( “I don’t believe in God,” I told one of my students many years ago. It’s within mystery-real or invented-that the human spirit thrives. Who were those gods from space? What was their interest in our crude simian species, that they poured such energy into cultivating us? The ancient question, What is a human being that Thou rememberest him, a child of humanity that Thou takest him into account? (Psalm 8:5) returns in a new form, more potent than ever.īut this opening of the door, from mystery to fresh mystery, does nothing to reduce the power of von Däniken’s conception. Of course they give way to other, deeper mysteries. It was their technology, not its feeble and primitive human counterparts, that built the great monuments of Old- and New-World antiquity.Īssume these things to be true, and the “unsolved mysteries of the past” (as the book’s subtitle has it) find their solution. They were extraterrestrial visitors, come to instruct our ancestors and to interbreed with them for their (the humans’) benefit. If you don’t know the central thesis of Chariots-and it’s a measure of the book’s influence that there must be very few who don’t-it is this: that the gods who haunt the myths and legends of human beings all over the world, from Yahveh to Indra to the eerie beings memorialized by the colossi on Easter Island, really existed. But even without that, I doubt if there would have been fireworks. In large part this was thanks to Gene Steinberg’s skilled shepherding. Von Däniken, however, is a very nice man, and our debate was conducted with mutual respect and good humor. It’s not a very good book, in my opinion. Chariots was an international bestseller, millions and millions of copies sold, translated into I don’t know how many languages. But surely von Däniken knew that already. To reveal something incontrovertibly true and essential for the understanding of our lives and our world. I wanted to tell von Däniken this 40-year-old story-why? Maybe to convey to him the universality of his book’s appeal, that it seemed to a secular thirtysomething Israeli Jew-one of a people who prided themselves on hard-headed, down-to-earth practicality-to be required reading for any thinking man or woman.
I settled down for one long summer Sabbath afternoon in Avi’s living room, with a Hebrew translation of Chariots of the Gods? He said this in a tone that invited no argument. “David,” he said, “there’s a book you’ve got to read.” Erich von Däniken, “Chariots of the Gods?” I was in Israel to teach an overseas course and was visiting a friend of the family, a building contractor named Avi. This was in the summer of 1978, nine years after Chariots was first published. I didn’t get a chance to tell Erich von Däniken, when he and I were guests together last week on Gene Steinberg’s “The Paracast” radio show, that the first time I read his Chariots of the Gods? it was in Hebrew.
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