Mauro Biglino (born 1950 in Turin) is an Italian translator and\nauthor whose reading of the Hebrew Bible — strictly literal, stripped of\ntwo millennia of theological interpretation — has made him the most\nwidely read figure of the contemporary reinterpretive tradition in\ncontinental Europe. His authority rests on an unusual credential: before\nhe wrote a single book of his own, Biglino spent years translating the\nHebrew \nMasoretic Text\n into Italian for Edizioni San Paolo, the\nCatholic publishing house, which published seventeen books of the Hebrew\nBible in his renderings within its interlinear Vulgata\nEbraico-Interlineare series. The method that emerged from that\ntranslation desk — set aside the theology, take the words in their\nconcrete sense, and \"pretend that the Bible is simply telling the\ntruth\" — now carries his name; the corpus treats it at full length in\nthe Biglino Method entry. This entry gives the\nbiographical and bibliographical record of the man himself.
\nWithin the contemporary landscape the corpus places Biglino beside\nPaul Wallis as one of the two most consequential\nliving voices of neo-euhemerism — the tradition\nthat reads the gods of religious memory as remembered visitors. The two\nfigures divide the territory between them: Biglino supplies the\ntranslation-desk philology and the Italian mass audience; Wallis, whom\nthe corpus registers as \"the principal Anglophone popularizer of the\nBiglino-adjacent approach,\" carries the reading into English. They\nblurb each other's books and appear together on camera; Biglino's\nstanding endorsement of Wallis reads, \"Though far apart geographically\nwe are spiritually close! We are a good team.\"
\nBiglino was born in 1950 in Turin, where he has remained based\nthroughout his career. His formation was in religious studies and\nclassical languages, and his working life before the public career was\nthat of a professional translator — a background that matters for\nunderstanding both his strengths and the shape of the criticism he\nattracts. Biglino is not an academic biblical scholar and has never\npresented himself as one; his repeated self-description is that of a\ntranslator reporting what the words on the page say.
\nThe foundation of everything that followed was the commission from\nEdizioni San Paolo — the publishing arm of the Society of St. Paul, a\nCatholic religious congregation with substantial Vatican connections —\nto translate books of the Hebrew Bible from the Masoretic Text for the\nVulgata Ebraico-Interlineare, a series of interlinear editions\npresenting the Hebrew text with a word-for-word Italian rendering\nbeneath it. Seventeen books of the Hebrew Bible appeared in Biglino's\ntranslations under the San Paolo imprint.
\nThe interlinear format is the crux of the biography. An interlinear\ntranslator cannot paraphrase, harmonize, or smooth: every Hebrew word\nmust receive its Italian counterpart in sequence, which forces a\nsustained word-by-word confrontation with what the text concretely\nsays. Biglino's account of the experience, given in The Naked Bible,\nis that the work \"brought me into direct contact... with the very\norigins, with the etymology of each individual word. Terms that, time\nafter time, are put back into the context of the stories. Words that\ngave birth to a mosaic that is totally different from what is\ntraditionally told to us.\" It is also on record — and the corpus's\nBiglino Method entry registers the point — that\nthe published San Paolo editions themselves left terms such as\nElohim, kavod, ruach, and the tetragrammaton in transliteration:\nmainstream Catholic biblical publishing conceded, in its own apparatus,\nthat the conventional renderings of these words carry interpretive\nweight the Hebrew does not settle.
\nIn 2010 Biglino published his own first book, Il libro che cambierà\nper sempre le nostre idee sulla Bibbia (\"The book that will forever\nchange our ideas about the Bible\"), setting out in public the readings\nthe translation desk had produced. The relationship with San Paolo\nended after his own books began to appear — a Catholic publisher could\nnot keep on its Hebrew translation team an author arguing in print that\nthe Hebrew Bible does not speak of God. The sequence is worth stating\nprecisely, because it is sometimes told backwards: the credential came\nfirst, the heterodox books second, and the separation followed the\nbooks.
\nThe independent career that followed made Biglino a phenomenon of\nItalian public culture. Il dio alieno della Bibbia (\"The alien god of\nthe Bible\") followed in 2011, Non c'è creazione nella Bibbia (\"There\nis no creation in the Bible\") in 2012, and the stream has continued\nsince — La Bibbia non parla di Dio (2015), La Bibbia non è un libro\nsacro (\"The Bible is not a sacred book\"), and a run of later works,\nincreasingly in collaborative formats with co-authors ranging from the\njournalist Giorgio Cattaneo (La Bibbia nuda / The Naked Bible) to a\nphilosopher of law (La Bibbia non l'ha mai detto). Several titles\nreached the mainstream Italian market through major publishers; his\nlectures and seminars on Hebrew Bible reading fill halls; his YouTube\nand online following is large enough that Italian religious-studies\nscholarship has taken his audience, not just his claims, as an object\nof study. English translations, principally through Uno Editori,\nhave carried the work into the Anglophone market from the late 2010s\nonward — The Bible Is Not a Sacred Book, The Naked Bible (2022),\nand the consolidated Gods of the Bible.
\nThe method is treated at full length in the\nBiglino Method entry; here it needs one\nparagraph. Biglino's three commitments are to work from the original\nHebrew text; to set aside the accumulated interpretation of the\nJewish, Christian, and Islamic exegetical traditions; and to read the\nwords literally, in their concrete sense, unless the text itself\nsignals otherwise. The wager is packaged in his signature formula,\nfacciamo finta che — \"let us pretend that\" the Bible is simply\ntelling the truth — a deliberately provisional framing: Biglino does\nnot assert that the Bible is true, he proposes reading it as if it\nwere and observing what coherent account results. The methodological\nprecedent is Schliemann's literal reading of Homer, which located\nTroy; the same Schliemann-to-Bible program was articulated by Jean\nSendy in 1969, four decades before Biglino's independent formulation,\nand the corpus reads the Sendy-Biglino convergence — two translators,\ntwo languages, two decades apart, same commitments, same principal\nobservations — as itself evidential. Where honesty about a term's\nmeaning is impossible, Biglino's rule is to leave it untranslated:\n\"It's a question of integrity, since we do not know exactly what they\nmean.\"
\nBiglino's principal textual claims, each attributed here to Biglino\nand argued across the works cited below; several are cataloged, with\nthe corpus's own assessments, in the\nlist of etymological readings.
\nBiglino's popular reach in Italy has no equivalent elsewhere in the\ntradition — sustained bestseller status, packed public lectures, and a\nfollowing substantial enough that the phenomenon itself has been\nstudied. The principal academic treatment, published in the Italian\nreligious-studies journal Studi e materiali di storia delle\nreligioni, analyzes the \"fenomeno Biglino\" through the categories of\npaleoastronautics, secularization, religious individualization, and\nquasi-religion — reading his audience as a post-Catholic public that\nhas left the Church but not the Bible, for whom Biglino's translator\npersona offers a way of keeping the text while dropping the theology.\nThe study is cited by Biglino's own co-author, and the corpus takes it\nas the serious sociological registration of his standing: whatever one\nmakes of the readings, the audience is a documented fact.
\nAcademic biblical scholarship, where it has engaged Biglino at all,\nhas rejected his conclusions, and the objections deserve statement in\ntheir own voice. The philological objection: elohim, though plural\nin form, governs singular verbs and adjectives in the overwhelming\nmajority of its references to the God of Israel, and Hebrew grammar\nknows honorific and abstract plurals — so the form alone cannot carry\nthe weight Biglino places on it. The literary objection: strict\nliteralism ignores genre, poetic convention, and the composite,\nredacted character of the text's transmission; reading Ezekiel's\nthrone vision as an eyewitness technical report mistakes what kind of\nwriting it is. The professional objection: Biglino does not publish in\npeer-reviewed venues, does not engage the specialist literature, and\nhis lexical arguments — kavod as flying object, ruach as craft —\noutrun what the comparative-Semitic evidence supports. Italian\nacademic commentary has generally filed his conclusions under\npseudoscience and declined further engagement.
\nBiglino's standing reply is that he is doing translation rather than\ntheology or history — reporting what the words say and inviting anyone\nwith a lexicon to check — and that the burden of the honorific-plural\nconvention is itself an interpretive choice made by the tradition his\nmethod suspends. The corpus's own position, argued in the\nBiglino Method entry, splits the difference: the\ncritiques register legitimate limits of the method applied alone,\nwhile the standoff — scholars dismissing Biglino without engaging his\nspecific observations, Biglino dismissing scholarship wholesale — is\nunhealthy for the interpretive conversation, since several of his\nobservations (the grammatical plurality, the concreteness of the\ntheophany descriptions, the bara question) are ones the academy\ncould productively engage on its own terms.
\nThe standoff had at least one notable interruption. In 2016, before an\naudience of some six hundred, Biglino spent more than four hours on\nstage with a panel drawn from the traditions his method contests: the\nCatholic theologian Ermis Segatti, the Waldensian Hebraist Daniele\nGarrone (a co-author of standard Hebrew dictionaries), the Orthodox\narchbishop Avondios, and Ariel Di Porto, chief rabbi of Turin. They\nexamined his translations in public. None adopted his conclusions; by\nhis interviewer's account the exchange turned up \"nothing that could\nundermine his deductive system based on a literal reading of the Old\nTestament,\" Di Porto confirmed that Judaism carries no doctrine of\noriginal sin, and Garrone allowed that it is unclear where Paul derived\nthe concept. The value of the event, for the corpus, is procedural: it\nis the one occasion on which the direct engagement mainstream\nscholarship otherwise declines took place on the record, with the text\nopen.
\nThe corpus's debt to Biglino is methodological and is stated openly:\nthe practice of reading Hebrew terms directly — Elohim as plural,\nYahweh as a name, kavod, ruach, and nachash kept in\ntransliteration — follows the program Biglino articulated and Sendy\narticulated before him, and the corpus adopts it as necessary but not\nsufficient, integrating it with the precessional framework, the\ncomparative sweep, and the Raëlian source-textual primacy that\nBiglino's own work does not touch.
\nThe convergence-through-independence framing the corpus applies to\nWallis applies to Biglino in modified form. Like Wallis, Biglino\narrived at the plural Elohim, the concrete kavod, and the\ngovernor-Yahweh from the text, without deriving them from the canon —\nand two translators reaching the same readings from the same text is\nworth more evidentially than one. Unlike Wallis, however, Biglino\ndemonstrably knows the Raëlian material: the corpus's source record on\nIl dio alieno della Bibbia notes Raël's texts in the\nbibliography. The independence claim for Biglino is therefore narrower\nand more precise — his readings are argued from the Hebrew, verifiable\nagainst the Hebrew, and stand or fall with the Hebrew, whatever else\nsits on his shelf. Where the canon states its claims as fact, Biglino\nstops deliberately short: he is a self-declared agnostic who presents\nhis conclusions as what the text says, not as what he believes\nhappened, and he draws no doctrine from them. The corpus reads that\nreticence not as a defect but as a division of labor — the translator\nestablishes what the words say; the framework\nargues about what the words record. Biglino's practice also tightened over the years, in a way that bears\non this independence. His first book leaned on Zecharia Sitchin's\nEarth Chronicles as its frame for the Mesopotamian material; the\nlater works quietly drop that scaffolding, re-sourcing the Sumerian and\nAkkadian parallels to academic Assyriology and leaving Sitchin as a\nbibliography entry and an occasional \"famous and controversial\" aside.\nThe drift runs against the usual course in the genre — from the texts\ntoward the mythology of the surrounding literature — and the corpus\nreads it as the method disciplining its own practitioner.
\nThe three-generation lineage —\nSendy (1969), Biglino (2010–), Wallis (2020–) — and its place in the\nbroader tradition is mapped in the\nneo-euhemerism entry and in the Explainers\nThe Archdeacon and the Dragon\nand The Translator's Wager, the\nlatter a close reading of Biglino's whole corpus.
\n", "extra": {"alternative_names":["Mauro Biglino (1950–)","the San Paolo translator","the 'let's pretend it's true' translator"],"category":"Methodology","claim_type":"direct","editorial_pass":"2026-05","entry_type":"biographical","external_links":[{"title":"Mauro Biglino — official site","url":"https://www.maurobiglino.it/"},{"title":"Mauro Biglino — Wikipedia (Italian)","url":"https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauro_Biglino"}],"infobox":{"born":"1950, Turin, Italy","distinguished_from":"Jean Sendy (who articulated the same Schliemann-style program in 1969, apparently unknown to Biglino); Paul Wallis (who popularizes and extends the approach in English rather than duplicating the translation career); Zecharia Sitchin and Erich von Däniken (artifact- and cuneiform-led popularization without Biglino's direct Hebrew engagement)","full_name":"Mauro Biglino","media":"Books, lectures, seminars on Hebrew Bible reading, and a substantial YouTube and online presence; joint appearances with Paul Wallis on The 5th Kind TV","method":"The Biglino Method (treated in its own entry): work from the Hebrew text; set aside two millennia of theological interpretation; read the words in their concrete sense — 'facciamo finta che,' let us pretend that the Bible is simply telling the truth","nationality":"Italian","principal_works":"*Il libro che cambierà per sempre le nostre idee sulla Bibbia* (2010); *Il dio alieno della Bibbia* (2011); *Non c'è creazione nella Bibbia* (2012); *La Bibbia non parla di Dio* (2015); *La Bibbia non è un libro sacro*; *The Naked Bible* (with Giorgio Cattaneo, English 2022); *Gods of the Bible* (English)","prior_career":"Professional translator of the Hebrew Masoretic Text for Edizioni San Paolo (Catholic publisher): seventeen books of the Hebrew Bible published in the interlinear Vulgata Ebraico-Interlineare series","relation_to_corpus":"Fellow-traveler whose method the corpus adopts as necessary but insufficient; unlike Sendy and Wallis he demonstrably knows the Raëlian material (Raël's texts appear in his bibliographies) while himself remaining a self-declared agnostic","signature_readings":"elohim as a plural of concrete individuals; kavod as a heavy object that flies; ruach as something moving through the air; the tetragrammaton as a proper name of unknown meaning, to be left untranslated; bara as separation rather than creation — 'there is no creation in the Bible'","status_in_framework":"Registered beside Paul Wallis as one of the two most consequential living voices of neo-euhemerism; eponym of the Biglino Method; his translation-desk credential is the corpus's standing example of what close engagement with the Hebrew text produces","turning_point":"The publication of his own books from 2010 onward, after which the San Paolo relationship ended and the independent career began","type":"Translator and author; principal contemporary voice of the strict-literal Hebrew reading of the Bible"},"lang":"en","lang_prefix":"","references":[{"id":"biglino-il-libro","locator":"the 2010 point of departure: the Elohim counted as individuals, the kavod, the untranslatable terms","note":"The first independent book — the one that ended the San Paolo relationship and began the public career."},{"id":"il-dio-alieno-della-bibbia-the-ruach-chapter-the-cargo-cult-reading-of-the-name-","locator":"the ruach chapter; the reading of the name YHWH; the agnostic self-declaration; Raël's texts in the bibliography","note":"The second independent book (2011), and the corpus's evidence that Biglino knows the Raëlian material."},{"author":"Mauro Biglino","date":"2012","title":"Non c'è creazione nella Bibbia: La Genesi ci racconta un'altra storia"},{"id":"biglino-bibbia-non-parla","note":"The mainstream-published mid-career statement (2015): the Bible does not talk about God."},{"id":"la-bibbia-non-un-libro-sacro-il-grande-inganno-the-redaction-history-of-the-colo","locator":"the redaction history of the 'colossal deception'; Deuteronomy 32:8–9; the kavod 'viewable by appointment'; the fourteen 'non è vero che' negations","note":"The consolidated negative case: what the Bible, on Biglino's reading, is not."},{"id":"the-bible-is-not-a-sacred-book","note":"The English edition, part of the Uno Editori translation program that carried Biglino into the Anglophone market."},{"id":"la-bibbia-non-l-ha-mai-detto-the-collaboration-with-a-philosopher-of-law-tselem-","locator":"tselem and DNA; the twenty occurrences of bara; Yahweh as tribal governor; the secularist stakes","note":"The collaboration with a philosopher of law — representative of Biglino's late-career co-authored format."},{"id":"the-naked-bible","locator":"the explicit naming of the method: 'The Biglino method works like this: pretend that the Bible is simply telling the truth'","note":"The collaborative book with Giorgio Cattaneo (English edition 2022) — the consolidated methodological statement and the principal Anglophone entry point."},{"id":"gods-of-the-bible-a-new-interpretation-of-the-bible-reveals-the-oldest-secret-in","locator":"the four 'let us pretend' commitments; the counting of the Elohim; kavod, ruach, tselem, olam; Psalm 82","note":"The consolidated English statement of the whole argument."},{"id":"tra-paleoastronautica-secolarizzazione-individualizzazione-religiosa-e-quasi-rel","locator":"Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 82/2, pp. 952–975","note":"The principal academic study of Biglino's Italian reception — the 'fenomeno Biglino' read through secularization and quasi-religion; cited by Biglino's own co-author."},{"id":"why-the-verb-bara-does-not-mean-to-create-in-genesis-1-1-2-4a-journal-for-the-st","note":"The mainstream proposal — contested but serious, from within peer-reviewed Hebrew Bible scholarship — that runs parallel to Biglino's 'no creation' argument."},{"id":"those-gods-who-made-heaven-and-earth","note":"Sendy's 1969 articulation of the same literal-reading program, four decades before Biglino's independent formulation — the genealogy is treated in the Biglino Method entry."},{"id":"escaping-from-eden","note":"Wallis's first Eden Series volume — the Anglophone extension of the Biglino-adjacent approach."}],"same_as":["https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16735538","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauro_Biglino","https://viaf.org/viaf/305288457"],"see_also":[{"description":"The corpus's close reading of Biglino's whole corpus — the bedrock/live-debate/leaps audit of the method and the convergence-and-divergence map with the canon.","path":"articles/the-translators-wager","title":"The Translator's Wager"},{"description":"The strict-literal hermeneutic named after him — three commitments and the 'facciamo finta che' wager; the corpus's full methodological treatment.","path":"wiki/biglino-method","title":"Biglino Method"},{"description":"The umbrella tradition — gods as remembered visitors — in which the corpus places Sendy, Biglino, Wallis, and itself.","path":"wiki/neo-euhemerism","title":"Neo-euhemerism"},{"description":"The 'principal Anglophone popularizer of the Biglino-adjacent approach'; the two blurb each other's books and appear together on camera.","path":"wiki/paul-wallis","title":"Paul Wallis"},{"description":"The grammatical plural whose restoration is the foundation of Biglino's whole argument.","path":"wiki/elohim","title":"Elohim"},{"description":"The figure Biglino reads as one governor among the Elohim, assigned the small tribal allotment of Jacob.","path":"wiki/yahweh","title":"Yahweh"},{"description":"The Masoretic Text Biglino spent his professional career translating for a Catholic publisher.","path":"wiki/hebrew-bible","title":"Hebrew Bible"},{"description":"The multiple-divine-beings content — Psalm 82, Deuteronomy 32:8–9 — on which Biglino, the corpus, and mainstream divine-council scholarship all draw.","path":"wiki/plurality-of-gods","title":"Plurality of gods"},{"description":"The corpus's catalog of philological readings, many of which carry Biglino's fingerprints.","path":"wiki/list-of-etymological-readings","title":"List of etymological readings"},{"description":"The book at the center of the 'no creation' argument — bara as separation and reorganization rather than creation from nothing.","path":"wiki/genesis","title":"Genesis"},{"description":"The broader tradition, within which Biglino's text-led philology is the methodologically tightest strand.","path":"wiki/ancient-astronaut-hypothesis","title":"Ancient astronaut hypothesis"},{"description":"The canon's source figure, whose texts appear in Biglino's bibliographies — a rarity in the genre.","path":"wiki/rael","title":"Raël"}],"timeline":["age-of-aquarius"]} }, "links": { "self": "/v1/wiki/mauro-biglino/", "canonical_html": "https://www.wheelofheaven.world/wiki/mauro-biglino/", "index": "/v1/wiki/", "schema": "/v1/schema/wiki-entry/", "related": [{"slug": "the-translators-wager", "title": "The Translator's Wager", "kind": "Article", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/articles/the-translators-wager/" },{"slug": "biglino-method", "title": "Biglino Method", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/biglino-method/" },{"slug": "neo-euhemerism", "title": "Neo-euhemerism", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/neo-euhemerism/" },{"slug": "paul-wallis", "title": "Paul Wallis", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/paul-wallis/" },{"slug": "elohim", "title": "Elohim", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/elohim/" },{"slug": "yahweh", "title": "Yahweh", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/yahweh/" },{"slug": "hebrew-bible", "title": "Hebrew Bible", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/hebrew-bible/" },{"slug": "plurality-of-gods", "title": "Plurality of gods", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/plurality-of-gods/" },{"slug": "list-of-etymological-readings", "title": "List of etymological readings", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/list-of-etymological-readings/" },{"slug": "genesis", "title": "Genesis", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/genesis/" },{"slug": "ancient-astronaut-hypothesis", "title": "Ancient astronaut hypothesis", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/ancient-astronaut-hypothesis/" },{"slug": "rael", "title": "Raël", "kind": "WikiEntry", "type": "see_also", "url": "/v1/wiki/rael/" }] } }