The Parallels Between Jesus Christ and Roswell

Copyright 2011, InterAmerica, Inc.



Just as there were niggardly references to Jesus of Nazareth, after his death, there were niggardly references to Roswell after that 1947 incident (as noted in my post showing the 1967 LOOK issue, Flying Saucers and in a comment from Christopher Allen).

No substantive account about Jesus appeared or is extant earlier than the Gospel of Mark, about thirty years after Jesus’ death, allegedly “helped” by The Holy Spirit



No substantive account of the Roswell episode appeared earlier than the 1980 book, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, covertly helped by Stanton Friedman.



Subsequent books or “gospels” about Jesus, centering on his meaning and mission, culminating in his death and resurrection, appeared later, 60 A.D. to 300 A.D., (with the sojourns of St. Paul, peripheral to Jesus life, showing up around 50 A.D).

These gospels derive from witness accounts, not first-hand information from Jesus or those in his circle.



Many books subsequent to the Berlitz/Moore work have appeared, all offering synopses of the Roswell event, culled from newspapers archives and alleged witness accounts, but no first-hand accounts of a flying disk crash.



Christianity eventually became, with the help of Roman Emperor Constantine, the prevailing religion in the West.



Roswell became, with the help of Stanton Friedman, the template for ufology’s extraterrestrial believers.



While the divinity of Jesus and his alleged miracles and resurrection have been grist for theologians, religious lay persons, and atheists (or agnostics), the supposed crash landing of a flying disk, piloted by extraterrestrial entities, in Roswell, has similarly become fodder for UFO’s ET believers and skeptics (or debunkers, as the UFO fanatics put it).

Jesus of Nazareth has generated more controversy and writings than any other religious oriented subject.

Roswell, in the UFO context, has generated more controversy and writings than any other flying saucer event.

Persons claiming to be Christians have provided a myriad of experiences related to the Jesus phenomenon.



Persons claiming to be Roswell witnesses or friends of same have provided myriad accounts tying them to the Roswell incident.



Both kinds of witnesses engage intellectual or superficial scrutiny by others, with fervant debate deciding nothing that can be substantiated by fact or empirical proof: Jesus remains an enigma for many, believers and non-believers alike; Roswell, remains an enigma, generally, for believers and skeptics too.

The Jesus story has an alleged artifact from his death/resurrection: The Shroud of Turin.



Roswell has artifacts from the alleged crash: misperceived debris.



Both Jesus and Roswell have produced a mythos, a mythology of significant proportions.

Neither is related to the other, but they do resonate as historical “fables” or historical realities.

The Jesus story appears to be transcendent but Roswell appears to be preternatural also.



Sociologists can work with the elements of both to determine the human interactions that provide the integration suggested here.

Jesus’ influence is much greater than Roswell, surely, but Roswell does mimic the vicissitudes that brought the Jesus movement to prominence, even if Roswell is a sociological canard.

But wait, the Jesus thrust has been just as fraught with fraud, falsity, or fallacious human interactions – the difference being that Roswell takes us nowhere theologically or philosophically relevant.

RR

Roswell: The Great Pan is dead!

In Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend [Gambit Inc., Boston, 1969], the authors, in Chapter XXI (Page 275 ff.), recount the famous tale from Plutarch about how, on board a ship with many passengers, sailing near the Echinades Islands, Epitherses (son of Aemilianus) tells that Thamus, the Egyptian pilot, heard a voice, while near the island of Paxi, calling his name.

Thamus, at first did not reply, but after a third time he responded to the voice, which said, “When you come opposite to Palodes, announce that Great Pan is dead.”

Thamus, Epittherses, and the passengers were astounded and reasoned among themselves whether to carry out the order or not.

Thamus, however, while approaching Palodes said the words, “Great Pan is dead.”

A great cry of woe, by many on the land, went up, and eventually spread to Rome, where Tiberius Caesar called for an investigation as to the truth of the profound rumor.

Plutarch, himself, did not accept the acclimation and suggested that the shouts from Paxi were misunderstood by Thamus and the story became embroidered by the masses, encouraged by the fact that Tiberius had called for an official investigation, apparently giving some credence to the tale.

The authors write this, “One is still allowed to wonder why such a fuss was made at the time about [the] exclamations…and why…that most learned of mythologists, the Emperor Tiberius himself, thought the matter worth following up.” [Page 276]

The significance of the tale is many. Firstly Pan was considered a major God, and equatable, in some quarters, with Jesus who was crucified during the reign of Tiberius.

Secondly, the tale strikes at the heart of the prevailing belief system of the time, Paganism.

Thirdly, the tale continues to be remunerated upon to this day (by scholars and mythologists, mostly).

And finally, Great Pan is dead was retold in many configurations over the years, such as it was Tammuz-Adonis, the grain god who died, the yoke-bearer, Giki-Gaki is dead on the Hurgergorn, and the Fanggen, a kind of “Little People” (or giants!?) disappeared in the Tyrol.

How does this tale relate to Roswell?

The Chapter (and book, in toto) elaborates on how history and events are muddled by belief systems, what people wish to hear, and Chapter IV (History, Myth and Reality) examples instances where events are confabulated or twisted, often inadvertently, by a jumping to conclusions inspired by entrenched beliefs and/or stories heard, many times, over the years.

Hamlet’s Mill treats great myths and tales that affect or have affected humanity in significant ways, over the millennia.

Roswell is not significant, nor worthy of a Myth status, Gilles Fernandez notwithstanding, but it has developed the status of mythos, in the sociological sense.

(Mythos -- the complex of beliefs, values, attitudes, etc, characteristic of a specific group or society)

What was decried by Thamus may be seen as similar to what was decried at Roswell: The Army Air Force has captured a Flying Saucer.



The “heard refrain” at Roswell has been elaborated upon and added to, much like that which happened when “The Great Pan is dead” was taken as a profound truth by those hearing about the announcement and taking it to varying interpretations, far and wide, subjecting it to the vicissitudes of many locales and peoples.

The original story – the original announcement – has been taken apart by “researchers” and recast by those same “researchers” into many guises, all adumbrated to enhance whatever belief system held in the mind of a particular “researcher” – some preferring the extraterrestrial cast, some preferring a secret military cast, and others eschewing any cast at all, debunking the tale, altogether, as Euhemeros, the first debunker, did with myth.



Roswell is a story, with a core truth at its center. What that core truth may be has been lost to time, and the ineptitude of those who gathered the remnants of the original tale twwnty years after the “event” allegedly took place.

Can the story be cleansed of the accretions? Not easily, if at all.

The Roswell tale has been concretized into a myth (or, better, mythos) as CDA and Gilles Fernandez continue to decry.

It can’t be scrubbed clean, that’s a certainty, which Nick Redfern and this writer (among others) think is the case.

But others, David Rudiak, Stanton Friedman, Kevin Randle, et al., will continue to promote the mythology, because, for them, mythos is more important than truth.