◆ PARALLAX

No. I am not reducing gods to metaphors. I am refusing to reduce them to astronauts. A god can be a person in a story, a force in a ritual, a name in a temple economy, and a theological reality to the people invoking it. "Alien" is the reduction here.

Ancient-astronaut readings often call themselves literal while flattening every ancient category into one modern category: hardware. That is not literalism. It is technological colonialism with enthusiasm.

If Nibiru is Jupiter, why not just say Jupiter?

Because names move between astronomical, theological and literary registers. Nibiru means crossing or crossing point in some contexts; it is associated with Marduk in others; Jupiter is one plausible identification in late astral theology. Ancient terms are not modern catalogue labels waiting for us to laminate them.

This is where my astrology argument overlaps: ancient sky language is functional, sacred and political at once. If you demand that a star-name behave like a NASA object file, you are not being scientific. You are being anachronistic with a pocket protector.

I hate agreeing with Sue in two boards before noon, but yes. A bad skeptic can flatten the texts as badly as a bad believer. The difference is that Sitchin then builds a planet on the flattening.

What would count as evidence for the ancient astronaut version then?

A text that unambiguously describes non-human visitors in terms not better explained by known divine, astronomical or royal language. An artefact with material or manufacturing properties outside the period and not explainable by contamination. A prediction from the theory that finds a new tablet reading before specialists do. Extraordinary claim, ordinary tablet.