That's it.The reason a husband leaves his home and takes his wife to have a second home is because this is kind of a manifestation of the creation which is mentioned in.This is the first insight in Genesis 2.After the creation of Eve, it's like they stopped describing things.And they say this is why a mansion leave his home and be with his wife together to, you know, recreate, to become as one.Because that's the act of creation can only be repeated by a man and woman.And that's important enough for this bond, this sacred bond called marriage is important because we, you know, through it, you recreate the first creation.You become a God in creating man or woman.And so, you know, these are fundamental things to who we are and they exist in Genesis.So if you're interested in our origins and want to read what the book says and not what you were told it says.That's the opportunity.

I think it's a brilliant opportunity because we mentioned this earlier before we started recording in my studies of any religion, whatever it happened to be, even when I went to university and started doing religious theology.And you find that, you know, everybody that rewrote the Bible, everybody that inserted something in the Bible because they didn't like this, or took something out because they didn't like something, inserted something else because they felt it was better, they changed the story and the narrative along the way.

Yes.

And every time it got changed, every time it got redone, every time something was taken out or put back in, I think that changing that narrative doesn't give us a full ability to be able to understand more.And from what I've read in your book so far, I like the approach that you break it down in such a way that you give us the opportunity to think and to look outside that box a little bit.And, you know, I think we all need that as a human being.We're all looking for understanding.We all want to know where we came from.We all want to know where we're going going.We know.We all want to know from a spiritual perspective, how do I belong in this universe?And you start opening doors.And I think that's a wonderful thing.I mean, obviously, how does your spiritual outlook today compare with when you were a young person, a young man?Did it change?

I never.Yeah, I was never able to succumb to, to the story that somebody is sitting over my head and counting what I do all the time.It seemed to me like, you know, God is not my personal assistant and he has bigger things to do.And everybody's like, communicating with him as if they're sending emails and waiting for replies and the things are, you know, like, from every day, oh, please help me with this and please help me with that, and da, da, da, da, da.It's like you have a relationship and it's like you're outsourcing many of the things that you need to get done.And I think that this is kind of, you know, so, so I was never part of that, but I, I am very spiritual because I know that there's more than just what we see and hear.You know, we are, we understand the world through our five senses, senses and, and, and brain.But obviously, if I had my brain was three times as large, I would understand more.So there is more.Right.And, and by the way, that also leads to AI which is also connected.And we can talk about that later on.But the fact is I am very spiritual from the, you know, energetic perspective.I believe that there are things that we are not really still able to, you know, understand.That's my spirituality, which is by the way, connected in many ways to my understanding that the book of Genesis and the God of the book of Genesis is not the creator of the universe.The creator of the universe might have been part of Genesis 1, but that's it.That's it in Genesis 2.And this is to your question also, or you know, you come from law enforcement and you just talked about one of the things I mention in the book, which is the translation issues.And I did not understand how foundational changes were made in the translation because I never read the translation.I've always been reading the source code.And I started as I was writing the book.This was like an unplanned part of the book to have so many references to translation glitches because I didn't realize that there are many places where the translators changed the narrative, you know, in a very meaningful way.And that cannot be, you know, taken too lightly because it's not, it's not a blunder.It's very specific, you know, it's.And, and I do want to touch something, you know, that blew my mind.In Genesis 2 for the first time after the seven day creation story, the the English Bible doesn't stops referring to God as what everything that was said in Genesis 1 about God did this.God did that on day one, day two, day three.It's kind of a conclusion of what happened in the seven day creation for the first time when the Lord God created the heaven and the earth.So this is the first time the description the Lord God was written in the Bible.Genesis 2.For me as a Hebrew speaker, of course growing up around in English speaking languages, when you hear the Lord God, I thought it was kind of a reverence way of saying, you know, like before you say the word God, you say the Lord because it's out of respect.I didn't realize that this was erasing the name of God as it was mentioned for the first time in Genesis 2, which is Yehovah or Yahweh as it's pronounced sometimes.And it's just erased out of the King James version, which is the most popular version of the Bible in the world.So billions of people don't even know that God in the Bible was given a name.And when you follow the fact that it's a name of A one God and not of many gods.You realize in the narrative that this character is sometimes there and sometimes when he's not there, it's God or gods, as is Elohim in Hebrew.And you can understand the story in a completely different way because you see when it's him and when it's not him.Now, let's not forget Judaism gave birth to monotheism, the single God religion, which means that this is a story about one God.But when you read it without the translation, when you read the source code, you understand there are many places, and some of those places are also in English, when the text refers to the gods, plural, with plural words, which basically plays into the narrative.Even the creation of Adam and eve in Genesis 1.This is like the most foundational text in the world, right?This is the creation of the world, Genesis 1.And Adam and Eve are created.And it says, when God says, or the gods Elohim say in Hebrew, let us create man in our own image after our likeness.In Hebrew, it's Dmut and Selim, which is form, shape, and likeness, is how you behave.So we were born.This is how the gods look.You want to see how God's.How God looks like?Here, it's like you.It's like me.And then it says man and woman were created.So if we are created in the image of the gods and man and woman were created, that means that there is a woman God and a man God.Genesis 1.Yet we all pray to one God and we all believe in one God.The book of Genesis is full of gods.And then there are sons who see that the women of the earth are fair and take them as wives.What is that if not a story about multiple gods?It's written there.And again, going back, I'm, you know, advanced in my career.I understand narratives.I know how to read.If I disconnect from my religious community and their taboo of saying anything else but what was told to them by their parents, which was told by their parents 2,000 years back.It's a.You know, in Israel, it's not something.I didn't even publish my book in Hebrew.I have.No, I don't.You know, a lot of Israelis read because, you know, of course we read English, but it's not a discussion that's had in this country, because here people are religious and they, you know, they don't want to mess with the authorities, like the religious authorities.And they think I have a thing for their religion, which I don't.So it's interesting how you read the text, you see one thing, but, then a thousand people around you can say, yes, but, and this but is not what is written.The but is what they were told, the story.

Yeah.

So this is the tension that I kind of put a mirror in front of the book and I show it to people, and people just have to look at the mirror.They don't have to agree, but it's a reflection of what's written in the book.And if you're an English speaker, you really missed a few things that you should reconsider.So.

You see me smiling quite a bit because the ideology and the methodology that you bring up in regard to helping us understand that there are different translations and there are different opportunities and that even a few words being changed changes the narrative just to a point, and that, you know, you need to have a wider vision.You know, growing up Catholic, you know, in my early years, is one of those things where they, you do this, you do this, you do this, you do this.You don't believe in this.You don't.You know, you put all these restrictions on you so that you.You put blinders on, and you walk through life with these blinders on, and you don't look outside of that.And then once you take those blinders off and you start looking around, it gives us an amazing gift to be able to understand that there's more than one answer.

Yeah.You know, the.Again, going back to understanding the book, after I wrote it, I kind of develop this theory I called Narrative os.It's the story, it's the operating system which basically makes us behave the way we behave and what we, you know, a lot of the ways that we behave develop over time.And many of the things I do today I've been doing because of things that happened to me through my life, which I can explain.You know, this is why I do this, that, and so on.But there is a part of that operating system that's the deep part.Usually it has to do with religion because that's what happens.You know, fundamental beliefs about good and evil and religion, these are the things that happen between the age of 0 to 9 when you're grown up and your parents tell you what to do.And whatever your parents tell you, you still don't have a developed way of critical thinking.So whatever they say is, that's it, you know, that's how things are.Why?Because.And when you realize that you actually have the administration password, this is your own software, you can go in and look at it.I don't say change it.But you were installed with software that.We are installed with software that most people, and I really want people listening to this to question honestly whether they went down to the inner room where the most fundamental software that they were installed with when, back when they were kids, and just ask themselves whether they can take a second look at it and decide whether some of the things that make him behave in a certain way are just based on the software without any plausible or, let's say, contextual explanation that I still need to carry today.Of course, some things are, you know, don't, you know, don't be a bad person is something that we were told when we were three.And we should still not be a bad person, right?And we should still be kind and so on and so forth.So many of those fundamental things in our operating system are fine.But religion is a story that was handed to us by the outside world.And we see that in other cultures.There are other stories.And what I found, you know, I'm from tech, and the reason the tech world is advancing so fast is because it's an open field for anybody to have a better theory.Nobody controls the narrative and even large companies who think they control the narrative.And I bring this example up in the book Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft.When the iPhone launched back in 2007, there was a very famous video, you can find it on YouTube, that he's asked in an interview what he thinks about this new iPhone.He's like, that's a $600 phone and it doesn't even have a keyboard.Ah, it's not going to work.Business people need a keyboard, blah, blah, blah, blah.You know, he was demolished, right?And I say that because Steve Ballmer was the goat.He built Microsoft and he knew things.Now imagine Steve Ballmer dictating how mobile phones should be.We would still be with a keyboard, right?And the reason progress happens is because it's an open field for ideas and you, you win based on merit.And somehow this book was not, I wouldn't say hijacked, but is controlled by a certain, certain institutions that don't let anybody else have a different view on the book.Now, again, it's just, I'm not telling people to follow me.I don't, you know, if they want to follow you, please go ahead.But it's a discussion.And I think one of the things that religion did is made us realize that we're all separate because I'm Jewish, you're Christian, he's something else, and so on and we're different cultures.But what I found out in the book, and again, I didn't think it was going to be so global, is that Genesis 2 and 3, we have the Garden of Eden story with the serpent.And here I think I came across what I think is a really interesting way to explain how narratives can be completely different based on the same factual story.And again, going back to your law enforcement days, the serpent story, which everybody in this, you know, most likely listening to this, knows.The serpent convinced Eve that she can eat, and he's the evil guy.And basically that's why we were banished from the Garden of Eden, because everything is to blame on the serpent and he's the bad guy.So religion put in our head the fact that the snake is this measly animal crawling on the ground and convincing Eve to eat the.The apple.But most people, they don't realize if you, if you really read the story of what happened.First of all, there's no apple.And most people think of an apple because somebody implanted that image in their head and from some, you know, some painting in a church.Second of all, the.The.The snake, the serpent, he's not some, like, animal as you see in these paintings.He's a.He's an entity talking to Eve.And he knows that what God says is not true.He's in the inner circle, and he says, you won't die as Yehovah told you.You won't, and you will.And the reason it's not.It's forbidden to eat is because you shall become as gods if you have the.If you eat, you gain knowledge.You shall become as gods.So first of all, you understand that Yehovah, our God did not want us to have knowledge.We were not supposed to eat from the tree of knowledge.And the serpent is the reason we actually have.Like, we are conscious and people with agency, and we gain knowledge.So if you look at the story from, again, from a.From a neutral perspective, the serpent is the hero.Now, why is that so cool?First of all, it's a different perspective, and the serpent is why we have knowledge.But then when you find out that the, the serpent 5,000 miles away and further away in Mesoamerica, the serpent God, the God of knowledge.Hey, that's a very interesting coincidence.The serpent of knowledge of the Mesoamericans, the Mayans, the Aztecs, is the serpent, maybe in the story of Genesis, the one that because of him we have knowledge, and not because of our God, because our God did not allow us to Eat.So, first of all, you find out that maybe there is a global story here, and we're not all these different cultures.These gods might have been in some type of conflict.And actually the serpent is the international God because everybody knows the serpent God in Yehovah, the Lord God.As you know, it only exists in the Middle East.His stories are not known globally, but the stories of the serpent are global.So first of all, it's interesting because, again, religion put us in boxes.And if you read the story and you read other cultural stories, you realize we might have a common cultural background.And we should stop maybe looking at all these as competing stories.Maybe we should try to put a puzzle of the global story instead.That's just an interesting.It's an interesting possibility, and it'll bring us closer.Imagine, you know, Mesoamericans, Aztecs and Mayas sharing the same serpent entity, deity as Jews.And also in Asia, the, you know, the serpent appears.And also understanding that somebody told you to hate snakes, that they're evil because of the story of the Garden of Eden, but if you think about it, he's actually the good guy.

Well, yeah, we wouldn't be where we are today if we didn't have.If we didn't have that snake, that serpent, we wouldn't have the tools in front of us.We wouldn't be talking like this.I love the introspect that you had just brought up in regard to.To all these different cultures in different areas that, you know, somebody in the Aztecs or the.They.They didn't visit the Middle East.They got the same message thousands of miles away.And I never thought about it that way.They come up with the same story told a little bit different, but the same.The same ideology.That's.That.Yeah, you just, you blew my mind a little bit.

And, and, you know, and there's also physical evidence of it, and I show it in the book.There is a piece in the National History Museum in New Mexico, which I visited.Monument Olmec, monument 19.It's.It's, it's.It's.What it looks like is a guy sitting in some type of, like, bubble craft, and he's holding a bag.And in the roof of this bubble kind of capsule he's in is a serpent.Like you have in ships.You have that thing in the front.It's a serpent, and he's holding the bag.Those bags show up in the Middle east in Mesopotamia, where Abraham came from, from the city of Ur, where they worship different gods.And their gods had the Same bags.The same bags.Now it's not a coincidence because a bag, if you think about a bag and look at the, you know, ladies bag, let's take them.Because I say ladies bag because they're held in a, in a, in a way which is similar to how ladies hold their bag.It's like this like U shaped bag and a small bag.A bag can be a thousand shapes.You know, the handle, the size of the, of the handle compared to the, to the bag, how it's held, and so on and so forth.You can, you know, in the same way there are endless types of watch faces.And this like small circle, by the way, I'm a watch freak.Because exactly that in this small circle diameter, you can have like endless possibilities.So in the same way, when you make a bag, it could be endless possibilities.Yet the Olmec Monument 19, showing some type of deity with a bag.And you travel all the way to the other end of the world in Mesopotamia and you see the, the, the Sumerian gods carrying the same bags.Something global happened.And nobody can tell me a different story.It just you, in the same way have to kind of, because of the current understanding that these cultures were different, you will invent some type of strange story to make sense out of it.But it just means that we do not know what happened in the world all these thousands of years ago.And there's a gap and this gap and the monuments which came out of this gap, which you know, how the pyramids made and many temples in India and of course, you know, megalithic sites all over South America and Europe also, nobody can explain them.And snippets of these strange things happening, of visitations from other entities from other worlds were mentioned in the Sumerian Bible, in Genesis and in the South American Mesoamerican culture.And when you say Genesis, people say, come on, what do you mean?We have this very clean, it's a very clean religion.We have one God.And you know, Christianity takes it one step.You have the Son of God, so you do have like a manifestation of a person, but it's still very clean.It's like the cross is like that's kind of, that's the only monument you have.And the church is where you come to pray to this one God.And he has one mother, but you didn't have, there's no father.Everything thing is very small and controllable.But when you read Genesis, it's different.It's different.Genesis 6 introduces the age of the Nephilim, the age of The Nephilim is a wild part of Genesis, and only because I kind of treated it as a narrative writer, I could finally explain to myself why they didn't take it.

Out.

Genesis 6 should have been edited out.Absolutely.If you're establishing this clean, monotheistic religion that has, you know, one God and, and everything that he does is perfect and he knows everything.And Genesis 6 is an experiment gone wrong.And God has to reset the experiment by exterminating the entire human race.Wow.Why would the loving God that just six chapters before made us up of nothing, created us in his image, cared for us and put us in a garden.And even when we disobeyed and he banished us, and even when the sibling of, you know, the first murderer in the Bible, Cain.The first.

Murder.

Yeah, the first murder.He did not punish Cain.He put a sign on him to protect him, because he was still from the, you know, the original man.We carry the sign as, again, storytelling for everybody.If you talk about Cain and Abel's story and the sign of Cain, it's like the sign of doing something bad.Right?This is like a sign for somebody who is evil.In the story of Genesis, the reason God puts the sign on Cain is to protect him.And he says, whoever will do anything bad to him, he will suffer seven fold.So it's a protection mechanism, which is fascinating.That's another alien verse I talk about.Right.But yes, so religion really kind of puts us in these corners and there are too many.Why?Because, and I just didn't accept it.And I can read and I understand what narratives are about.And Genesis 6 is, is a bombshell.We can talk about it a little bit more.

Well, you know, honestly, you've spent your professional life understanding how narratives influence people, you know, and from a marketing perspective, from technology perspective, I, I, I have to applaud you for, for talking about us human beings with, in the technical aspect having been programmed in software and we need software updates, you know, and things like that.I think that's.

Exactly,.

I enjoy that.I think that that's a nice way to put things, you know, when you put, when you turn your curiosity towards Genesis.I mean, what was the, if I could, if I could ask this, because we could talk about this for hours.The, what was your catalyst to kind of towards you, to turn you toward Genesis in particular?Was there something that stuck out from that, that you kind of went, well, I, now I see how all this crosses over here because we have Genesis in, in this culture.In this culture, in this culture.But Just written kind of differently, but.But still with the same elements.

Yeah.Well, first of all, the first motivation I had, and I.When I. I told you before that the translation glitches were actually not part of the plan, I was drawn towards what I call the Star wars moment.This is what gave birth to the term that I coined, which is alien verse, which is a verse that I think does not belong to a book which is 5,000 years old.Somebody from 5,000 years ago could not have written this in the way that we think, because now we know many things, and when we read it, it just comes to us as natural, but we don't realize that somebody at that point, time, should not have been able to write it.So these were the Star wars moments, and Genesis is just full of them.And I came across them again as a child, because this is what you study.But I'm actually now already moving on to the other books in the Bible for the second book, for the second edition.So the Bible is filled with these alien verses, but for me, it was the Star wars moments.And recently, because I started writing about three, four years ago, the topic became so popular, and I was realizing people were making mistakes.As far as I'm concerned.Many things were just thrown around as kind of what I call fun facts.And people were mentioning the Nephilim, but talking about them in the wrong way and not realizing the story and why it came to be.And also some of the side stories that exist that are not necessarily in the official Bible, but are next to the Bible, like the Book of Enoch, which goes into detail about the Nephilim.And for me, it was really just important to, hey, guys, I want to put some order.You know, I feel part of this community.I've always been like, you've been broadcasting to me about everything.But now it's time for me to do a little bit of broadcasting and put some things to order.I want people to understand the order of things.I want people to understand, you know, the root of why things are written in a certain order, the important words that they miss, like Nephilim.The word Nephilim is not just a random word.Nephilim comes from the Hebrew word nephal.Where do you fall from?You don't fall.You fall from the sky.The age of the Nephilim is the age of the people who came from above.They were the sons of God.God always came from above.In the book of Genesis, he appear, he goes up, down, or he just comes.But there's always like a moment where you know, and then he goes up.And the Nephilim is the opposite direction.It doesn't go up.They come down.And who comes down?The sons of God.Now you read this verse and you say, what do you mean?I thought we're talking about a God.Yes, sons.There's like.It's a community of people who have needs and wants.And it says, yes, they have needs and wants.They saw the women of the Earth, that they were fair, and they took them as wives, whomever they want.What does that mean?It means a bunch of people who look like us saw women, excuse my language, you know, became.Were attracted to them.I'll try to keep it fine.

Were.

Attracted to them.They found them very attractive to the extent that they went down and they took them wives, whomever they want.Now imagine you're a man, and these gods, the sons of God come down and they take your wife, because that's what they want.They were powerful, the Nephilim.Nobody messed with them.And for the people of that time, and this is the Eric Von Daniken part, the ancient astronaut theory.The gods walked among us.And this story of Genesis is one of those stories.In the same way the Greeks have their stories and the Sumerians have their stories, and the Mesoamericans have their.It's all the same stories.There isn't one God.There are multiple gods.And even the second commandment, when God is giving, you know, the.The structured 10 most fundamental rules of his philosophy, the second commandment says, you shall have no other God before me.That means that there are other gods, but I'm the God that you should have.God refers to himself.He says in Hebrew, Kanah is jealous, I'm a jealous God.God says about himself, I'm jealous you will only worship me.He does not deny the existence of other gods.And he had helpers, and he had sons.And this is in our book, it's not in somebody else's book.So what I'm saying is our book is so fascinating, and it's very similar to the Hind, you know, the Mahabharata.You read the Mahabharata?I haven't read all of it because it's super long, but I've read, you know, parts of it.It's an amazing story with many entities and deities and this power, that power the sons of God in the Book of Enoch, which is kind of the wider explanation to what happened in Genesis 6, talks about the different traits that these gods have.One is expert in metallurgy, one is expert in Medicine.And one is expert in law.And guess what their names are, because these are the names of many people, including yourself, that walk around with a God's name without not even knowing.So now let me tell you the story.The word God in Hebrew is Elohim.But the word God in Hebrew in a single tense is L. Okay?And Elohim is kind of.Is kind of plural.It's not like a perfect plural, because a perfect plural is Elim and not Elohim.So it's slightly different.But when you see that the gods say, let us make man in our own image after our likeness.And later on in the book of Genesis, God walks with his aides.And later on in the book of Genesis, the sons of God go down and mate with the women of the earth, which means that there is a biological compatibility for them to mate and have children.Think about that for a second.These are the sons of God.So God is like us.His sons are like us.There were many gods, and what were their names?So the single word for God in Hebrew is El.And in the book of Enoch, it says Danny, El, Michael, all these names such as yourselves.Michael is Michael and Daniel and Raphael.So Dan in Hebrew is judge.Daniel is the God of law and order.Raphael in Hebrew, the world.The word Rapa, Rafa is healed.Raphael is the God of medicine, and so on and so forth.So Michael is the helper of God, and Emmanuel is God is with us.So the suffix el was first used in the Bible or the scriptures to describe gods, not people.These are angels, right?The names of angels.Who are these angels?And they have names with a purpose.It's not just a nice name.Raphael, such a angelic name.No, it's the God of medicine.And people walk around with beautiful names and they don't even know.

That's pretty.That's very, very cool.You give me chills.It when you start thinking about it from that perspective, it gives you a different perspective.You're kind of.Your soul opens up a little bit.I think that I can't wait to finish your book.And I'm looking forward already to the second book because I think what an amazing opportunity.I love the word opportunity because we all have opportunity.We have choice in life.And sometimes we don't grasp that choice, and we don't make that choice.We don't grasp the opportunity.I think it's an opportunity for us to understand that, number one, we are all people.We're all part of the same universe.We're all part of the same mankind.We're all connected in some form or another.And even what you have mentioned about all these different cultures across the world thousands of years ago having the same story just told in their language.The only way they could have known that is, is we're all being connected.We're all connected.

Yeah.

Which I find fascinating in itself.Your book raises the possibility that some description in Genesis can involve technologies rather than supernatural events.Can we talk through an example of that?Because before we go.

Yeah,.

I think that that in itself is kind of very unique.I know you come from a technological background, so because of that, along with all of your research, all of your studies, you know, how does that implement within that?

You know, it goes down to, again, the basic story of how you perceive God.If you perceive God as an almighty entity that knows everything, done everything, knows everything in advance, and basically can, you know, can do anything that you can imagine in the book of Genesis.What you come across is a problem solver and it's not a God.Because when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge, he banishes them.And you would have thought so first of all, you should have known in advance, excuse me, you're a God.So I call it the God oxymoron, or how we perceive God.But all of a sudden, things are happening behind his back.The serpent is telling them what he told you, it's not true.And then he banishes them.And you would have thought that a God that is almighty, that can do everything that within possible, within the imagination, how does he choose to seal off the Garden of Eden?If I was a God or even, you know, when Hollywood had to dream about the technology and the man in black, they put the finger, you know, that pen in front of the people and said, you know, look at this pen chick.And then they forget.That seems like a very simple solution.But no, you know what God does?So first of all, out of Nowhere in Genesis 2, all of a sudden they introduce these entities that are called the cherubim.It's like he puts guards.The cherubim are like guards.So he puts cherubim at the entrance of the Garden of Eden and then the flaming swirling sword.So all of a sudden you're thinking about it, and you know, I have military background and this kind of sounds like a protocol to me.There was a breach, security breach.Somebody ate from or, you know, somebody did something that they weren't supposed to do, you know, bring out the guards and seal off the perimeter.But, but that's, but that's not, that's not a godly thing to do.That's, that's a very earthly thing to do.You know, why, why would you need to put two guards and some, some technology with a flaming swirling sword?You just make them forget.So, you know, so that's, that's one instance.That's when God does it.The, the second and one of my favorite.Have you reached the, the, uh, Sodom and Gomorrah chapter yet?Because I don't know.

I have not.But I was going to ask you about that in one of your other interviews you were talking about Solomon Gamora and I thought, you know, there's a.

I love the story.Yeah, I love the story.And.Yeah, and that's where you have both a Star wars moment and the translation glitch encapsulated in, in one story.And that's a very important part of the misunderstanding of, of, of what happened there.Because the story, which is not a spoiler because in Genesis, it actually starts in a fascinating interaction.Three men appear to, in front of Abraham.And he's just, you know, he sees these three men, obviously he sees something as amazing about them because he's bowing down.You have to come down.I have to.And he feeds them and he gives them, you know, and they eat and everything.And then they say, listen, we heard the city.And he knows this is Yehovah, like this is the commander.And he tells them, listen, we've heard the screaming from, from the city and they're evil.We want to go down, check, we want to check what's happening there.And if they're bad, we'll wipe them out.And Abraham is horrified.He's like, what?But if there are 50 righteous people.And God says, if there are 50, I'll be okay.And then Abraham says, and if they're 45, and if they're 40, and they go all the way down to 10.So it's like a negotiation between the God and one of his human servants.And God, his God is going to wipe out these people and he's going down to Inspect.So you're thinking also, why would God go down to inspect?Would he know it in advance?Eventually the chapter ends and the next chapter starts with the angels going to actually extract one of the righteous people, which is Lot, which is his brother in law.So the two angels arrive at Lot's house.Lot sees them, understands they're special again, bows down.You have to come down to my house.Please, please, please, please.He brings them into his house and they're like, listen, we have to get you out of here, because God's gonna bomb the place.And then the.The villagers see that these two strange people come into the house.So first of all, you have to.Why would these people, you know, want these.Want to basically take the strange people out of Lot's house?And they're banging on the doors, wanting to get in.And Lot says, no, you will not touch my.You will not touch my guests.They're important.You will not come in.And it becomes super intense to the extent that Lot offers his daughters, who did not know man, as offering to the mob.Just don't touch these angels.So you understand the state of mind that he wants to protect these angels more than his daughters, which, as a father to a daughter, it's, you know, mind blowing.Yeah, put that aside.Put that aside.But then the people break in, and then there's the light, the Star wars moment, and the.The translation glitch.The angels smote the men who came in with blindness, and then they escape.So blindness sounds like magic.They did something, they.Whatever, spell, and the people became blind, and then they were able to escape.In Hebrew, the words are the.The hiku otam, the san verimon.The use of the words san verim comes from the word which means to be blinded by a bright light.It's not a random word which relates to random blindness.It's only a blindness which is created with flashing lights.Again, going back to my military service, I know that when you want to go into an urban warfare, into a room without hurting the people, you can use strobe lights, which basically blind people.It's a weapon.You use it and you flash.

The.

Lighter.

Flashbangs.

Yeah.

And.

I'm sure you also.Yeah, it's a very conventional way.It's not like a big deal.But in those days, imagine even a flashlight would be amazing to those people, you know, magical, godly.So then he.So they escape, but they did not use special powers.The angels did not create some type of spell or magic.It's a very interesting.It's for that reason that the translation, instead of saying that they were blinded by the lights, which you need to use these two words, if you're correctly translating from Hebrew, and just left the word blinded, smote them with blindness.So here, the translation erased kind of the weapon.It just, you know, and left the magic.You.You're left with what happened to them and not how it happened, which is a very manipulative thing to do.And.And you do it very subtly, it's like, no, but they were blinded.Yes, that was the effect.But why were they blinded?Because of the bright lights.And then also when they escape, there's a, you know, the entire episode is an escape from, from an artillery shell.It's not godly in any way.It's not like you disappear, you know, it's military grade weapons to evacuate the person and when they evacuated, also how the city was annihilated.And there are many other instances in the Bible.And again, if you read it from the biblical perspective, it's, it's magic.But if you read it as the words say it could be, it might have been a weapon.

Well, and, and I've never, I've never thought about it that way.And I've been military background as well as in my law enforcement background.I think I'm going to go back and re examine that.I mean obviously reading your book, but I'm going to go back and re examine that from that perspective, from a tactical and a strategic perspective instead of, instead of just, well, here's what happened.And it was magic.

Yeah,.

We all want to believe in magic, but in this particular case that makes a lot of sense.Holy smokes.

You know, there's, there's something that I talk about which is really important to me.It's also how people kind of categorize themselves and it's connected to what we talked about.Because what we're talking about now is the tension between magic and science.Right.It's like I say no, this might have been something like technological and the religious people say no, this is like magic, godly and so on.In our world, in our culture, you have to choose a position.Am I a person of religion or am I a person, person of science?And, and usually they're separate.And, and that tension, even if you're a very religious person, you can be a religious person who is scientific, but that tension exists within you.What I say is the language of God.God created the world in, you know, Genesis 1.He manifested the world into being.What he manifested is biological, it's physical, it's mathematical.That's the language of God.If you want to study God, study mathematics.If you want to study God, study biology, study physics.This is the study of God's language.The Bible was written by people, was handed over.It's a great story.It's important.It has many morals which are good, even though you don't follow the, you know, the God in the story.But there's, it's a Very fundamentally important book.You know, I have even more respect for Genesis and the importance of Genesis after writing the book and also made me more connected to my tribe because I'm probably one of the few people or, you know, one of 16 million people in the world whose tribe has existed for 5,000 years and we did not disappear.Think about the Olmecs.They don't.They don't exist.The Egyptians that we, you know, that built, or whoever was, you know, responsible for the pyramids, they don't exist.Whoever built the pyramids, the Mayans, the Aztecs, they don't exist.They lived with us and we survived, and our story carried through and now is the foundation of Western civilization.So I have a lot of respect for the book, but I think we're reading it.We might be reading it slightly wrong.And I want people to understand that, first of all, there is a beautiful book here that many philosophical and, you know.You know, truth can be, you know, extracted out of it.Even though you're not religious and you can still be.For me, being like a doctor is the ultimate kind of manifestation of being religious, because not only are you studying science and biology, you're actually studying what God created, and that could be for a veterinarian, but also, if so, anything that you study within the physical world and scientists and religion, people need to connect, you know.And I think, by the way, now when we, as kind of, from the scientific perspective are starting to see, you know, I'm in the.I think it was six months ago or so, there was the first stories that talked about showing the first ever images of a human cell, which are amazingly complicated, with all the proteins and mechanisms there.And the scientists are kind of looking at this picture and saying, listen, this couldn't have evolved into being.This has an architect behind it, right?This.A machine cannot evolve because the machine parts, when they work, they work at their final form.A screw halfway doesn't work.So if you see a screw inside a cell, which you do inside the machine which creates the protein, somebody did it.So, you know, I don't know who, and I'm, you know, I'm not pretending to know, you know, how things came to be.But I'm saying science is finding religion, but not religion in the religious sense of Catholic, Jewish.But finding that the fabric of our universe is maybe constructed by something or someone.And that's really interesting.And I want that to be preserved further without the tension of, hey, you're.This is.This is going against religion and what we believe in.No, let's have respect for religion and, you know, it has its place.But science has amazing spiritual opportunity and not just, you know, physics people from the physics world and mathematicians and biologists for me are like pastors.They should be.And by the way, when I listen to other podcasts, I listen to some of these brilliant people, scientists, and they bring you knowledge and that's.They actually speak the word of God because they teach you what God created if you're religious.So let's stop separating between everything and realize, like the world, it might be one, that also religion and science should be more one.And I think if we develop, evolve, our new religion should be something which is much more of a combination.And we actually not just stick to the word of the scripture, but because we have to remember people wrote that and actually look at the world and maybe start to think of something more holistic than it's either in the book or it doesn't or it's not true.We can progress.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you in that regard.I do.I. I believe in the universe.I know that we have an entity that's up there that I know that is guiding us as well.But I also believe in angels and call upon them frequently.And I think that there is something more than that.I agree with you 1000% that I think once we evolve into that methodology, that ideology, that we're all connected in that same way and that we all should not necessarily follow the.Because this is coming from an old cop, follow the letter of the law.But understand that it's much bigger than that.And the science and the spirituality part of it, I believe, need to kind of meld at some point.But I think that I have an almost question.I always ask this question to everybody.I like to think back to your younger version of yourself, the boy growing up between cultures, encountering unfamiliar beliefs and beginning to realize that the world might be very different from the one that he'd been taught to understand from that perspective.What if you had never followed that curiosity?What if you simply accepted the stories you inherited and never questioned them?What might.Might you have missed discovering about yourself?And the rest of us would have missed it as well.

You know, many of my friends, again, we grew up during the 70s, 80s, of course, also 90s, that were part of our kind of upbringing, you could say early, early 20s.And many of my friends have only lived in one culture.And by the way, after the army, I also lived a couple years in New York, and later on I lived almost five years in Berlin.In Germany.So this journey of living in different cultures continued.And I find that many of the things that I'm able to do that helped me along the way are part of this kind of upbringing, of constant change, of, of understanding, different perspective.Many of the, you know, we are going through elections, you're going through elections.Many of the, the truths that we hold as, as like fundamental and even in a political sense, we think that the other side is like 100% wrong.And so, and, and so I have more empathy for even my, my, you know, my, my competitors.I understand my, my counterparts.And I think empathy helps you even if you don't agree, if you violently disagree, empathy helps you explain yourself better, understand the situation better, plan better, strategize better.So for me, I think that has been one of the biggest gifts that I had in my upbringing, which I cannot imagine myself without it actually.You know, you ask what I might have missed.I don't even know how my life would have looked like if I stayed in one place and didn't have all this kind of, you know, my mind and kind of heart was open to all these different cultures.So for me, it's kind of who I am.And I can't even think of what I would have been or missed if I, if I didn't have that experience.

Well, we all would have missed, we would have missed your wisdom and your, your book.And that's the opportunity for us to have a better understanding about humanity and life.And, and I, I thank you for that, that the, the comment and the words of wisdom in regard to empathy and compassion.Empathy and compassion can go a long way.And I think that we as humanity, we as society and culture, especially in this day and age, are starting to forget that empathy and compassion are really two valuable assets for a human being to have to one another.So thank you for reminding us of that.Let's talk about how people can find you and find this wonderful book and website.

Yeah.So of course on Amazon, Gil Rosen, Alien versus Decoding Genesis.Any one of those keywords will get you to my book.Gilrosen G I L R O S E n dot net also has links to my books, my substack, my Instagram, my TikTok.I try to, you know, I try, I try to provide kind of a perspective outside of the book in my substack, some articles, some of the thoughts that I'm also kind of entering into the writing of the second book, kind of realizing some of the things of how people reacted and trying to explain what you're about to read in a better way.So hopefully, even for the people who read the first one, the second, the start of the second one will help understand the first one before even they get to the.To the new alien verses.But, yeah, those places you can find me and of course, talk to me, send me comments and whatever.Happy to have a conversation with anyone.

That's brilliant.And I'll make sure that's in the show notes so they can easily just click it and follow it right to your website.For those individuals that hopefully will come see you, this has been absolute wonderful conversation.Thank.

You, Michael.

I.

Really enjoyed our conversation.

Me too.This is one more thing before you go.So I have this.Words of wisdom.Always ask words of wisdom.What's the one more thing you want people to carry with them?After our conversation today,.

I think the fact that to understand that we are installed with software, that we have permission to go deep down into our soul, into the software and just ask questions.Because if you ask, you exist.If you don't ask, you're just driven as code, as instructions.So before you're driven by those instructions, go check you have the password to your own operating system, and you can decide if you want an update, and you can decide not to have an update.But checking is really important and it's so fundamental and it can change your life.So just do it.

Brilliant words of wisdom.Gil, thank you very much for pulling up a chair and sharing your curiosity, your perspective, your personal journey, everything that's behind your work has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show.Thank you.Thank you.You know, one of the things that I find fascinating about our conversation like this wasn't necessarily whether we agree with every conclusion, although we have.It's the way they invite us to examine something we often take for granted.The stories that we inherit, as we've mentioned throughout this conversation, from our families, our parents, our cultures, and the generations before us can shape the way we see the world long before we ever think to question them.And questioning a story doesn't necessarily mean you reject it.Sometimes it just simply means that we want to know a little bit more, to have some more understanding, some more compassion, and get a little deeper.So maybe that's something worth carrying into our own lives and hopefully within those people around us as well.Because the stories we share reveal who we are becoming.It helps us to form, I think, a tighter connection to humanity.So until next time, I'm Michael Hurst.And remember, pull up a chair.You're always invited to take a seat at this table.And One More Thing before you Go.Have a great day, have a great week and thank you for being part of One More Thing before you Go.

Thank you for Listening to this episode of One more Thing before you Go.Check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com you can find us as well as subscribe to the program and rate us on your favorite podcast listening platform.