PALEOCONTACT IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES By DR. Matest M. Agrest**

PALEOCONTACT IDEAS IN THE

MIDDLE AGES

By DR. Matest M. Agrest**

The year 1994 marks the eight hundredth anniversary of the birth of the greatest thinker and mediaval scholar Rabbi Moshe Ben Nackman-Ramban (1194-1270), who lived in the golden era in the history of the development of the Jewish religious and national culture. Two prominent schools existed at the time: the Tzorfat (French) Sсhool headed the world renown Rashi and the Sephard (Spanish) School headed by a group of brilliant scholars including Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, Ramban  and Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonedes). Ramban absorbed, analyzed and developed the deepest ideas of this two schools. Not only he was a great thinker. but also he possessed a a very deep intuition and could feel many things lying on the age of rationalism. He was a defender of Maimonedes Rationalism and at the same time one of the greatest cabbalists and the first of them to openly develop the ideas of cabbala and to use some of them in his well known commentaries on the Bible.  Ramban devoted many years of his life to the Pentateuch commentaries and finished them only after he moved to the Promised Land in 1267 AD. Sometimes Ramban evaded an open explanation of his ideas, noting that there is a  hidden "secret". Later two of his followers composed two books especially devoted to interpret Ramban's "secret" . (See Note) Here is the English translation of the conclusion  of Ramban's commentary on to the verse Genesis 4: "But the Midrash Pyrkey 'Rabbi Eliezer' (chapter.22) which is mentioned in the Talmud, treatise 'Juma' explains the world Hanphilim as Messengers fallen from the sky. That is the best commentary for thr verse Genesis 4. But to explain the secret contained in this verse it is necessary to write very much". (1)

The English translation of Genesis 4 is:  "It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth  - when the divine beings cohabited  with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown." For the contemporary reader it is evident that Ramban sees in this verse  a record of the descending of man like messengers  from another world to Earth: that is, paleocontact. it goes without saying that more than seven centuries ago such an idea was dangerous for the then ruling ideology. It was more dangerous for for a scientist to express such ideas, or even to think about them. Even 400 years later , Giordano Bruno was burn at the stake because of his asserting  of the existence of many other civilizations in outer space - an idea far less dangerous for the ruling ideology than Ramban's idea. But Ramban was not afraid to think and his great experience as an ideological fighter showed him to how to save this