Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 23

Naked Bible: Why Do We Do What We Do?

It’s exceedingly unusual for me to share emails here that I get from Naked Bible Podcast listeners, or folks who read my books, or someone who has otherwise benefited from the content I try to produce. But this one captures why we do what we do on the podcast that I asked permission to share it. It also reflects the dilemma in which so many of you find yourselves — trying hard to learn Scripture. I want you all to read it to get a sense of the problem, and why Naked Bible content needs wider exposure.

Here’s the email in its entirety, without personal identification:

Mike,

In between your new episodes on Hebrews I’ve been listening to Leviticus. The whole thing makes so much sense when one listens in conjunction with the other!

I want to help you understand how big of an impact the Lord is making through you:

I’ve grown up in the Church (I’m not referring to a walled building), and I’ve been studying the Bible since I was 8 (I’m now 32). I’ve got a BA in Biblical Studies and am in seminary right now. I’ve read close to everything I’ve been assigned over all these years. Literally the only thing I’ve learned that has been new information to me through all these years of schooling has been Hebrew (and I’m not an expert at that!). I’m saying that in all my years of schooling (including Christian grade schools) everyone, even up to the master’s level, has been teaching the same Sunday-school level Bible stuff. I’m finally challenged to learn when it comes to you and all of the authors you’ve exposed me to!

I say all of that to say that ever since coming across you around 2015 I’ve actually been learning new information. All these years I’ve been hearing the same old out of context stuff, and, like you often state, I’ve always known there was more to this. Since 2015 I’ve been reading so many other things that you’ve recommended, or that I’ve come across through being exposed to you. The scholarly realm was nothing before I “met” you. It was almost as if I didn’t know it existed (even though I knew it did). Now I’m reading N.T. Wright, Matthew Bates, John Walton, David Burnett, Ronn Johnson, David Tsumura, etc. The list goes on, and I’ve read many scholarly articles from people that I don’t even know their names (poor sentence structure there…).

Anyway, this has been an amazing ride, and it seriously is exciting to study the word again. All these things, all your objectives, have come to fruition in my life. I’m sure you receive emails like this all of the time, and I’m just a number to you (just kidding!), but seriously, brother, Yahweh is working through what you, Trey, and Logos are doing.

For the sake of a semi-short e-mail I can’t get into it all, but just know that I’ve essentially become like you. That is, if it’s not scholarly and peer-reviewed I just don’t mess with it. I’ve since seen how often the word is taken out of context. Undoubtedly, there are many out there with no ill will, but the end result is that they’re still taking so much out of context. Another thing that I’ve learned from you is your kaleidoscope approach. If it doesn’t fit the system but it has truth, then don’t disregard it! I’ve not been a fan of these systems growing up, but it’s only enhanced all of this for me.

Anyway, I could go on about all of this, but you get the point. Thank you for what you do. Please thank Trey for me (he’s the perfect co-host). May the Lord was your faithfulness to his word and to your commitment to all that goes into proper contextual interpretation.

Your brother …

 

Did you catch the line “even up the master’s level” it’s all been regurgitating the same old stuff? I know he’s on target, because I lived this and was once part of the problem. That ended the day the Lord awakened me to the fact that I shouldn’t be protecting people from their Bible. That epiphany has produced other challenges, of course, but I’ve never regretted it. I’d like to say I just sort of figured things out, but I didn’t. I had to be shamed by the Lord and convicted of what I was doing. This is why we’re serious about “naked” content. I care only about what the text can sustain, not what a denomination, tradition, or famous preacher says. The Lord didn’t put me (or you) here to perpetuate a sub-culture. But that’s what so much of institutionalized Christianity does. Since we don’t care about being academically trendy either, scholarship isn’t the end point. Serious scholarship is a means to an end: The Bible understood in its own context, not some later, imposed context.

The bottom line is that I can produce the content. Trey can make sure it gets out there (and make it fun). Brenda can produce the transcripts. Joe can keep my homepage running and looking sharp. Donors and friends can keep MIQLAT working and having a presence online. But ONLY YOU can expose people to what’s really going on here. If you want to learn, and want others to learn, and want friends to graduate from Christian Middle Earth, YOU are key to making that happen. Lord willing, I will be able to devote my entire week, every week, to producing content. But not being able to do that now isn’t going to prevent me from doing something. Emails like this help me answer the question, “What’s the point?”

Supernatural Translations Posted on the MIQLAT Site

Most of you will know that my non-profit, MIQLAT, is funding the translation of my book, Supernatural: What the Bible Says About the Unseen World–And Why it Matters. It’s the “lite” version of The Unseen Realm. 

Over 20 translations are running or have been completed. Here’s the link to the page where the translations will live online. There are two translations not yet added that have recently finished.

The translations are free to reproduce and distribute in any form. The idea is that the book will be free to any who read these languages and that people will send the files all over the internet. Piracy is encouraged. I’d like the book on every phone in all these languages.

Eventually we hope to have Kindle versions posted as well.

We’re grateful to all those who donate whatever they can to MIQLAT. We will be writing and translating discipleship material in 2018 with the same goal in mind.

And the Title of the Next Novel Will Be …

The CIPHER … by a narrow margin:

Thanks for all who voted!  Over 1500 of you!

I start tonight … well, as soon as we get power back. Day 4 of no electricity at home (at work now – civilization). Hopefully we’ll be back in business late tonight.

PanBabylonianism: The Wellspring of Middle Earth PaleoBabble

I came across this essay recently. It’s from the out of print book, Mesopotamian and the Bible, edited by Mark Chavalas and Lawson Younger. The essay is by Chavalas, a scholar of biblical studies and ancient Mesopotamia:

Chavalas Assyriology and Biblical Studies Century and a Half of Tension

The essay is about the use and abuse of Mesopotamian literature and archaeology by non-specialists. This tension and problem — “seeing” the material from Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylon as behind most everything in the Old Testament, especially the early chapters of Genesis — became known as “PanBabylonianism.” That arose in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the wake of the decipherment of cuneiform texts in the 19th century. It is the lifeblood of much of the “research” and “discovery” of self-anointed teachers (Christian or otherwise) one finds foisted upon unsuspecting readers on the internet and listeners on shows like Coast to Coast AM. their “findings” are hopelessly outdated and wrong in a myriad of ways as subsequent decades of scholarship has demonstrated. But no matter. It gets the paleobabblers on talk shows and gives them the attention they crave.

Chavalas ends his essay with this quote from Finkelstein (underlining is my own – it describes the paleobabble researchers well). It’s blunt but still encourages scholars to responsibly educate the public.

 

 

666 Giveaway!

I figured that title would get some attention.

Right now my book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible[image error], is at 661 reviews. That got me thinking about a giveaway for the 666th review. But that would encourage no one to review the book until it hit 665. So … a better idea …

I’ve decided to give away a copy (either hard copy or Logos Bible Software format) of the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. It’s my favorite reference work for biblical studies. All reviews of The Unseen Realm on Amazon are eligible, from number 660 through 700. Once the reviews cross 700, I will randomly select the winner from those reviews (661-700). It’s an expensive book, so there will be only one winner.

Here’s what you need to do. Once you post your review, take a screen shot of it and email it to me. That way I will be able to match your screenshot with the winning review and the correct email address. I’ll email the winner for a mailing address and announce him/her here and in the Naked Bible Facebook page.

If you have already reviewed Unseen Realm, you can’t participate on this giveaway (the earlier idea of altering old reviews just didn’t work well). However, you can still win something. Right now my latest book, The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on Its Own Terms[image error], is at 18 reviews. Once the 700th review for Unseen Realm appears I will check the reviews for The Bible Unfiltered. Anyone posting a review for that book from this point forward (#18+) is eligible to win a book chosen from the list below. I will pick one winner:

The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Literature, Revised Edition [image error]

The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions [image error]

Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross [image error]

Same rules as above — once you post the review, send me a screen shot via email.

Of Yehovah and Jehovah’s Witnesses

A week or so ago I saw something on Twitter that made me shake my head. An apparently well meaning Hebrew enthusiast gleefully reported that, after searching through hundreds of manuscripts, he’d found thousands of places where the divine name (YHWH) was vocalized by scribes as “Yehovah” but (and here’s what tickled him) none vocalized as “Yahweh”.

I’m not really sure why this would be so exciting,  but I’ll hazard a guess — there’s probably some dislike for “Yahweh” as the pronunciation of the divine name and an urge to be “truly Hebraic” by proving he knows better — that the name is really Yehovah.

This is silly. It shows a misunderstanding of why the scribes did what they did and why we can tell. I decided to make a short video explaining that.

The discussion of Yehovah also made me think of Jehovah’s witnesses. I’ll be interviewed this weekend for the Deeper Waters podcast. We’ll be talking about how my work in Unseen Realm matters for talking to Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. I thought I’d show you all something here that I will likely reference on that show.

Jehovah’s witnesses are fond of saying that John 1:1 doesn’t said “the Word [Jesus] was God” but “the Word was a god.” They base that on the absence of the definite article before the Greek word theos (“God”; “god”). Now, there are lengthy scholarly refutations of their approach, but here’s something simple. You could show this to the next JW who knocks on your door.

Question 1: are there any other instances in, say, just John 1, where theos lacks the definite article?

Question 2: If there are, does it make any sense to translated those occurrences “a god” instead of “God”?

Short answers: yes … and no way. Here’s a graphic to illustrate the point:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are all the instance of theos (in any form) in John 1. Most of them have the definite article (green rectangle). That means the rest lack the article. Now how would those verses (aside from John 1:1, which the JW wants to read “a god”) sound if we read “a god” instead of “God”? Here you go — have fun with your JW visitor!

John 1:6 –

There was a man sent from a god, whose name was John.

(So the God of the Bible didn’t send John — but some old, other god did!).

John 1:12-13 –

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of a god, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of a god.

Hmm.. . . I wonder which God was the father of people who believed in Jesus. Maybe they got to pick their favorite!

John 1:18 –

No one has ever seen a god; the only god, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

So, no one ever saw a god … not even Moses (Exod 33-34)? Abraham (Jehovah comes to Abram as a man – Gen 18)? But the particular god at the Father’s side (if that isn’t Jesus, which god is at Jehovah’s side?) has made him known. How? How did that other god make Jehovah known?

Naturally, JWs have their own Greek NT. They may have thought of this before — but how many JWs bring a Greek NT with them? At any rate, I usually go right to Exod 23:20-23 and other passages where the angel of YHWH is identified with YHWH and then go to Gen 48:15-16. They don’t see that coming. But it’s in their preferred Bible, the OT.

Naked Bible Fantasy Football Winner

I’m happy to let the world know that the Pugnacious Pugs, let by my pug, Mori, dominated in the Naked Bible Fantasy Football league (291-189 over Craig’s Steel Curtain). It’s been a long time since I’ve won the league. Mori’s drafting skills no doubt played a major role. In addition to the trophy, he got extra belly scratching.

Trey finished a glorious 4th place. Better luck next year!

About that DOD UFO Program: I’m with Nick

Nick Redfern has a short, to-the-point essay over at Mysterious Universe. I agree with his tepid enthusiasm.

And I’m still waiting for those emails where Tom DeLonge (and let’s throw in John Podesta) grilled their sources for whether Project Palladium had anything to do with these videos. Yes, there are other possibilities (again, Navy pilots would NOT be in  a need-to-know position when it comes to exotic Black projects), but this is an obvious starting point.

Saving Ancient Manuscripts from ISIS

Over on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog, Peter Gurry directs our attention to a 60 Minutes segment on the textual tragedy that accompanies the human tragedy caused by ISIS.

On Those “Alien Alloys” Noted in the NYT Report on the DOD UFO Program

Here’s an interesting piece from Scientific American (SA) on one point of the UFO story of a week or so ago from the New York Times. The claim SA is objecting to is this one: “In a group of buildings in Las Vegas, the government stockpiles alloys and other materials believed to be associated with UFOs.” here’s (fundamentally) why (from the SA article):

“I don’t think it’s plausible that there’s any alloys that we can’t identify,” Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society’s panel of experts, told Live Science. “My opinion? That’s quite impossible.”

Alloys are mixtures of different kinds of elemental metals. They’re very common – in fact, Sachleben said, they’re more common on Earth than pure elemental metals are – and very well understood. Brass is an alloy. So is steel. Even most naturally occurring gold on Earth is an alloy made up of elemental gold mixed with other metals, like silver or copper. [8 Important Elements You’ve Never Heard Of]

“There are databases of all known phases [of metal], including alloys,” May Nyman, a professor in the Oregon State University Department of Chemistry, told Live Science. Those databases include straightforward techniques for identifying metal alloys.

If an unknown alloy appeared, Nyman said it would be relatively simple to figure out what it was made of.

That’s pretty straightforward. The point: aliens would be using the same elemental metals we know of to make alloys because we’re part of the same universe. So, unless ET has discovered a new elemental metal (from where exactly?), the composition of alloys could be discerned.

The article has more on these and other “alloys,” so check it out!

And by the way, I’m still waiting for Tom DeLonge or anyone else to verify that the Project Palladium technology was not behind the Navy fighter / UFO videos. As noted earlier, that’s a reasonable question. If Tom really wants to be Mulder, he’d ask that question of his insiders — and the people (I hope) he has watching them, too.