PSEUDEPIGRAPHA WATCH: Erich von Däniken, bless his muddled heart, is still giving lectures and has recently abused some Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Florian Freistetter reports in a guest post at the Aardvarchaeology blog:

The next topic in Dänikens chain of "evidence" is an analysis of the biblical apocrypha. These are Christian texts that were not included in the final version of the Bible. The Book of Enoch tells how Enoch was taken to Heaven by angels and brought before the throne of God. For Däniken of course, the angels were aliens and Heaven was the interior of a space ship.

Another example that Däniken discussed at some length was the "Apocrypha of Abraham". Here Abraham apparently tells the tale of how he was abducted by aliens and brought to their space ship. Re-telling the story, by his way of speaking Däniken often suggests that he is quoting directly from the text. And those quotations really sound impressive! Abraham saw beings "who did not have the breath of a man": they were wearing spacesuits with helmets, as Däniken explains. Abraham wished "to fall back down to the Earth": so if he wants to fall "back down" he has to be in space! And there were many more of those quotations that really sounded strange and did not fit into an old Christian text. What does this mean? Even Däniken couldn't be so bold and just invent such a story?

Of course, he again stated that he is not inventing anything. He told the audience, that everybody can just get a copy of the text and read the story for itself. So of course I tried to do that!

And, of course, the text turns out to be the Slavonic Apocalypse of Abraham and the interpretation turns out to be, well, creative.

Naturally, Ezekiel gets the treatment too:

In a talk by Däniken, the famous story of the space ship of Ezekiel cannot be missed. Däniken talks for almost half an hour about this particular piece of exegesis. Again, a biblical prophet is taken away in an alien space ship. This time he is brought to a space port which he is supposed to measure, then to report the results to later generations. At least, that is Däniken's opinion.

He tells the audience that 30 years ago he gave a "secret talk" to NASA and there meet an engineer named Joseph Blumrich. Blumrich, impressed by Däniken's tale of the biblical space ship, tried to "reconstruct" the ship, based on the text of the Book of Ezekiel. Däniken stresses, that "not a centimeter was omitted or added" - everything is based strictly on the Bible.

Oh goody. Solomon's Temple turns out to be a space port for the ship too.

Earlier post on Erich von Däniken here. I wonder how his theme park is doing.