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229 the Departure, for it was not Sin alone who “became angry” and, leaving Earth, “went up to heaven.” The extraordinary celestial comings and goings described by Adda-Guppi and Nabuna’id took place while they were in Harran—a significant point because another eyewitness was present in that area at that very time; he was the Prophet Eze- kiel; and he, too, had much to say on the subject. Ezekiel, a priest of Yahweh in Jerusalem, was among the aristocracy and craftsmen who had been exiled, together with King Jehoiachin, after Nebuchadnezzar’s first attack on Jerusalem in 598 B.c.£. They were taken forcefully to north- ern Mesopotamia, settling in the district of the Khabur River, just a short distance away from their ancestral home in Harran. And it was there that Ezekiel’s famous vision of a celestial chariot had occurred. As a trained priest, he too re- corded the place and the date: it was on the fifth day of the fourth month in the fifth year of the exile—594/593 B.c.E.— “when I was among the exiles on the banks of the river Khe- bar, that the heavens opened up and I saw visions of Elohim,” Ezekiel stated at the very beginning of his prophecies; and what he saw, appearing in a whirlwind, flashing lights and surrounded by a radiance, was a divine chariot that could go up and down and sideways, and within it, “upon the likeness of a throne, the semblance of a man”; and he heard a voice addressing him as “Son of Man” and announcing his pro- phetic assignment. The Prophet’s opening statement is usually translated “vi- sions of God.” The term Elohim, which is plural, has been traditionally translated “God” in the singular, even when the Bible itself clearly treats it in the plural, as in “And Elohim said let us fashion the Adam in our image and after our like- ness” (Genesis 1: 26). As readers of my books know, the biblical Adam tale is a rendering of the much more detailed Sumerian creation texts, where it was an Anunnaki team, led by Enki, that used genetic engineering to “fashion” the Adam. The term Elohim, we have shown over and over again, referred to the Anunnaki; and what Ezekiel reported was that he had encountered an Anunnaki celestial craft— near Harran. When the Gods Left Earth