What if we have misunderstood the Bible?

For thousands of years, people have tried to understand what happened in biblical times. Historians examine written sources and archaeological finds; theologians study religious meaning; philosophers and psychologists offer their own interpretations of ancient narratives. Yet beneath these varied approaches lies a problem that is easily underestimated: we often do not know the true nature of the participants, objects, and phenomena described in ancient texts. Familiar definitions may even give us the illusion that we do.

We read about God, angels, heavenly chariots, the tree of life, and other extraordinary things. Each name evokes associations shaped by culture, religion, and centuries of interpretation. But knowing an object's name is not the same as knowing its nature. Perhaps the familiar words originally referred to phenomena for which ancient observers had no appropriate concepts. To see why this matters, let us conduct a thought experiment.

How a helicopter becomes a chariot of the gods

Imagine someone living three thousand years ago who suddenly sees a modern helicopter. He does not know what an engine, a main rotor, or an aircraft is, and he lacks words that could accurately identify the unknown object. Yet he can still observe and describe what happens. A large object descends from the sky; something above it spins rapidly. A deafening roar fills the air, dust rises, the object stops above the ground, then lands, and people emerge. The observer does not understand how a helicopter works, but he reports its actions reasonably accurately.

The eyewitness then tells someone else what he saw. From this moment, the original account begins to change. Each subsequent storyteller receives not the event itself but a description filtered through the previous person's knowledge, language, culture, and worldview.

The first interpretation is cognitive. The listener has never encountered such an object and explains the unfamiliar through the familiar. In his experience, birds can fly, so the large object descending from the sky becomes a gigantic heavenly bird. He is not trying to deceive anyone and may sincerely believe his explanation. Nevertheless, he has replaced an unknown object with a familiar category and changed the original description.

The second interpretation is linguistic. The next storyteller hears about the heavenly bird and retells the story in another language or in expressions customary in his time. An uncertain description of a large object becomes the definite name of a winged creature. The rotation above the object may become the movement of its wings, and a deafening mechanical roar may become a thunderous cry. Some original details disappear because the speaker does not understand their significance or cannot find suitable words. A change in language becomes a change in content.

The third interpretation is cultural. The story now reaches a society with traditions of celestial beings, miraculous journeys, and messengers of higher powers. People fit what they hear into their worldview. The enormous bird capable of bringing people down from heaven gradually becomes a celestial chariot. The unusual occurrence receives an explanation that makes sense to the community and takes its place among existing traditions. By then, none of the new storytellers knows that the original witness saw a human-made object.

The fourth interpretation is theological. Several generations later, the account becomes part of a religious tradition. The heavenly chariot is understood as a deity's vehicle, and the people emerging from it as divine messengers. A particular purpose is assigned to their arrival: to deliver a command, warn humanity, or announce the will of higher powers. An initial report of an unknown occurrence becomes testimony to divine intervention. As the story is recorded, edited, and incorporated into religious narrative, it may also be adjusted to accepted ideas about the nature of gods and their relations with humans.

The fifth interpretation is symbolic. Centuries pass. Later interpreters no longer necessarily regard the heavenly chariot as a physical object. It becomes a symbol of divine presence, spiritual ascent, or the transmission of knowledge. The noise, movement, and arrival of messengers receive metaphorical explanations. What began as the observation of an unusual object is now read as a narrative about spiritual truths. Its meaning depends less on the original event than on the symbolic system through which it is studied.

Eventually, a modern scholar encounters an ancient text about a miraculous chariot descending from heaven. The scholar may carefully study its language, literary composition, religious content, editorial history, and cultural setting. Those conclusions may be well-founded as interpretations of the surviving text. Yet even such research does not necessarily answer a different question: what did the original eyewitness actually see?

In our thought experiment, we know the answer: it was a helicopter. We can therefore follow how successive interpretations altered the initial report. An unfamiliar object first received a familiar name, was then absorbed into a cultural and religious worldview, and ultimately became a symbol. At each stage, the explanation grew more intelligible to new storytellers while moving further from the actual nature of what had been observed.

Some characteristics, however, might survive even repeated changes: downward movement, loud noise, effects on the surrounding environment, hovering or stopping above the ground, and the emergence of people. Certain versions might even retain a reference to an unusual rotation above the object—a detail poorly suited to a bird or ordinary chariot but natural for a helicopter.

Of course, this is a fictional experiment, not a claim that modern technology existed in antiquity. In real life, kinds of interpretation can operate simultaneously, recur, overlap, or be absent. There is no mandatory sequence of five transformations through which every ancient story must pass. The example nonetheless illustrates an important feature of information transmission: names, causal explanations, and attributed meanings may change substantially, while certain descriptions of actions can endure.

This opens up a possibility for inquiry. If we do not know the original object's true nature, perhaps we should temporarily set aside familiar definitions and examine what it did, how it interacted with its environment, and what consequences followed. That requires preparing the ancient text first, separating analyzable features from accumulated interpretations.

I developed the method of functional residue and anchor anomalies for precisely this purpose.

The method of functional residue and anchor anomalies

The method of functional residue and anchor anomalies is intended to prepare an ancient narrative for investigation. It does not establish what actually happened or deliver ready-made answers about the nature of the participants or objects. Its task is, as far as the surviving text permits, to distinguish descriptions of actions from the definitions and explanations assigned to them, while identifying significant details that require independent analysis.

Let us return to the example. If we treat “heavenly chariot” as an original attribute of the object, further investigation will inevitably be shaped by ideas about chariots and their symbolic significance. But if we provisionally suspend that label, we are left with information about movement, rotation, noise, effects on the environment, and the transport of people. We no longer begin by asking what the heavenly chariot means. Instead, we identify the actions ascribed to the unknown object and the properties needed to perform them.

This produces the functional residue: a set of actions, functions, and relationships between participants or objects extracted from a narrative and available for study independently of the customary explanation of their nature. It does not necessarily reproduce the original observation without distortion and cannot guarantee accurate identification. Its value lies elsewhere: the information becomes suitable for comparison, examination of causal connections, and construction of competing explanatory models.

Functional characteristics alone, however, are not enough. Sometimes the most important detail is one that fits the generally accepted understanding poorly. Imagine that an account of a heavenly bird preserves the statement that it did not flap its wings, while a long object above it spun. That is strange for an ordinary bird but could be essential to a particular technical device. If we decide in advance that the story concerns a mythical bird, the odd detail can easily be dismissed as the storyteller's imagination. Yet it may expose the inadequacy of the chosen model.

I call such details anchor anomalies. They are significant features of a description that lack a satisfactory explanation within the accepted interpretation and deserve separate examination. An anomaly does not prove an alternative hypothesis and does not, by itself, identify an object. It shows only that the familiar explanation may be incomplete or require further testing.

The two components of the method perform connected tasks. Functional residue isolates material describing actions and processes; anchor anomalies keep unusual details from disappearing when a narrative is forced into an established conceptual scheme. The result is not a reconstruction of the event but prepared material that still needs to be investigated.

It is equally important to understand what the method does not do. Having isolated movement, noise, rotation, and transport, we have not established that an ancient observer saw a helicopter. This is merely one model that could be tested during subsequent analysis. Likewise, preparing a biblical text does not prove the existence of the Bons, the technological nature of Eden, or the managed character of the chosen people's history. Such conclusions can emerge only after examining the prepared material, comparing explanations, and judging how well each fits the evidence as a whole.

My work therefore distinguishes three stages: preliminary preparation of the text, subsequent analysis, and the construction of a functional reconstruction. The method does not replace investigation or predetermine its outcome. It seeks to reduce the influence of accumulated interpretations on the starting material and allow inquiry from a more open position.

Why preliminary preparation matters especially for the Bible

In the helicopter experiment, we already knew the object's true nature and could distinguish its real features from later explanations. With the Bible the situation is far more difficult: we do not know the nature of many participants, objects, and phenomena described in its texts. Nevertheless, we use familiar definitions as though they already provided reliable knowledge about those things.

The word “God,” for example, names a central participant in biblical events, but it does not itself tell a researcher what that participant's nature is, what abilities or limitations it has, or how it interacts with the material world. Theological traditions offer answers, but a functional investigation cannot automatically treat those answers as the participant's original characteristics. Otherwise the analysis rests on assumptions that ought first to be examined.

Suppose God is an entity belonging to another reality, capable of interacting with our world only under certain conditions. Unusual forms of appearance, the need for special places or intermediaries, restrictions on contact, and the danger of direct presence could then follow from the nature of interaction between two different environments. Fire, cloud, voice, and other manifestations might acquire a possible functional meaning very different from a conventional theological explanation.

This is one hypothesis within the theory of the Bons, but it must not become a premise of the preliminary preparation. At that stage we do not yet know who or what God is, why particular actions occur, or what accounts for restrictions on contact. The method extracts the described actions, their conditions, and their consequences while leaving the actor's nature unresolved. Only afterward can different models be compared, including the hypothesis of an entity from another reality.

The order of investigation is crucial. Starting with a ready-made definition determines in advance which explanations will be considered admissible. Preparing the material first makes it possible to consider a broader range of causes without declaring any of them proven.

Preliminary cleaning should not, however, be mistaken for proof that every traditional interpretation is wrong. Historians, textual scholars, and researchers of religion have long examined how ancient texts changed, their sources, editorial layers, and cultural contexts. That work is valuable in itself and can provide essential information for functional analysis. What distinguishes my approach is above all its starting question: do not assume that the nature of the described participants and objects has been established merely because their names have acquired accepted meanings.

“What does this image mean?” is not necessarily the same question as “What might originally have been described?” The second question directs the functional reconstruction.

From individual events to processes spanning millennia

Studying the Bible cannot end with reconstructing isolated actions or unusual objects. Its narrative covers immense stretches of time, during which peoples form, rules are established, social institutions arise, forms of organization change, and crises occur. Each event can be studied separately for its historical setting, religious significance, or literary qualities. Theological and scholarly approaches also exist that consider the Bible as an overall composition. Yet another task remains possible: to investigate the narrated sequence as a long-term process in the development of a complex system.

The formation of the chosen people, for instance, involves more than separate covenants, migrations, wars, reigns, and exiles. Across the narrative one can trace changes in internal organization, the emergence of rules and institutions, mechanisms sustaining collective identity, interactions with surrounding peoples, and transformations under crisis. It matters not only why a particular event occurred but also what role it played in the development of the system as a whole.

The interaction of internal and external circuits is especially interesting. Within the people, behavioral rules, forms of organization, ways of transmitting tradition, and mechanisms of stability take shape. Outside are other peoples, states, and political powers that create threats, opportunities, and constraints. Changes in the external environment affect internal structures, while decisions within the system determine how it engages with its surroundings. Studying these processes separately risks missing causal connections visible only over long periods.

Established scientific models of organizational development and complex systems can be used to study such sequences, including the stages of formation, growth, maturity, crisis, and transformation. Resemblance to any one model, however, does not prove that a historical process was planned in advance or directed from outside. The correspondence of events must be tested, alternative explanations considered, and the model's explanatory value assessed.

This is where the separation between preparation and analysis becomes particularly clear. The method of functional residue and anchor anomalies does not automatically discover a people's life cycle or explain why it formed. It prepares descriptions of actions and changes, seeking to reduce interpretative assumptions. Historical, systemic, organizational, and other analyses can then use this material to examine extended processes and their internal and external relationships.

The subject of reconstruction therefore includes not only individual biblical episodes but sequences spanning centuries and millennia. The whole history can be considered as interconnected processes in which the actions of participants have consequences and influence later development. At this scale, an episode may acquire significance that remains invisible when it is treated solely as a self-contained moral parable, historical tradition, or theological image.

From prepared material to reconstruction

Once the biblical material has been prepared, investigation begins as a separate stage. The extracted actions, functions, conditions, and anomalies are compared; their causal links and sequence are examined; and possible explanations are evaluated. Knowledge from history, sociology, organizational theory, psychology, biology, engineering, and other fields can be brought in where it genuinely helps address a specific question.

This approach led me to propose a functional reconstruction of the biblical narrative that differs substantially from familiar interpretations. Within it, biblical gods are considered entities of a different nature, interacting with the material world under certain conditions. Eden appears as a purpose-built engineered environment, while the actions associated with it form part of a process of modifying and preparing humans. The history of the chosen people is analyzed as the prolonged development of a managed system with internal organizational mechanisms and external circuits of interaction.

Later events of the Old and New Testaments, including the activity of Jesus and the Apocalypse, are considered within an overall sequence of actions, changes, and consequences. In this model, biblical episodes cease to be isolated stories and can be studied as parts of longer processes. The unity of the narrative is not itself treated as proof of unified control: the nature of the functional and causal links must show whether that hypothesis is justified.

The resulting reconstruction is an author's hypothesis. It does not establish the existence of the Bons as a scientifically confirmed fact or turn conjectures about biblical objects into historical evidence. Its significance lies in the attempt to study events systematically from a different starting point: not to treat inherited definitions as complete knowledge of reality, but first to isolate analyzable characteristics and only then seek explanations.

The Bible of the Bons: the outcome of the research

This work became the foundation of The Bible of the Bons project. The nonfiction book presents the reconstruction, its arguments, comparisons, and the author's hypotheses. The fiction series imagines how biblical history might have unfolded if the proposed model of events and actors were accepted.

I am not proposing a new religion, nor do I claim to have definitively decoded the Bible. My purpose is to show that we can begin the study of an ancient text with a different question. Before explaining an event, we should try to distinguish information about actions from explanations accumulated through the transmission and interpretation of the story. The prepared material can then be studied not only as individual episodes but as a description of complex processes unfolding over many generations.

The result is an unusual functional reconstruction of biblical history, from the nature of the gods and the structure of Eden to the formation of the chosen people and the events of the Apocalypse. Its conclusions can be tested, criticized, and compared with alternatives. Yet simply being able to ask these questions invites us to look differently at familiar biblical texts.

Believe me, you have never seen the Bible like this before.