Episode 189
"The Unseen Realm" Part 1
In this episode of Ryan and Brian’s Bible Bistro, the hosts dive into The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser, focusing on Old Testament themes. Heiser’s “Deuteronomy 32 worldview” explores a divine council of spiritual beings (Elohim) surrounding God, distinct from polytheism. Key passages like Psalm 82:1, Genesis 6:1-4, and Deuteronomy 32:8 highlight rebellions (Fall, Nephilim, Tower of Babel) and cosmic geography, where Israel’s land is uniquely tied to Yahweh. Naaman’s request for Israelite soil (2 Kings 5) underscores this. Heiser’s framework, rooted in ancient context, clarifies “weird” texts but requires caution due to speculative elements. Part 2 will cover New Testament applications.
Overview of The Unseen Realm
- Core Thesis: Heiser proposes a “Deuteronomy 32 worldview,” emphasizing a divine council of spiritual beings (Elohim) that God interacts with, distinct from polytheism.
- Heiser’s Background: His interest sparked as a PhD student when reading Psalm 82:1, which mentions God judging “among the gods” (Elohim, a plural Hebrew term).
- Writing Style: Heiser leans into “weird” or overlooked passages (e.g., Genesis 6:1-4), offering fresh interpretations grounded in biblical languages and ancient Near Eastern context.
- Audience Appeal: Engages readers unfamiliar with scholarly study through accessible writing, YouTube presence, and podcasts.
Key Old Testament Concepts Discussed
- The Divine Council (Psalm 82:1)
- Text: “God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the gods” (Elohim).
- Explanation: Elohim can mean God or spiritual beings, depending on context. Heiser argues this passage depicts God surrounded by a council of spiritual beings (not gods in a polytheistic sense).
- Key Idea: God is unique, but other spiritual beings exist, serving advisory roles, not as equals. Heiser emphasizes, “There is no Elohim like Yahweh.”
- Deuteronomy 32 Worldview (Deuteronomy 32:8)
- Text: “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance… he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of God” (Dead Sea Scrolls/Septuagint reading).
- Context: Refers to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), where God divided nations and assigned spiritual beings (“sons of God”) to oversee them.
- Implications: These beings rebelled, leading to judgment (Psalm 82). This explains why nations worshipped other gods, tied to spiritual rebellion.
- Textual Note: The Masoretic Text reads “sons of Israel,” but earlier texts (Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint) support “sons of God,” a more difficult but likely original reading.
- Three Rebellions in Genesis
- Fall (Genesis 3): The serpent, a rebellious spiritual being, deceives humanity, opposing God’s plan for humans to rule the earth.
- Sons of God and Nephilim (Genesis 6:1-4): Spiritual beings (“sons of God”) intermarry with human women, producing Nephilim (giants), leading to increased wickedness and the flood.
- Tower of Babel (Genesis 11): Humanity rebels by building a ziggurat to reach the heavens, defying God’s command to spread out. God divides nations and assigns spiritual beings (Deuteronomy 32:8).
- Cosmic Geography
- Concept: The land of Israel is uniquely tied to Yahweh’s presence, distinct from other nations under rebellious spiritual beings.
- Example: Naaman’s Story (2 Kings 5:14-17):
- Naaman, a Syrian general, is healed of leprosy by dipping in the Jordan River and requests Israelite soil to worship Yahweh.
- Heiser interprets this as Naaman believing Israel’s land is spiritually significant for worshipping the true God.
- Mindset: Ancient readers saw the spiritual and physical realms as interconnected, unlike modern insulated views.
- Spiritual Beings and Nations
- Daniel 10:12-14: A spiritual being is delayed by the “prince of Persia” (a rebellious spiritual being), requiring Michael’s intervention.
- Job 1:6: The “sons of God” (not “angels” in Hebrew) present themselves before God, with Satan (the adversary) among them.
- Terminology Note: Heiser critiques translating “sons of God” as “angels” (malak = messenger), as it obscures their distinct roles.
- Stars as Spiritual Beings (Job 38:4-7)
- Text: Morning stars and “angels” (sons of God) rejoice as God creates the earth.
- Interpretation: Stars symbolize spiritual beings, present as witnesses to creation, not active participants.
- Cultural Context: Ancient Israelites viewed stars as spiritual entities, a perspective Heiser encourages modern readers to adopt.
- Angel of Yahweh and Two Powers
- Concept: The “angel of the Lord” (e.g., in Abraham’s story) may represent God physically, distinct from Yahweh yet interacting with Him.
- Two Powers Theology: Heiser suggests this was an accepted Jewish idea until post-New Testament, when it was rejected due to Christian Trinitarianism.
- Implication: Lays groundwork for New Testament Trinitarian concepts without reading the Trinity back into the Old Testament.
Additional Notes
- Mountains in Heiser’s Framework:
- Mountains (e.g., Bashan) are significant as places to meet God or as strongholds of spiritual evil (tied to Ugaritic texts).
- The “heights of the north” symbolize enemy origins, both physically (Assyria, Babylon) and spiritually.
- Use of 1 Enoch: Heiser gives credibility to 1 Enoch’s angelology, seeing it as aligning with his divine council framework (to be explored further in Part 2).
- Ugaritic Texts: Heiser uses Canaanite religious texts to illuminate Old Testament contexts, particularly spiritual beings and divine councils.
Discussion Points
- Explanatory Power: Heiser’s framework clarifies “weird” passages (e.g., Genesis 6, Naaman’s dirt) by rooting them in ancient worldviews.
- Speculative Elements: Some interpretations (e.g., assigning spiritual beings to nations) are speculative, requiring caution when building further arguments.
- Orthodoxy: Heiser’s views are considered orthodox by Old Testament scholars, not denying core doctrines like God’s uniqueness or Jesus’ deity.
- Critique: Some scholars note Heiser’s confidence in speculative ideas, suggesting a more contingent approach to certain claims.
Resources and Links
- Book: Purchase The Unseen Realm via the podcast’s bookstore at thebiblebeeshow.com (supports the show with a small Amazon commission).
- Follow the Show:
- Socials: The Bible Bistro on Facebook and Instagram
- Apple Podcasts: Subscribe and leave a review
- Next Episode: Part 2 will explore Heiser’s New Testament applications, including spiritual beings, stars, and Trinitarian implications.
Stay curious, keep exploring, and join us at the Bible Bistro next week!
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Welcome back to Ryan and Brian's Bible Bistro.
Speaker B:I'm Ryan and that's Brian.
Speaker B:Say hi, Brian.
Speaker A:Hi, I'm Brian.
Speaker B:This is the Bible Bistro, a podcast all about the Bible theology and all things related to the Christian faith.
Speaker B:Pertaining.
Speaker B:Related.
Speaker B:We don't care.
Speaker B:I'm not.
Speaker B:I don't care.
Speaker B:You care.
Speaker B:Brian cares.
Speaker A:Words matter.
Speaker B:They do.
Speaker B:You know what?
Speaker B:They do, Brian.
Speaker A:And that's the subject of what we're talking about.
Speaker B:We're talking about words.
Speaker B:We're talking about words today.
Speaker A:We're using words to.
Speaker A:To talk about words.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, we appreciate you, you know, taking a listen.
Speaker B:We've been off here for a couple weeks.
Speaker B:You've been busy.
Speaker B:I've been busy, yeah.
Speaker B:It's just school starting up for me again.
Speaker B:And so we're back in the throes.
Speaker A:Of reading on for class, too.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, which kind of leads us to today, because you got it assigned.
Speaker B:You were given a book to read.
Speaker B:And I was like, I'll read it with you so we can have some conversations.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And we are both like, I knew the premise of the book, but I'd never read it myself.
Speaker B:And so we're having some conversation.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's the Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser.
Speaker A:And it's actually one of these books that makes the rounds.
Speaker A:And I think people become interested in.
Speaker A:He makes them very different kind of arguments and some shocking kind of things, and the people who really dig it, dig it, you know, and so.
Speaker A:So you hear his name come up from time to time.
Speaker A:Well, you know what I'm saying, like, yeah, he makes some really interesting arguments.
Speaker A:And we're going to talk about.
Speaker A:We thought we'd actually do two episodes on this.
Speaker A:We're Part one, we're going to focus primarily on the Old Testament.
Speaker A:Part two, on the New Testament.
Speaker A:What he says about it's a big book, about 417 pages, something like that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's not something you just pick up and right through.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:But it was one of these.
Speaker A:We kept texting each other, hey, where are you at?
Speaker A:Have you gotten to this part yet?
Speaker A:And we really found it interesting, found some things to talk about.
Speaker A:So let me just give you a little background for it.
Speaker A:This book was put out 10 years ago.
Speaker A:The 10th anniversary edition is just going to be put out later this summer.
Speaker A:And one of the interesting things about this book is when Heiser put it out about every third page, he says, there's not enough room to talk about this.
Speaker A:So you can go to my companion website and find this.
Speaker A:And he does have this website site out there that has lots of supplementary information, as I understand this 10th anniversary edition of the Unseen Realm, that's the title of the book.
Speaker A:The Unseen Realm is going to bring a lot of those notes into the text itself.
Speaker A:Logos Software.
Speaker A:Heiser worked for Logos for a long time, several years.
Speaker A:He did pass away just a little over two years ago.
Speaker A:Passed away just not long after his 60th birthday from.
Speaker A:I think it was pancreatic cancer, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker A:And was that okay?
Speaker A:And, and so I put that in the notes.
Speaker A:I said, I thought, oh, I meant to check that.
Speaker A:I better be careful.
Speaker A:So if you can confirm that.
Speaker B:Yes, I can.
Speaker A:But like I said, it's kind of engaged people who aren't even necessarily that familiar with scholarly study.
Speaker A:He writes in an interesting manner.
Speaker A:He really kind of draws in a lot of things.
Speaker A:And he asked the kind of questions, as we've talked about before, that people really interested in some of those really strange passages.
Speaker A:In fact, we'll talk today a little bit about that.
Speaker A:You know, there's one passage we get asked about probably more than any other.
Speaker A:It's Genesis 6, the first four verses of Genesis 6.
Speaker A:And, and Heiser tells you what it means.
Speaker A:You know, he's.
Speaker A:He's really into those kind of things.
Speaker A:And, and I heard him described on another podcast.
Speaker A:They said those passages that we tend to kind of gloss over, he leans into.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And he really spends a lot of time in him.
Speaker A:So he's also had a presence on YouTube.
Speaker A:He had a couple of podcasts that he did on different kinds of subjects.
Speaker A:And so.
Speaker A:So he's engaged a different kind of audience than you typically see in your scout.
Speaker A:More scholarly.
Speaker A:But, I mean, he really knew his stuff.
Speaker A:We're going to see that he knew.
Speaker A:Knew a lot with biblical languages.
Speaker A:He was an Old Testament scholar, but he was very familiar with the other Semitic languages, with Greek, and makes a lot of arguments from that.
Speaker A:So today, talking about the Old Testament, when Heiser begins his book, he really talks about kind of what got him into this line of study.
Speaker A:And he was already a PhD student.
Speaker A:He was studying an Old Testament passage.
Speaker A:The way he describes it, he was in church one day and one of his fellow PhD students handed him a Bible and said, hey, read this verse and I'll go ahead and you read it.
Speaker A:Psalm 82:1, if you want to.
Speaker A:If you want to read that.
Speaker B:Yeah, so it's.
Speaker B:Let me, let me pull it up here on another way.
Speaker A:Oh, sorry.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:No, that's that's all right.
Speaker A:I have it.
Speaker A:It's in the notes too, if you want to look there.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So God presides in the great assembly.
Speaker B:He renders judgment among the gods.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And so Heiser read that, of course, with his familiar Hebrew, he realized that the word God there.
Speaker A:God presides in the great assembly.
Speaker A:And don't let me forget.
Speaker A:I want to come back and talk about that.
Speaker A:But then he renders judgment among the gods.
Speaker A:He recognizes in Hebrew, that's the same word.
Speaker A:And I do have to explain a little bit here.
Speaker A:The word for that we translate God in the Old Testament is Elohim.
Speaker A:And anytime you have a Hebrew word with that em ending, that's a masculine plural ending.
Speaker A:And so there is no.
Speaker A:Well, it's not typically a singular form of God.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:Elohim is the way that it's often rendered.
Speaker A:And you have to look at the context in order to decide, is this talking about God or is it talking about gods?
Speaker A:Because it's naturally plural.
Speaker A:There are some other words in Hebrew like that.
Speaker A:You see this sometimes in the King James language.
Speaker A:For example, the word waters or the word heavens are always in the plural in Hebrew.
Speaker A:So it's just a feature of the language.
Speaker A:But in this passage, Psalm 82, God presides over in the great assembly and judges the gods.
Speaker A:And he's like, well, that really kind of freaked him out.
Speaker A:So he really started to study this.
Speaker A:And so what he proposes, and one of the main parts of his kind of understanding of scripture is the idea of the divine council.
Speaker A:And this is not an unusual feature.
Speaker A:You see other Old Testament scholars writing in this area and thinking about this area, but it's the idea that there are these places in scripture where God seems to be kind of on his throne and he's surrounded by these other spiritual beings is the.
Speaker A:Is kind of the term I've decided to use today for this.
Speaker A:There.
Speaker A:Heiser uses different terms to talk about this.
Speaker A:This divine council, but these are other spiritual beings that surround God.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And he kind of sometimes interacts with them and talks to them about judgments and these kind of things.
Speaker A:Now, you know, Heiser's clear this is not polytheism.
Speaker A:You know, that he's not proposing that these are other gods.
Speaker A:And in fact, he says Elohim probably refers more to their.
Speaker A:The fact that they are spiritual in nature, that, you know, maybe God's is not even a good translation for them.
Speaker A:But this idea that divine council is where he begins.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, and I.
Speaker B:I can't Remember if I heard this on podcast or somewhere else, but it was the kind of.
Speaker B:The concept that.
Speaker B:That Heiser takes is like, God is not the only Elohim spiritual being, but there is no Elohim like God.
Speaker A:Like God, right?
Speaker A:He is.
Speaker A:He is in a different category all his own.
Speaker A:He is still the Creator God, the way that we would understand him to be.
Speaker B:And that's, you know, as we think about that sometimes, you know, there's probably some folks out there right now that are already going like, whoa, I don't know about this, but we already.
Speaker B:We do believe in spiritual beings, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:And we believe in angels and demons, like that these are spiritual beings that.
Speaker B:Now, Heiser would say they have specific roles, you know, that's why they're called certain things.
Speaker A:But that we'll come back and talk.
Speaker B:About, we'll come back to that.
Speaker B:But that there is.
Speaker B:There is a.
Speaker B:This is why he calls it the Unseen Realm.
Speaker B:There's a spiritual reality and that there is a.
Speaker B:There's a group of spiritual beings that are interacting at least with God.
Speaker A:Now, Heiser takes this and kind of makes it the central part of the narrative of Scripture, though, really, that there's this battle that's going on between the spiritual forces of darkness and, you know, those who are faith, those spiritual beings, those Elohim, let's say, that are.
Speaker A:That are faithful to God.
Speaker A:And so we'll say a bit more about this.
Speaker A:So one of the things he talks about, he used this language of God's spiritual or heavenly family, that he created this divine council.
Speaker A:And he would see this as before the creation of the earth and the creation account we read about in Genesis 1, that there was already this divine counsel that God had created as a spiritual family to.
Speaker A:How do I say this?
Speaker A:To rule with him over the spiritual realm or the heavenly realm.
Speaker A:Let's use that term.
Speaker A:And then in the creation of the earth, God's idea is to create humanity, to create human beings to be his earthly family.
Speaker A:So he's got a heavenly family and an earthly family.
Speaker A:And in the same way.
Speaker A:And again, there's lots of scriptures that this brings to your mind.
Speaker A:But he created humanity then, according to Heiser's point of view, in order to rule over.
Speaker A:Which is what we see in the.
Speaker A:In the creation account, to rule over the earth.
Speaker A:So the divine council rules with God over the heavenly realms, and humans are created in order to rule over the earth.
Speaker A:And this is where he understands some problems begin, because he would say that these spiritual beings have free will in the same way that human beings have the will to either accept God or reject him, that these spiritual beings do as well.
Speaker A:And even the idea of creating humanity apparently caused some of them to rebel against God, is the way that he would understand this.
Speaker A:So that's kind of the first part.
Speaker A:That kind of is how he got interested in this whole area.
Speaker A:But then there's another passage, Deuteronomy 32.
Speaker A:Eight, that becomes very important to Heiser.
Speaker A:And in fact, several times in his book he calls this the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.
Speaker A:So I'm going to read Deuteronomy 32.
Speaker A:Eight for you and then maybe you want to, you want to make a comment about it.
Speaker A:It says when the Most High, talking about God, when the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples.
Speaker A:And that word peoples, by the way.
Speaker A:Well, I won't say too much about it, but he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number.
Speaker A:And I'm going to read this according to the niv, according to the number of the sons of Israel.
Speaker A:So let me go back and read that whole thing and then I'm going to come back and say something else.
Speaker A:When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the numbers, number of the sons of Israel.
Speaker A:Now, if you look in your niv, I read that out of the niv.
Speaker A:The ESV includes this reading I'm getting ready to give you.
Speaker A:You'll have a footnote at that point that says both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint agree that the reading is sons of God, not sons of Israel, but sons of God.
Speaker A:And the Masoretic text, the Hebrew text we have, you got to remember, is a pretty late text.
Speaker A:The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint both would be based on earlier text types.
Speaker A:So a lot of times when they agree, when the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint agree against the Masoretic text, that's the reading that we consider to be the more accurate.
Speaker A:So according to the number of the sons of God.
Speaker A:And his idea is the sons of God is a way to refer to this divine council.
Speaker A:Now, did you want to say what's your thoughts on this, on this passage?
Speaker A:You want to say more about how he understands it?
Speaker B:Yeah, Well, I mean, he, he sees this as according to the sons of God.
Speaker B:So that the term sons of God is always, it seems to be in the Old Testament, referring to Spiritual being.
Speaker B:Like, it's all, it's kind of what he sees as among the.
Speaker B:So when he sees back in Psalm 82:1among the gods that we're seeing here, again, when he says According in Deuteronomy 32, 8, according to the sons of God, it's referring to those spiritual.
Speaker B:Spiritual beings.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I thought was interesting, you know, this.
Speaker B:I'm not a Hebrew textual critic person.
Speaker B:I know you, you would have better idea of that.
Speaker B:But that typically when we see those disagreements and I think it applies the same way to Greek as it does to Hebrew.
Speaker B:Typically, the, the more difficult reading.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Is probably the one that is the more accurate.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I, a podcast I'd listen to is like, you know, you could see someone reading Sons of God and a scribe kind of going like, I'm not sure what we should do with this.
Speaker B:And it says makes it Sons of Israel.
Speaker B:You know, like it's easier to explain Sons of Israel than it is Sons of God.
Speaker B:But that those earliest texts that we, that we have seem to reference as sons of God.
Speaker B:And that's why, you know, again, ESV has it as Sons of God.
Speaker B:There are other translations that have it as Sons of God or yeah, Sons of God, but then their NIV uses Sons of Israel.
Speaker B:So it's, it's kind of.
Speaker B:There's something happening in the text here that happened along the way.
Speaker A:So Deuteronomy 32, that becomes very important for him.
Speaker A:And he calls, like I said, he calls his view kind of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.
Speaker A:He would say, and I was going to mention this, Paul uses this reference to this verse.
Speaker A:He doesn't quote it per se, but he alludes to this verse in Deuteronomy 32.
Speaker A:8 When he's talking on the Areopagus, when he's talking to the, the men of Athens.
Speaker A:And he says there this idea that God set the boundaries in place.
Speaker A:Now, Heiser, it's not just this, you know, he calls the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, but he sees Deuteronomy 32 here referring to an earlier event.
Speaker A:He understands this in a reference to the Tower of Babel and, and when God divided up the languages and the.
Speaker A:The nation set them in place in that situation.
Speaker A:But then according to the sons of God, he would say that God essentially assigned different members of this divine council to oversee different nations, different peoples.
Speaker A:And so that's that.
Speaker A:And you know, I'll go ahead and give away the ending.
Speaker A:This becomes when they fail the judgment we see in the Psalm 82, when they fail to continue to do what God had called them to do, then he calls them to judgment.
Speaker A:And so we see these, these divine members of the divine council not leading these people in accordance with God.
Speaker A:And there, there's some question even was this a judgment on the nations because of what they were doing in the Tower of Babel that God gave them these, these gods or these spiritual beings.
Speaker B:Like each, each nation that's been separated from each other in the, in the Genesis 11 Tower of Babel.
Speaker B:Babel, Babel event are given a spiritual being is assigned to them in that region.
Speaker A:So when we see in the ancient world and in the Old Testament text, these different nations worshiping various gods, then this is where that comes from.
Speaker A:It's a speculative.
Speaker A:This is where you begin to see Heiser.
Speaker A:One of the things you and I kept saying is there's lots of explanatory power in this, in his understanding.
Speaker A:And we're going to see later on there's even some things that it helps us understand, but it also is relatively speculative.
Speaker A:And I think that's where we need to maybe be a little bit, take a little bit more caution.
Speaker A:When you take something speculative and then you build other stuff on top of it, that's when you get kind of into shaky ground.
Speaker A:But let me talk a little bit more about the Tower of Babel.
Speaker A:Heiser believes that there are three stages in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis that are rebellions against God.
Speaker A:And this is where Genesis 6 comes into it.
Speaker A:So the first one, the first rebellion against God that we see in Genesis is the, is the fall.
Speaker A:That's Genesis chapter three, the typical fall that we would understand.
Speaker A:He would understand the serpent there to be one of these divine beings or these, I keep using the time term divine.
Speaker A:I really want to call them spiritual beings.
Speaker A:One of these spiritual beings that was.
Speaker A:That didn't like the idea of humans ruling over the Earth.
Speaker A:And so he comes and he takes this role of questioning God, questioning Yahweh God, and, and so this serpent then.
Speaker A:And, and Heiser brings in lots of other ancient literature that talks about the idea of the serpent, that it's, it's really not a physical, it's not like a snake crawling around on the ground, but it is the appearance of a, of a spiritual being to Adam and Eve, which makes some sense, I think, in that, in that surprise when, when.
Speaker B:We think of a snake talking to.
Speaker A:Her, snake starts talking to her.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:That's questions.
Speaker A:You're, you're left with there.
Speaker A:So I thought.
Speaker A:I thought that was an interesting idea.
Speaker A:And again, he's.
Speaker A:He's very creative and lots of really interesting ideas.
Speaker A:Second, rebellion is.
Speaker A:Is that in the Flood narrative?
Speaker A:That's Genesis, chapter six.
Speaker A:Go ahead and read this.
Speaker A:We know these passages well, but go ahead and read verses one through four for me, if you don't mind, Ryan.
Speaker A:And there's lots of questions about.
Speaker A:About this passage.
Speaker A:Obviously, we've talked about how Enoch answers some of these questions and others.
Speaker A:You know, this is something people have speculated about for a long time.
Speaker A:Well, here's.
Speaker A:Here's where.
Speaker A:Or understands it.
Speaker B:So, yeah, when human beings began to increase in number on the Earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful and they married any of them they chose.
Speaker B:Then the Lord said, my spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal.
Speaker B:Their days will be 120 years.
Speaker B:The Nephilim were on the earth in those days.
Speaker B:And also afterward, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by him, they were the heroes of old men of renown.
Speaker A:So this idea of sons of God, we've already kind of given away the fact that Heiser always understands this to be divine beings.
Speaker A:So there's nothing hidden here.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:He understands this to be.
Speaker A:And of course, there's problems with this view, and not everybody has this view, but this idea that the sons of God are these spiritual beings that essentially had sexual relations with daughters of men.
Speaker A:And these Nephilim are giants that are.
Speaker A:That are born to or from this union, I should say the sons of God, these spiritual beings and the daughters of men, and this results in wickedness increasing on the earth and of course, results in the Flood.
Speaker A:So that whole idea is how he would explain, or he would explain that to be a rebellion of these sons of God.
Speaker A:In other words, they're not maintaining their proper role, but they are essentially intermarrying between the spiritual family of God and the earthly family of God.
Speaker A:And this is another rebellion that takes place.
Speaker A:So there's a lot that he goes back to in order to try to explain this.
Speaker A:And I'll say more about that later.
Speaker A:The third one is the Tower of Babel, then.
Speaker A:And Genesis 11, 8, 9, it talks about this idea that they created a tower.
Speaker A:And I'll go ahead and say mountains for Heiser are very important.
Speaker A:They're seen as places where you go and meet with God.
Speaker A:And he would understand the Tower of Babel to be one of these Ziggurats that we have in the Middle east, which is man made mountains, basically.
Speaker A:In other words, what the people were trying to do is instead of doing what God had mandated them to do, which was to spread out and to populate the earth and to take essentially the idea of take Eden and spread it out throughout the entire Earth, they were instead in this, rebelling against God's command and were trying to keep themselves together, which is what they say.
Speaker A:And so this idea of the tower that they are building being essentially trying to reach to the heavens.
Speaker A:And that's why the mountains are seen as places where you meet God, because, you know, they're high places, they're.
Speaker A:They're toward the heavens.
Speaker A:And so, so he understands then taking Deuteronomy 32, this idea that the division of the peoples then is.
Speaker A:Is assigned.
Speaker A:They're assigned these different spiritual beings.
Speaker A:That's what he understands.
Speaker A:Deuteronomy 32, the sons of.
Speaker A:Of God, according to the number of sons of God to be in reference to.
Speaker A:And here's another part of this that he brings in is Genesis chapter 10 gives us a table of nations, if you've ever read that.
Speaker A:It talks about where all the nations come from.
Speaker A:And there are 70 nations in number.
Speaker A:So that becomes a significant point in Heiser's overall construction in understanding all this.
Speaker A:So that's kind of how that Deuteronomy 32 worldview works in.
Speaker A:As he says, this is, this is what happened.
Speaker A:So all this stuff about Israel and the nations, Right.
Speaker A:All these nations that are surrounding and the.
Speaker A:And the different Old Testament language that talk about the nations coming up against Israel and all this is, you know, that's the, that's the seen part of it, the unseen part of it is this spiritual battle that's going on between the sons of God who rebelled against God and those who are faithful to him.
Speaker A:So thoughts on that so far?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, and this is the narrative that, you know, that as Joshua is leading the conquest.
Speaker B:Why.
Speaker B:And we're going to talk about a little bit about the land itself here in just a little bit.
Speaker B:But why we get this narrative, Heiser sees us, the narrative of really cleansing the land and getting everyone out of it is so important.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because this is God's establishing a physical place here that connects to the spiritual realm as well.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And he even mentions this group called the Anakim, which he thinks are related to these giants, the Nephilim that we read about.
Speaker A:And the places that he says, you really need to get rid of these people.
Speaker A:The Anakim are mentioned in those places.
Speaker A:And so he says, yeah, so chapter 18, then he calls cosmic geography.
Speaker A:And there were some things in there that really intrigued you.
Speaker A:I know, but it goes along with this idea that the nations essentially are turned over to these spiritual beings.
Speaker A:But Israel, and we're talking about physical.
Speaker A:You know, the land of Israel is this place that God reserves for a special place for his people.
Speaker A:And his presence is mediated there in a different kind of way than it is in other places.
Speaker A:So again, all these surrounding nations worship their gods, but Yahweh is the one, is the God of Israel.
Speaker A:And so we see.
Speaker A:We see this connected in this way.
Speaker A:And there's lots of different passages he brings in.
Speaker A:You were going to talk about one, I think, that he mentioned specifically, partly.
Speaker B:For me, the story that I was like, oh, gosh, this really kind of made me catch my breath here a little bit, is talking about the story of Naaman, who was a general for foreign army at one point.
Speaker A:Syria.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Syrian army.
Speaker B:Yes, Syrian army.
Speaker B:And who's diagnosed with leprosy.
Speaker B:And he comes to.
Speaker B:Sends some servants, I believe, to Elijah and says, you know, what must I do to be.
Speaker B:To be healed?
Speaker B:He wants to be healed.
Speaker B:And he's told, come to the Jordan river and dip yourself in the Jordan River.
Speaker B:I think it's seven times, right?
Speaker B:And there's this whole thing of, like, why do I need to come to the Jordan River?
Speaker B:This whole narrative, like, number one, it's dirty.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Don't I have superior rivers here in Syria?
Speaker A:The far par is a much better river.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Why can't I just do it here?
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And they're like, no, you need to come to this river.
Speaker B:So story is naming goes, washes, and the leprosy falls off of him.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker B:And I have to say, like, this is part of the story that, you know, I've.
Speaker B:I know I've read this, but I've never really spent too much time on it.
Speaker B:And I'm gonna.
Speaker B:I'm gonna pick it up here.
Speaker B:This is second Kings 5, chapter 14.
Speaker B:And I'll put some emphasis on the thing that really got me.
Speaker B:So I'm gonna start with 14, and we're gonna read through 17.
Speaker B:So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times.
Speaker B:That's Naaman, as the man of God had told him.
Speaker B:And his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
Speaker B:Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God.
Speaker B:He stood before him and said, now I know there is no God in all the world.
Speaker B:Except in Israel.
Speaker B:So please accept a gift from your servant.
Speaker B:The prophet answered, as surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.
Speaker B:And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.
Speaker B:If you will not, said Naaman, please let me, your servant, be given as much earth dirt as a pair of mules can carry.
Speaker B:For your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other God but the Lord.
Speaker B:So, you know, the thing that stuck out to me, and I hope I emphasized it enough here, if you're listening, is like, Naaman wants just some dirt.
Speaker B:Like, give me a couple mules, give me a cart and give me some dirt, right?
Speaker B:And I'm like, what's the.
Speaker B:And so like, you know, I'd always been like, well, this is great dirt, I guess, or something like, remember his journey.
Speaker B:But no, it seems to be.
Speaker B:And then it's tied to him making sacrifices, right?
Speaker A:He says, I'll never worship these other gods.
Speaker A:I'm only going to worship Yahweh.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Now, we don't know exactly what Naaman does with this dirt, but as Heiser points out, it seems to be that, like, there's something specifically about this dirt, about this land.
Speaker B:Just like Naaman had to come to the Jordan river, it seems, at least in Naaman's mindset here, that there's something special about this dirt about the land from this area that he needs to take it with him so that he can worship.
Speaker B:And so if you're going to worship.
Speaker A:The true God, you're going to worship.
Speaker B:Allah, if you're going to worship Yahweh, I need this soil.
Speaker B:And so, as Heizer points out, there seems to be, you know, calls it a cosmic geography that, like, there's something about the land of Israel that it is, there's something connected to the land and the spiritual reality of worshiping Yahweh.
Speaker A:And you said something very important there.
Speaker A:You said, in the mindset of Naaman at least.
Speaker A:And this is one of the things I do admire about Heizer and I think he's correct in saying this.
Speaker A:He begins by saying we need to look at the Bible in the way that the, in the mindset of the people who would have been, you know, writing that, writing it originally or receiving it originally.
Speaker A:We need to get into their mindset and we don't have that mindset of these spiritual beings and that kind of thing.
Speaker A:We don't, you know, we've talked about that before, even when we talked about Charles Taylor's book, you know, we, we have this, this Kind of, you know, view of ourselves, that we're insulated from the spiritual realm, as opposed to 500 years ago, let's say.
Speaker A:But he's saying the people in this time, these spiritual beings would have been seen to be real.
Speaker A:Things like cosmic geography would have been seen to be real.
Speaker A:So in Naaman's mind, if I'm going to worship the God of this land, I need to take part of the land with me.
Speaker A:And that seems to be the implication.
Speaker A:You said you never thought about that.
Speaker A:I mean, I don't think I'd ever even noticed that part of it.
Speaker A:You know, I noticed the whole thing with you need to come to Israel, that Naaman wasn't willing to go.
Speaker A:And, you know, basically they said, what.
Speaker A:What do you have to lose?
Speaker A:You know, it's not too hard of a thing he's asking you to do.
Speaker A:And so why don't you.
Speaker A:You go and see.
Speaker A:And then he.
Speaker A:He becomes essentially a convert to the worship of the true God.
Speaker A:But yeah, that's a.
Speaker A:That's an interesting idea.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It was always, you know, when you hear that story about Naaman, it's about trusting God and, you know, he's got to travel to Israel and all that stuff.
Speaker B:But I'm like, I don't know if I've ever spent too much time talking about, like, oh, Naaman wants a pile of dirt, like, right.
Speaker A:He didn't.
Speaker B:Hey, if you want to accept this blessing, just give me some dirt.
Speaker A:You didn't have the flannel board with the little piles of dirt and mules taking them away?
Speaker A:No, we didn't have to remember that.
Speaker A:One of the things that I really had to think a lot about it, and we had an episode on First Enoch not too long ago, and for Heizer, he uses first edict a lot.
Speaker A:And we'll say even more about this next week when we talk about the New Testament.
Speaker A:He mentions this idea that First Enoch is mentioned both in Second Peter and also in the book of Jude, which we've discussed already.
Speaker A:But he does seem to give a lot more credibility to Enoch's interpretation of the events.
Speaker A:I will say so when we talk about First Enoch.
Speaker A:I talked about it has a very advanced angiology.
Speaker A:There's this idea of all these spiritual beings.
Speaker A:And for Heiser, you know, those things kind of fit really well into his worldview.
Speaker A:So you've really.
Speaker A:That's another area, I think.
Speaker A:I don't know that I can go all the way, all the way with him.
Speaker A:But, you know, your point here, there's a Great deal of explanatory power in his, in his argument where you have these kind of weird, again, these weird passages.
Speaker A:And it's like, well, what in the world could this mean that he wants to take the dirt, you know, and when he explained it in the way that he does, you're like, well, okay, I kind of see what you're saying.
Speaker A:He's taking the land of Israel, so to speak, into this foreign land where a different God is worshiped, a different spiritual being.
Speaker B:And it doesn't seem that Elisha stops him.
Speaker B:Elisha doesn't try to stop him.
Speaker B:Elisha doesn't say, you don't need this dirt.
Speaker B:God is everywhere.
Speaker B:It's like, yeah, sure, that sounds reasonable.
Speaker A:And you mentioned that we're going to talk about the New Testament next week, but it reminded me very much of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John chapter four, where it's like, well, where, where should we worship the true God on this mountain?
Speaker A:You know, Mount Gerizim?
Speaker A:Or is it on Mount Zion?
Speaker A:And that Jesus answer is there's a time coming when, when the geography is not going to matter, right?
Speaker A:That, that there's an expansion.
Speaker A:And the whole idea of the expansion of the kingdom is that God's kingdom is now going out into all the world like it was intended to do from, from the beginning.
Speaker A:So I didn't, didn't mean to get into that, but I do want to mention Mountain Heiser.
Speaker A:He talks about this phrase that we see in the Old Testament, the heights of the north.
Speaker A:And this is another one of those areas.
Speaker A:I think, you know, there are interesting ideas he has here and some even that we're going to see in the New Testament next week.
Speaker A:But he mentions the mountain of Bashan, particularly several times, as this mountain up in the north.
Speaker A:That's kind of a stronghold for the, the spiritual forces of evil, so to speak.
Speaker A:And a lot of this comes from Ugaritic, from the, from the Ugaritic documents the Ugaritic language.
Speaker A:And, and I will say it's interesting to me.
Speaker A:Heiser, you know, really uses Ugaritic a lot, which is, which is a relatively recent development.
Speaker A: ast part of the last century,: Speaker A:So a lot of these are things that, that have helped us understand.
Speaker A:Basically all these texts are Canaanite religious texts.
Speaker A:They tell us about the religion of the Canaanite people.
Speaker A:And so he uses a lot of those in order to help us understand and illustrate various parts of the Old Testament.
Speaker A:Among them are how he understands those, how I say, those spiritual beings.
Speaker A:And he talks about these other nations around.
Speaker A:Their gods have divine councils.
Speaker A:And so Yahweh has this divine, divine council as well.
Speaker A:But, but he, he, he brings in that, that a lot to talk about these mountains.
Speaker A:And that's the, the mountain of Bashan is kind of seen as this stronghold against God's people, I will say several times in the Old Testament.
Speaker A:The north, there's no disputing this.
Speaker A:And that's, that's the other thing.
Speaker A:There are things he says and you're like, well, yeah, everybody, every Old Testament scholar thinks this.
Speaker A:The north is the place from which the enemies of Israel are seen to be coming.
Speaker A:It's true.
Speaker A:Whether it was Assyria, whether it was Babylon, you know, all these bad things come from the north.
Speaker A:And Heiser is simply suggesting there's a spiritual element to this as well.
Speaker A:Not just, not just the kings, but also, or the armies, but also the spiritual element as well.
Speaker A:You want to Talk about Daniel 10.
Speaker A:This is one of those passages that he uses to, to talk about the fact that these spiritual beings were given domain over certain nations.
Speaker A:And so here's one that's mentioned in Daniel 10.
Speaker A:And this is again one of those weird passages.
Speaker A:We talked about this back in our series on Daniel, but he says this.
Speaker A:Do not be afraid, Daniel.
Speaker A:This is verse 12.
Speaker A:Since the first day you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard.
Speaker A:And I have come in response to them.
Speaker A:This is this divine being, the spiritual being, who's, who's going to be.
Speaker A:We talked before about apocalyptic literature, typically has these, these spiritual, these heavenly messengers, right?
Speaker A:And so he says, I've come in response to them, but the prince of the Persian Kingdom resisted me 21 days.
Speaker A:Then Michael, one of the chief princes.
Speaker A:And again, this is pretty commonly understood.
Speaker A:Michael's understood to be one of the.
Speaker A:We usually call him an archangel.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Which.
Speaker A:We'll come talk about that a bit more in a minute.
Speaker A:But, but Michael comes and, and it says he came to help me because I was detained there with the king of Persia.
Speaker A:Now, I've come to explain to you what will happen to your peoples in the future.
Speaker A:For the vision concerns a time yet to come.
Speaker A:So the whole point is that this spiritual being says, I was kept from coming to you, Daniel, because the prince of Persia.
Speaker A:And so the way that Heiser interprets this is the Spiritual being that was assigned to the nation of Persia was the one who was preventing this spiritual messenger from God.
Speaker A:So we see this battle taking place, and then Michael comes to another spiritual being loyal to God, comes and helps and allows the messenger to come and bring the message to Daniel that he needs to.
Speaker A:So that's another one of those, you know, kind of passages that he would.
Speaker A:He would explain in this way.
Speaker B:Yeah, we dealt with that when we did our Daniel series.
Speaker A:Like, yeah, yeah, we talked about that.
Speaker B:You know, how do we.
Speaker B:I mean, it says what it says.
Speaker B:How do we, you know, like, instead of us trying to talk our way out of it, like, how do we understand?
Speaker A:And I do.
Speaker A:You know, Heiser would say that.
Speaker A:He would say that we shouldn't ignore these passages, you know, just because they seem too hard for us sometimes.
Speaker A:We should make sure to spend time on it.
Speaker A:Job one's another one of these weird passages, passages, right, that people ask about.
Speaker A:It's another of these divine council settings where God is on his throne and he seems to be surrounded by the spiritual family, to use Heiser's phrase, that he's, you know, interacting with, and he.
Speaker A:He's talking to these kind of things.
Speaker A:So go, go ahead and read Job 1:6 and.
Speaker A:And notice that note I make there on angels there.
Speaker B:One day, the angels, which in Hebrew literally says sons of God, came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came with him.
Speaker B:The Lord said to Satan, where have you come from?
Speaker B:Satan answered the Lord from roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.
Speaker A:Of course, then they get this whole thing, well, have you considered my servant Job?
Speaker A:And so forth.
Speaker A:Now, Satan in the Old Testament, we've talked about this as well, means the adversary or the accuser.
Speaker A:It's not a proper name, even though in most of our English texts it capitalizes Satan.
Speaker A:And by the time we get to the New Testament, then we see Jesus using the term.
Speaker A:It seems like in a proper noun kind of way.
Speaker A:But in the Old Testament, the Satan is again, more of a role.
Speaker A:And also mention this.
Speaker A:It was interesting to me when I looked this up in the niv, that they had translated what is literally the sons of God as the angels.
Speaker A:And Heiser really has a difficulty with this because he would say angel, which in Hebrew is the word Moloch and which in Greek is the word Angelaz.
Speaker A:That's where we get our word angel.
Speaker A:Those words both mean messenger, right?
Speaker A:So they're sometimes used in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, not for a spiritual being, but for messenger.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's the word that means messenger.
Speaker A:We have come to use that term angel for spiritual being.
Speaker A:And Heiser would say this sometimes keeps us from seeing the unseen nature of some of the unseen realm nature of some of these texts.
Speaker A:And so in this one, angel would be again, a role.
Speaker A:Whereas these spiritual beings, he would say, are even of different kinds.
Speaker A:He mentioned the idea of archangel.
Speaker A:There could even be different categories of these spiritual beings.
Speaker A:He's like, you know, we.
Speaker A:We don't know.
Speaker A:Enoch and other texts from the intertestamental period or later will.
Speaker A:Will develop this idea more, I think.
Speaker A:And we, we do see more.
Speaker A:More of those.
Speaker A:Anything else you want to say about.
Speaker A:About that?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think one thing I've been thinking about, I just want to make sure we say is like Heiser would say, like Yahweh is not dependent upon.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I'm glad you said these spiritual beings.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's not like Yahweh needs them.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:It is out of his choice that he has created them to.
Speaker B:To counsel him.
Speaker B:You know, I mean, like.
Speaker B:And that is that he is.
Speaker B:Again, I know we kind of said this, that there is no Elohim like Yahweh.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But that he is.
Speaker B:He is independent of them.
Speaker B:And so, like, you know, that he, he sees this as advisory, but that the decision maker.
Speaker B:So he even points us out in the beginning of Genesis when it says, let's make them in our image.
Speaker B:Like there's this plural, but then the act, the verb create, and then he created them is singular.
Speaker B:Like it is God, Yahweh himself singularly creates them.
Speaker B:But this isn't.
Speaker B:He doesn't need help.
Speaker B:This is.
Speaker B:They're not.
Speaker B:They're not creative like Yahweh, but they are.
Speaker B:They're an advisory capacity to Him.
Speaker A:Well, and I mean, you know, in some ways it's almost like he's doing these things in their presence.
Speaker A:It's almost more like they are with us in this next passage.
Speaker A:That's where we're going to.
Speaker A:In job 38.
Speaker A:I think we see this very clearly.
Speaker A:This was one of those that again struck me when he looked at it this way.
Speaker A:The parallel he drew that I thought was really.
Speaker A:To what you're talking about, that I thought was really interesting.
Speaker A:He said God didn't create humans because he needed them to.
Speaker A:Because he needed them either.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:He created us wanting to share in this work with us.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Because of his desire to.
Speaker A:Not because of any need on his part, but he chooses to work through his creation.
Speaker A:That's something about his nature that is true.
Speaker A:And Heiser would say, whether talking about the spiritual family or the earthly family.
Speaker B:And he kind of points out that in that Genesis narrative that as the early Israelites would have read in our image, they didn't probably have the.
Speaker B:They didn't have a trinitarian understanding yet.
Speaker B:And so, like, they had a different understanding of our.
Speaker B:Than we do from the New Testament post Jesus and the Spirit coming as we read it back.
Speaker A:So, so this is where we would have the.
Speaker A:The, you know, we're going to create them in.
Speaker A:In a.
Speaker A:In a.
Speaker A:In an image of the spiritual beings essentially in this nature.
Speaker A:So job 38, go ahead and read this.
Speaker A:This was.
Speaker A:He sees stars as spiritual beings.
Speaker A:And again, I'm going to come back and remind you again, one of the things that Heiser's insisted on that I would agree with is we need to understand this language within the worldview of the people who are writing these.
Speaker A:And they understood the stars as spiritual beings.
Speaker A:So here's one example in Job 38 where God is.
Speaker A:This is that passage where God is really questioning Job, where he says, okay, Job, shut up for a minute, let me talk to you.
Speaker A:And here's one of the things he says.
Speaker B:So this is job 38, 4, 7.
Speaker B:Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Speaker B:Tell me if you understand who marked off its dimensions?
Speaker B:Surely you know who stretched a measuring line across it?
Speaker B:On what?
Speaker B:On what where?
Speaker B:On what?
Speaker B:Where its footing set?
Speaker B:Or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy.
Speaker A:This idea of the morning stars and the angels are not active in creation.
Speaker A:They're essentially the audience for creation as God is doing these things.
Speaker A:And you can see they're already in existence, right?
Speaker A:They're already there watching.
Speaker A:So I have to say this is one of those places where Heiser.
Speaker A:And I'll say, I think his book's been great.
Speaker A:We both have really thought it was a good one.
Speaker A:It's one of these that makes you look at passages again more carefully and in a different kind of way, I think.
Speaker A:And so this idea of stars being spiritual beings.
Speaker A:There are several passages even in the New Testament, we may look at a couple of them next week that have this kind of language.
Speaker A:One passage I forgot to bring up is I was going to bring up the Lucifer, the bringer of light passage too, and just kind of look at it in that way which Heizer does see, it's a reference to the King of Tyre.
Speaker A:But going back to talking about this Rebellion, you know, using this, the spiritual rebellion of the spiritual beings as a background for, for understanding this.
Speaker A:But stars, even in the Book of Revelation, again, not to bring in the New Testament too quickly, but right where it talks about the dragon, they swept, you know, third of the stars of heaven out of the sky, which we understand to be a reference to fallen, you know, fallen.
Speaker A:I would have said fallen angels in the past, but I'm going to say fallen spiritual beings, you know, in this rebellion.
Speaker A:So the one final thing I wanted to mention, then we'll see if there's anything else.
Speaker A:The angel of Yahweh or the angel of the Lord in English that we see in the Old Testament.
Speaker A:I think Heizer's kind of changed my mind on this because I'd taken kind of the view that most modern scholars have today that this angel of the Lord is not a divine being.
Speaker A:But he uses this idea of two powers.
Speaker A:And he would say that this was a teaching within understanding within Judaism up until after the New Testament period.
Speaker A:He would say, really it was a response to the trinitarian view of Christians that caused the two powers to be seen as more of a heretical idea within Judaism.
Speaker A:And I haven't traced that out to see if that's the case, but this is how he explains it.
Speaker A:But he would see the angel of Yahweh then as God physically representing, you know, as a physical representation of the creator God.
Speaker A:And then you have Yahweh who's, who's, you know, the, the God, the creator God.
Speaker A:And you see them interacting and in different ways.
Speaker A:And I had noticed this in the past, for example, when the angel of Yahweh appears to Abraham and then later Yahweh is the one who's speaking.
Speaker A:You know, it seems like they both.
Speaker B:Have this kind of bounces back and forth between.
Speaker A:And so he would take an understanding of this is called the two powers understanding, which then he would say in, in the New Testament, when we have this idea of this, the Spirit of God as well, that we then have this idea of the Trinity being fully formed.
Speaker A:He doesn't read Trinity back into the Old Testament, but he does say that the origins of the Trinity, at least not, I shouldn't say the origins, but there's a way that we can have this understanding of this idea in the two powers, the angel, the Yahweh, and then Yahweh himself.
Speaker B:Yeah, there's a lot in there.
Speaker B:As we said, it's like a 400 page book.
Speaker B:And that, you know, well, there's Just a lot that, you know, I think it's.
Speaker B:If you're interested in this, I think it's definitely worth a read to get in there and to see it, because I think it's.
Speaker B:We talked about explanatory power and it's one of those things we kind of go, how many thousands of years are we separated from these events?
Speaker B:That kind of going.
Speaker B:We live in a different mindset than the ancient Israelites and ancient Hebrews.
Speaker B:And so I think there's a humility as we approach these texts to see this, to kind of go like we all feel, I think, for the most part, pretty comfortable in the New Testament.
Speaker B:You know, in some of those things, it's a world that we understand more clearly in some ways.
Speaker B:Not totally, I understand that.
Speaker B:But in that.
Speaker B:That ancient world, to kind of go there is.
Speaker B:They understood things differently than we do and that there's.
Speaker B:We should not.
Speaker B:We can't shy away from these texts that kind of make us go, I'm not so sure about or I'm.
Speaker B:What did he really mean?
Speaker B:Oh, he couldn't have meant that.
Speaker B:But that Heiser, I think, is saying, like, they're actually.
Speaker B:There couldn't be a way that we can understand these texts that brings them all together to help us get a better idea of what's happening in the new, in the Old Testament.
Speaker A:And that's power, I think of it.
Speaker A:Power.
Speaker A:I think of his argument.
Speaker A:We both listened to another podcast where an Old Testament professor was kind of critiquing some of Heiser's views.
Speaker A:And one of the things that he said is really the biggest criticism he had was that there are things that he would hold more contingently say, well, that's a possibility, but I don't know that I'm going to say that for sure.
Speaker A:Where Heiser has a great deal of confidence and says this is how it is, and then, like I said, builds other things on top of it.
Speaker A:So I would say when you read this, absolutely, it helped you.
Speaker A:I think it helps you understand the worldview, as you mentioned, the ancient world.
Speaker A:I think it may give you new insight into certain texts.
Speaker A:But I do think we need to, as with anything we read, use caution and think through some of these things more carefully.
Speaker B:So, and just that other podcast you referenced there, I.
Speaker B:I'll put a link to it.
Speaker B:You can watch that if you want to.
Speaker B:I think one of the things that I appreciated there was a question and then.
Speaker A:And then you can.
Speaker B:Yeah, watch ours first, obviously, is that the question was asked, like, would this be considered an orthodox position.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And this Old Testament professor said, yeah, yeah, like, you know, like, by and large, this is a very like and considered an orthodox position among Old Testament scholars.
Speaker B:Like, this is not something outside of the realm of a reality for these texts.
Speaker A:A lot of the pieces that he would say, he would say, well, yeah, the majority of Old Testament scholars would think this.
Speaker A:I do think the other value of Heiser is he does bring our attention to the spiritual realm that, like you said, we often will.
Speaker A:We'll kind of ignore.
Speaker A:But yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And then, and then the other point he makes, he doesn't deny any of the, the mainstream doctrines.
Speaker A:I mean, the, you know, he's not denying anything about the, the uniqueness of, of the creator God.
Speaker A:He's not saying anything about the deity of Jesus that would be heretical.
Speaker A:You know, he's very much.
Speaker A:He's not saying Jesus a created being or something along those lines.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So he's.
Speaker A:Yeah, he's.
Speaker A:He's orthodox in that sense.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, Brian, it's a great conversation.
Speaker B:Yeah, glad we had it.
Speaker B:So if you enjoy the podcast, you can go to thebiblebshore.com, we have a little bookstore on there if you like.
Speaker B:I'm going to put this book on there if you'd like to pick up a copy.
Speaker B:If you click through the link through there, we get a small portion of the purchase price from Amazon.
Speaker B:I mean, we're talking cents here, so, you know, we're not.
Speaker A:But it adds up.
Speaker B:It adds up, yes.
Speaker B:So you can purchase that or there are other books in there on different topics.
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Speaker B:You can follow us on the Bible Bible Bistro on Facebook and Instagram, or you can follow us on Apple Podcasts and give us a review if you're enjoying this.
Speaker B:So we appreciate everyone that's listening.
Speaker B:Brian, thanks so much for, you know, leading this conversation and hope you'll join us again next week as we can kind of continue this conversation as we start looking at how this, this concept of the unseen realm plays out in the New Testament.
Speaker B:So pretty excited about that and looking forward to it.
Speaker A:All right, stay tuned.
Speaker B:All right, thanks, Brian.
Speaker B:Bye.
Speaker B:Bye.
