“Rethinking What the Bible Tells Us”: A Review of The Nucleus: My Religion in the Rear View Mirror by W. Wallace Wagner, Jr.

 

(Dimensionfold Publishing, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-998395-06-4

In the past 18 months, I have gotten to know W. Wallace Wagner, Jr., both as an author and as a two-time guest on my podcast. I have reviewed Crossing the Crevasse and Within Grasp, Wagner’s first two books, which I highly recommend to anyone seeking alternative interpretations of the Bible and other religious texts beyond organized religion, especially in the context of Off-World Intelligences and anomalous archaeological structures and other phenomena that defy an easy explanation when considered through the lens of traditional narratives.

Of the three books, The Nucleus is the most intense, which makes sense given the author’s nearly decade-long journey through an evolving set of viewpoints concerning the accepted Word of God after his encounter with a Tic-Tac UAP in 2016—well before the government release of Navy footage of this type of craft. Since that time, Wagner has been a committed researcher, seeking out and forging relationships with respected individuals in the field of alternative religious text interpretation. He has done an impressive amount of textual analysis, using many versions of the Bible. In The Nucleus, his language is more frank, his lines in the sand more deeply demarcated, and his positions more secure.

Wagner is well aware of the tone of this book, and he opens up his Introduction with a warning. Start there and see if this book is right for you, even if you have read the previous two.

It is essential to keep in mind that W. Wallace Wagner, Jr., is a man of substantial faith and integrity. His upbringing and understanding through a Conservative Christian lens began to break down following his sighting of the UAP. This in and of itself is not unusual—these experiences are often profound and even life changing for those who have them. What is a bit unusual is the depth of Wagner’s commitment to understanding better the Bible rather than simply abandoning it. Through this process, he has become increasingly closer to Yeshua ben Joseph, while taking the position that the Old Testament God of Wrath is not a god at all (and certainly not Yeshua’s father) but an extraterrestrial—and not a unique or particularly powerful one at that. Connected to this thesis is the idea that Yeshua gave us knowledge on multiple levels and the Church did its best to suppress the insights and teachings he shared with the disciples and others on a gnostic (or direct knowing) level. In other words, a series of Church councils and writers with agendas matching those of their patrons excised the most profound of his teachings from the accepted canon. Thankfully, we have the gnostic gospels, found at Nag Hammadi and other places 80 years ago, or else this spiritual–practical knowledge would be lost.

This distortion of the biblical narrative by competing agendas and gatekeepers is the core thesis of The Nucleus, which, like a doctoral dissertation in theology, spends the bulk of its words in textual analysis, to an even larger extent than its predecessors.

In setting up the book, Wagner takes the Church to task for past harms, which are legion. He specifically targets the suppression of astronomers like Galileo Galilei and Nicolaus Copernicus and progressive or alternative thinkers like William Tyndale and Martin Luther. He also delves into Middle Eastern geography (a key component of his thesis) and discoveries of a wheel and a bell in places they should not have been found that render accepted historical timelines and data untenable if they are authentic. Wagner also explores the nature of the miracles attributed to several saints and possible alternative meanings behind the trees of Life and Knowledge. 

Wagner then begins a thorough comparative textual analysis between many versions of the Bible to parse out inconsistencies (e.g., can God be seen or not?), illuminate omissions (e.g., the word Elohim, meanings gods, not God), and offer alternative readings that attempt to explain the shocking differences between the Old Testament God of Wrath and the New Testament God of Love.

Concerning the case that the OT god is an interstellar traveler who holds dominion over the lands and tribes he rules, Wagner provides considerable supportive textual evidence, as have numerous other scholars, both within and well beyond the community of researchers expounding the admittedly controversial Ancient Astronaut theory. It’s hard to dismiss descriptions that sound like crafts/chariots of fire bellowing smoke and flame and releasing weapons of mass destruction, and various gods and angels descending from the sky (see pp. 130–31 for a long list of Bible passages supporting this thesis). There is the burning bush, from which emanates a voice. This path of exploration also returns to the Elohim, the “Shining Ones,” and names for the OT god such as YHWH, who turns out to be, not the One True God, but a local Canaanite deity. Wagner then makes a compelling case that there were 70 of these local gods. The OT God of Wrath is a local god—the God of Israel—and seemingly not the most powerful of the 70, who are the sons of a god named El Elyon. Who is their mother? Possibly Asherah, the “Queen of Heaven.” In some respects, Baal, another Canaanite god, was just as powerful as YHWH.

No wonder YHWH was so often jealous and violent toward other gods. Remember the first commandment: You shall have no other gods before me.  

As to the famous wrath of this local god YHWH, there are some stories in the bible that are so abhorrent when you unpack them that Wagner gives them extra time. One such story is that of Job, the focus of a wager between God and Satan. Job endures horrible afflictions, and loses everything, including his ten children—all so YHWH can prove how pious and faithful he is. This seems almost insignificant when one considers the tribes and countries that the OT God of Wrath orders destroyed for a variety of slights, often having to do with the breaking of commandment number one.  

Because nature abhors a vacuum, Wagner’s letting go of conservative Christian teachings that no longer serve allows him space to take in and assimilate a broader range of teachings, such as those of the Theosophical Society and the International Association for Near Death Studies. This is clearly reflected in the section “Snippets from Around the Globe,” which offers quotes from a tribe in Kenya, Soren Kierkegaard, Yeshua, Krishna, the Upanishads, Zoroaster, Muhammad, Shinto philosophy, Aristotle, Sun Tzu, William Blake, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and many more. These quotes serve as a reminder that the messages and philosophies found in the Bible are reflections of the same core tenets found in myriad world cultures, philosophies, and educational disciplines.  

There are some revelations personal to Wagner in this book that are admittedly intense and deeply personal. They speak to Wagner’s impressive faith, what we do with the messages we receive, and the nature of the energies at play in the Universe.    

It has truly been a privilege and a source of growth for me in my own studies to watch Wagner “connect the dots” as he terms it in this book.

As he does in the previous books, Wagner offers us four companion texts: the gospels of Thomas (a personal favorite of mine), Judas, Mary, and James. These gnostic texts demonstrate the higher-level wisdom of Yeshua that Wagner proves that the Bible omits.

Wagner states along the way that The Nucleus is the final book he is writing on this subject. I hope that he will continue to explore other areas, spiritual, paranormal, and elsewhere, as his scholarship and commitment to telling the larger story is essential to making sense of our complicated modern world.