Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 16

DARPA and Transhumanism

Just in case you haven’t had anything creep you out lately.

Here you go: Resident Evil? DARPA Unveils Genetic “Tuning” To Fight Chemical, Radiation Attacks

Of course. This would never lead to anything else.

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Remember the Alien Autopsy Film?

It’s been over 20 years since the debut of the notorious “alien autopsy” film. I remember it being the rage on late-night talk radio while I was in grad school. The Magonia Review has an excellent run-down of the whole incident, including how it was faked and who did the faking. Interesting and informative.

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A Key Resource for the Intersection of Ancient Judaism and Christianity

I’m speaking here of the 3-volume Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Midrash (3 vols.), by Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck. It is frequently referenced by scholarly New Testament commentaries (especially those on the four gospels). To this point, it has existed only in German, the language of its publication. My employer, Faithlife / Logos Bible Software (Lexham Press), has taken up the task of translating all three volumes into English. It’s a costly project, but worth it.

You can push the project over the edge to production by ordering it now at the pre-publication price. It’s $450 in print, but now you can get it in the Logos format for $149. That price will move up after the project is completed — presuming the project gets funding from such orders (that’s how pre-pub pricing works). So this is a steep discount. In the pre-pub system, no one is actually charged until the product is completed and “ships” — pre-pub orders tell us how many people want the product at the pre-pub price, which allows us to know if an item is achievable. This is a massive translation project.

Here is a paragraph from the pre-pub page:

Lexham Press is pleased to announce the first-ever English translation of Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck’s Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. Using the Pre-Pub process for this project allows us to invest resources in translating Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch only if there is sufficient demand. These books, previously available only to specialists, will soon be accessible to everyone. As the scope of the project becomes clearer, the price might increase, such as when we announce the translator and begin the work of translation. That means users who pre-order the earliest—with the fewest details available—will get the best price.

 

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Frank Viola’s New Book, Insurgence

Some of you may know the name Frank Viola. Frank has published several best-selling books in the wider Christian world. He spent a lot of time reading through and blogging about (very favorably) my own book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible[image error]. 

I’d recommend his new book, Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. If you follow that link you’ll see my blurb of the book. My audience will appreciate how Frank is trying to apply some of the content of The Unseen Realm to kingdom mission for a lay audience. Check it out!

 

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Did NASA Announce It Has Found Life on Mars or Outer Space?

Short answer: No.

But to read the click-bait headlines circulating on the internet in the last couple of days, you’d think so. All you need to do is read NASA’s own announcement — just the first paragraph:

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found new evidence preserved in rocks on Mars that suggests the planet could have supported ancient life, as well as new evidence in the Martian atmosphere that relates to the search for current life on the Red Planet. While not necessarily evidence of life itself, these findings are a good sign for future missions exploring the planet’s surface and subsurface.

One wonders how many consumers of online content even looked. The internet has trained us to be distracted and think poorly (don’t believe that, then read this telling — and disheartening — book: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains[image error]).

But let’s say NASA uncovers microbial life on Mars. Is that evidence of panspermia (the idea that life on earth originated from outer space).

Short answer: No.

The reason is simple. You’d have to prove life on Planet A (Mars) got to Planet B (earth). There’s no way to know that. Even if the life forms were of the same type, the process could have worked in reverse. No way to know.

There are two broad theories of panspermia:

(1) cosmic ancestry, which asserts that life has always existed everywhere in the universe.  Life has no single point of origin. A discovery of life on Mars would support this view in principle — but you’d need to discover life on all sorts of planetary bodies to actually prove the idea.

(2) life traveled from one place in space to another. This is the more common idea. This one requires some sort of travel mechanism. There are two varieties of this idea: (a) directed (“intelligent”) panspermia (life was put here by intelligent aliens or was part of God’s evolutionary plan — for those theists who embrace evolution), and (b) undirected (“non-intelligent”) panspermia (the mechanism was a random natural event, like a meteor shower).

In view of the above you’ll now see a small (but enduring) spike in the ancient aliens community about how life was put here by aliens, how Zecharia Sitchin was right, how nibiru was part of this, etc., etc. All nonsense — the same as it was a few days ago.

 

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PEERANORMAL Episode 15: Quantum Physics and Metaphysics: Part 1

This episode launches a series on quantum mechanics and its presumed relationship to metaphysical ideas, religion, theology, and the paranormal. During the series we’ll be joined by Dr. Rob (“Putty”) Putman, who holds a PhD in theoretical quantum physics, but now pastors a church in Illinois. In this first episode, we survey the history of quantum mechanics and talk about how some of the important ideas are used to make metaphysical statements about all of reality—statements that are inherently theological and religious. Are such statements accurate? What can we really say about the nature of reality and God on the basis of quantum physics?

Check out the episode page for resources and the episode!

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Naked Bible Conference Speaker and Topic Profile #5

The first four profiles and topics for the upcoming Naked Bible Conference (Dallas, August 18) were:

Dr. Bill Arnold: “Israel in, among, or against Its Neighbors? A Singular Israel in a Pluralistic World“
Dr. Archie Wright: “The Reception of the Satan Tradition in Second Temple Judaism and the Gospels“
Dr. John Hilber: “Since When Is Literal Interpretation “Normal”?—Reconsidering a Popular Assumption“
Dr. William (“Rusty”) Osborne: “Reaching for the Heavens: Tree Imagery and Kingship in the Bible and the Ancient Near East“

I’m also speaking, but you all know me (my topic is described on the conference website with the rest). Our final speaker and topic profiles is Dr. Daniel Streett whose session is entitled, “Flood, Fire, and Festival: How the Nephilim and Noah’s Flood Unlock the Mystery of Yom Kippur and the Final Judgment.”

How awesome is that? A real scholar (not a Christian Middle Earth personality) talking about the nephilim and end times? Honestly, when is the last time you had that opportunity?!

Truth be told, this last topic is illustrative of what I’m trying to do with this conference. A lot of folks who listen to the podcast found it compelling because of their prior exposure to these sorts of things in the wild worlds of YouTube and Google search results — what I affectionately refer to as Christian Middle Earth. But MANY of those folks have told me they suspected (or discovered) that a lot of what they found online really wasn’t academically (or theologically) sound. Well, now is your chance to get some trustworthy information on topics that most of the church consider fringe-worthy, but which Dr. Streett will show were an important part of the intellectual context of Israel and Second Temple Judaism.

It’s no exaggeration to say (again) that you won’t find another conference like this one (until next year’s). Register now while there is still space!

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Naked Bible Conference Speaker and Topic Profile #4

Our fourth speaker and topic profile for the inaugural Naked Bible Conference in Dallas, TX on August 18 is Dr. William (“Rusty”) Osborne. I’ve alluded to Dr. Osborne’s work on the Naked Bible Podcast several times. His dissertation was on tree imagery and symbolism in the Bible and ancient Near East. His dissertation was just published in book form (Trees and Kings: A Comparative Analysis of Tree Imagery in Israel’s Prophetic Tradition and the Ancient Near East (Bulletin for Biblical Research Supplement)[image error]). Now we get to hear from the expert in person!

Not surprisingly, Dr. Osborne’s session is entitled, “Reaching for the Heavens: Tree Imagery and Kingship in the Bible and the Ancient Near East.” What’s it about? Think of passages like Ezekiel 31:

1 In the eleventh year, in the third month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: 2 “Son of man, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his multitude:

“Whom are you like in your greatness?

3  Behold, Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon,

with beautiful branches and forest shade,

and of towering height,

its top among the clouds.

4  The waters nourished it;

the deep made it grow tall,

making its rivers flow

around the place of its planting,

sending forth its streams

to all the trees of the field.

5  So it towered high

above all the trees of the field;

its boughs grew large

and its branches long

from abundant water in its shoots.

6  All the birds of the heavens

made their nests in its boughs;

under its branches all the beasts of the field

gave birth to their young,

and under its shadow

lived all great nations.

7  It was beautiful in its greatness,

in the length of its branches;

for its roots went down

to abundant waters.

8  The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it,

nor the fir trees equal its boughs;

neither were the plane trees

like its branches;

no tree in the garden of God

was its equal in beauty.

9  I made it beautiful

in the mass of its branches,

and all the trees of Eden envied it,

that were in the garden of God.

Where there’s kingship and Eden talk, there’s “divine council worldview” lurking in the background. Without understanding the conceptual relationship between kingship and tree imagery in the ancient Near East, you won’t be able to understand passages like Ezekiel 31.

Register today for the Naked Bible Conference! Not only will you learn something new (a lot of things, actually), but you’re supporting our effort to bring credible biblical scholarship to the wider believing community.

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Have You Subscribed to FringePop321 Yet?

If not, you need to. Really.

FringePop321 is a YouTube channel. I’m the host. Every week we release a new video of me trying to inject some sanity into a fringe topic — paleobabble, fringe archaeology, ancient aliens, paranormal topics, etc. Just go to the channel and click “subscribe”! (And there is a website for research material on each episode!)

Here are some recent episodes:

Are There Dinosaurs in Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs?

Are We Alone in the Universe? What Are the Odds — Really?

Are There Helicopters and Spaceships in Ancient Egyptian Texts? (What’s Up with those Abydos Glyphs?)

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Naked Bible Conference Speaker and Topic Profile #3

Over the last couple days I’ve profiled the topics of Dr. Bill Arnold (panbabylonianism) and Dr. Archie Wright (Satan in Second Temple literature and the NT). Today the focus is Dr. John Hilber, whose session is entitled, “Since When Is Literal Interpretation ‘Normal’?—Reconsidering a Popular Assumption.”

At one point in early planning for our inaugural conference I entertained the idea of making the entire conference relate thematically to this topic. Let’s face it. This is the default assumption about how to read the Bible that so many people are taught. In the most extreme form it leads to truly goofy Bible interpretation. More often, (to be blunt, and I’ve been doing a good bit of that lately), the notion that “if the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense” is an excuse to stop thinking (or a tool for discouraging thinking) about the biblical text. Biblical writers didn’t think this way. This is especially true when you see how New Testament writers thought about certain passages in the Old Testament.

As Dr. Hilber will point out, the problem is more fundamental than that. The “plain sense” takes no account (and even sidesteps or obscures) of the kind of metaphorical thinking we engage in every day of our lives when we encounter print or speech. Thinking beyond a “plain sense” (and what is that, anyway?) is part and parcel of communication. In fact, it’s vital to understanding all sorts of nuances intended in communication. When we read or hear a word we have an intuitive sense that the most literal meaning often isn’t what’s in view. We process all that unconsciously, but we are taught not to do so when we read Scripture. It’s downright unnatural and cuts off what biblical writers were angling for in many respects. This session will encourage people to become better readers of Scripture and explain why the “plain sense” approach impedes reading Scripture accurately in many instances.

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