An Italian scholar who once translated Old Testament books for a Catholic publishing house now argues the original Hebrew texts describe multiple alien beings, and he says the Vatican is watching him closely.

Mauro Biglino spent years translating 17 books of the Old Testament for Edizioni San Paolo, a major Catholic publishing house with ties to the Vatican. Somewhere along the way, he says, the text stopped reading like theology and started reading like something else entirely. The beings described in the Hebrew Bible eat, drink, rest, get angry, feel jealous, and, critically, in Biglino's reading, are never described as immortal. He now contends these figures were not manifestations of one transcendent God but flesh-and-blood visitors from somewhere beyond Earth.

The claim puts Biglino squarely in the "ancient alien" camp, a fringe that mainstream biblical scholarship has long dismissed. But his background as a translator for a Vatican-linked publisher gives the argument a pedigree that most ancient-astronaut theorists lack, and, he says, has drawn quiet attention from inside the Vatican itself.

Biglino says his method starts with the Hebrew words themselves

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Biglino laid out his approach. He does not begin with doctrine or tradition. He begins with grammar.

"My approach is different because I begin with the Hebrew words, their grammar and the concrete actions attributed to the biblical protagonists."

That method, he argues, reveals a picture far removed from the one taught in churches and seminaries. The Hebrew word Elohim, commonly translated as "God", is grammatically plural. Mainstream scholars have long acknowledged this but explain it as a plural of majesty or a grammatical convention that refers to the singular God of Israel, depending on the surrounding language. Biglino rejects that reading.

He points to specific passages. Psalm 82 depicts God presiding over an assembly of divine beings and warning that they will "die like mortals." Deuteronomy 32 describes nations being divided among higher powers. These are not obscure texts. They sit in the middle of the Old Testament canon, and Biglino says they describe a hierarchy of physical beings, not spiritual abstractions.

Mainstream biblical scholars, for their part, interpret such passages as references to spiritual beings, angels, symbolic expressions, or manifestations of one transcendent God. That scholarly consensus has held for centuries, and no named scholar is cited in the available reporting as endorsing Biglino's extraterrestrial reading.

'Kavod' arrived, departed, and made noise, Biglino says that sounds like technology

Biglino draws particular attention to the Hebrew word kavod, often translated as "glory" in English Bibles. In passages from Exodus and Ezekiel, the kavod arrives, departs, moves through space, and produces noise, fire, and light. Biglino argues this does not behave like an abstract theological concept.

"In these contexts, it behaves like something physically present."

He extends the argument to Ezekiel's famous vision, the one with wheels within wheels, living creatures, and a throne above a crystalline expanse. Where traditional interpreters see symbolic religious imagery, Biglino sees descriptions of advanced technology, including what he interprets as flying vehicles. The ancient writers, he contends, were doing their best to describe machines they had no vocabulary for.

The broader claim is sweeping. Biglino told the Daily Mail that the Hebrew Bible, taken on its own textual terms, appeared to contain something unexpected.

"It appeared to contain the memories of different peoples who had relationships with powerful beings possessing superior knowledge, longer lifespans and technologies that the ancient writers could describe only through the vocabulary available to them."

That is a dramatic assertion, and one that rests entirely on Biglino's own interpretive framework. No corroborating scholars are named. No peer-reviewed research is cited. The case, as presented, is one man's reading of ancient texts filtered through a theory that most of his former academic peers reject outright. Readers interested in how historians evaluate evidence for core biblical claims will find a very different standard of proof at work.

Biglino claims the Vatican is paying attention

Perhaps the most provocative thread in Biglino's account is his claim that unnamed figures within the Vatican are following his work. He says sources he considers reliable have told him his ideas are being discussed in certain theological circles inside the institution.

"Given the reach of my publications... I believe it is highly probable that, sooner or later, [the Vatican] will intervene in some way."

He also claims that many within the Vatican already know the Hebrew Bible presents a more complicated picture than what reaches the pews.

"Many of them are fully aware that the Hebrew Bible presents a much more complex picture than the simplified version generally offered in religious teaching."

No evidence is provided to support either claim. No Vatican official is named or quoted. No internal document, memo, or communication is cited. The Vatican Observatory has publicly discussed extraterrestrial life in general terms, but that is a long way from endorsing the idea that the God of Abraham was actually a committee of space travelers. Biglino himself has previously claimed his relationship with his Catholic publisher ended under contentious circumstances, though the details of that separation remain disputed.

Biglino acknowledges the theological difficulty of his position. Asking whether microbial or intelligent life exists on another planet, he told the Daily Mail, is "relatively unproblematic for theology." But the next step is where the ground shifts.

"Asking whether non-human beings came to Earth in the past, interacted with our ancestors and were subsequently identified as 'gods' is far more challenging."

He even offers the Vatican a potential escape hatch, suggesting the Church could accommodate his findings without abandoning monotheism entirely.

"It could simply say that these beings, like humanity, are creatures of the one universal God."

What the evidence actually supports, and what it does not

Biglino's credentials are real. He translated 17 books of the Old Testament for a publisher connected to the Vatican. That is not nothing. But credentials are not conclusions, and a translator's access to the text does not make his interpretation correct, especially when the scholarly mainstream lines up against him.

The grammatical plurality of Elohim is well established. So are the vivid, sometimes startling descriptions in Ezekiel. These are not secrets Biglino has uncovered; they are features of the text that scholars have debated for centuries. What Biglino adds is a specific interpretive lens, the ancient-astronaut hypothesis, that reframes familiar material in extraterrestrial terms. Whether that lens clarifies or distorts is the question, and the scholarly consensus falls heavily on the side of distortion.

His claims about Vatican surveillance rest on unnamed sources and his own speculation. No official Vatican response is on record. The institution that has weathered controversies from the Reformation to modern debates over the supernatural has not, so far as the public record shows, felt compelled to address Biglino's theories directly.

None of this means Biglino should be silenced or dismissed without engagement. Serious questions about ancient texts deserve serious answers. But serious answers require named sources, peer review, and evidence that goes beyond one scholar's interpretive preference. In an era when governments and institutions increasingly police religious expression, the freedom to make unconventional claims matters, and so does the responsibility to back them up.

A bold reading of an ancient text is not the same as a proven one. Biglino has the first. He has not yet delivered the second.