Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 30

Win a Signed Copy of Mike’s New Book: The Bible Unfiltered

I received author copies of my newest book a few days ago. I have 6 to give away.

Here’s how to win a signed copy!

1.       Post a review of Unseen Realm on Amazon. If you’ve already posted one, you could edit it so as to qualify for the next step.

2.       Email a screenshot of the review with your physical mailing address to: calvinheiser@gmail.com.

The giveaway ends midnight, Oct 3 (Pacific time). Submissions received after midnight will not be considered.

On Friday, October 6, 7 pm Pacific, we’ll have a live drawing of the 6 winners on my Facebook / YouTube livestream. You have to follow me on Twitter (@msheiser) or on Facebook, or my personal YouTube Channel to get alerts for the livestream.

You do not have to be watching to win.

PEERANORMAL Episode 11: Bigfoot DNA

Back in 2012 the world heard that Bigfoot DNA had been isolated and genetically tested under controlled laboratory conditions. Those involved claimed that the testing had proven the existence of Bigfoot (aka, Sasquatch), and that the creature was a hybrid between modern homo sapiens and an unknown primate species.In a short time, the story unraveled and the research was scrutinized by experts revealing a number of flaws. But this was not the only attempt at producing genetic evidence for Bigfoot. There were earlier and subsequent tests. Is there genuine evidence for Bigfoot DNA?

The episode is now live.

Michael Bird: Brief Thoughts on the New Perspective on Paul (NPP)

I get asked about my opinion of the NPP at events and on Q & A episodes of the Naked Bible Podcast. I always recommend Kent Yinger’s book,  The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction[image error]. It’s short and clear.

I’m happy to also recommend this brief set of comments from Michael Bird on the issue. It won’t educate you like Yinger’s book, but Bird captures my own thoughts. In a sentence: “The NPP is correct in what it affirms, but often wrong in what it denies.” That’s well said. Read what he means at the link (and get a lot more with Yinger’s book — the same spirit there).

David Meade and the Sept 23 Rapture: Living Testimony to Biblical Illiteracy

This is embarrassing. It shames Christ and tarnishes all those who sincerely try to understand Scripture and get people interested in it. There’s just no other way to put it. Lord willing after nothing happens on Sept 23 David Meade will just quietly disappear. But I doubt it.

Here’s a quotation from Meade — it isn’t difficult to see how uninformed this man is:

Jesus lived for 33 years. The name Elohim, which is the name of God to the Jews, was mentioned 33 times [in the Bible],” Meade told The Washington Post. “It’s a very biblically significant, numerologically significant number. I’m talking astronomy. I’m talking the Bible … and merging the two.

Elohim mentioned 33 times? Has this guy ever heard of a concordance?  (That’s a rhetorical question).

Elohim occurs thousands of times in the Hebrew Bible. Here’s a list (the file is 250 pp). Here’s a more narrow list — all the places where elohim occurs as the subject of a singular verb (denoting it refers to the lone God of Israel; only 71 pages).

So where does this put Mr. Meade? Our choices are that his comments are ineptitude (he’s really a terrible researcher) or that he’s counting on his followers to not question his teachings (he’s a false teacher and a manipulator). Nice choice.

Instead of ignoring folks like Mr. Meade, the serious Church should call him out. He’s an embarrassment to Bible study and Christian ethics. The same can be said for others who teach the same sort of nonsense that weren’t interviewed by the Huffington Post.

The only question now is, after nothing happens on Sept 23 will he apologize and repent or just lie about a contrived fulfillment?

Book of Jasher, Chronicles of Gad the Seer

I am frequently asked for my opinion on the Book of Jasher and the Book of Gad the Seer (more properly called the Chronicles of Gad the Seer, per 1 Chron 29:29). There are books by both titles floating around (typically on the internet) that purport to be these ancient source texts from the biblical (OT) time period. They aren’t. Books you might see online or buy in some form are not the authentic source texts referred to in the Bible. They are not books that belong in the Bible. They aren’t even ancient.

I have blogged before about the so-called book of Jasher. The link includes a short peer-reviewed article on the recent book purporting to be the ancient source text.

For this post, I want to add something about the Chronicles of Gad the Seer. Most scholars

Fortunately, there is a fine peer-reviewed article on the literary work that purports to be the Chronicle of Gad the Seer: Meir Bar-Ilan, “The Date of The Words of Gad the Seer.” Journal of Biblical Literature 109.3 (1990): 475-492. It’s available on academia.edu so I have posted it here:

Bar-IlanChroniclesGadSeer

The introduction to the article reads in part:

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a “new” book by the name of The Words of Gad the Seer. This is an apocryphal Hebrew book known only from a unique manuscript that was copied at Cochin, India, in the middle of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was purchased by the University of Cambridge, England, and since then it has been there. The name of the book, together with other extra-biblical books that were in the possession of the Jews of Cochin, has appeared in print in German, Hebrew, and English during the last two centuries. Nevertheless, this book is almost unknown to the scholarly world. The aim of this article is not only to draw attention to this book but also to demonstrate its significance by evaluating its date.

Bar-Ilan concludes the book is very old, but not the book referred to in the OT:

The Words of Gad the Seer treated here is not the book that was in existence in biblical times and was apparently lost. The book discussed here was composed in one of the early centuries of this era, but was noticed only at the end of the eighteenth century. When the book was discovered, it was thought to be a medieval work and was assumed to be of little value. Contemplating the different proofs of its date of composition shows that the arguments for its lateness are outweighed by evidence of its early date. Nevertheless, even if one believes that the book is late, its importance is unquestionable. Its value lies in showing the modern scholar some of the techniques of the editors of the biblical narrative. It presents apocalyptic visions and perhaps supplies the missing verse in Psalm 145. Of further importance is the contribution of this book to the knowledge of the Hebrew language in the first centuries of this era: Biblical Hebrew on the one hand and philosophical Hebrew on the other. Above all, this book might enhance our understanding of the book of Revelation and the literature of that period in general; and the history of the Jews of Cochin would not be the lesser for it.

In short, the book has value, but isn’t to be regarded as a lost book of the canon.

Science Now Able to Remotely Hack the Brain

Yes, you read that correctly.

Good thing I don’t need to make things up for my novels. Stuff like this makes freaking readers out a whole lot easier.

Thanks, scientists!

The Portent Portending: Synthetic Genomes Are Just a Click Away

Readers of my fiction know that synthetic biology was a sub-plot element in The Portent. Well, we’re moving down the road toward creating humans from scratch (or some sort of human derivative). This article describes a new process for creating a functioning gene.

What could go wrong?

A (Useless?) Plea to Stop the Madness

Had some short chat time with Joel Richardson today and yesterday. Joel sent me a brief audio link to some comments of Hugh Ross that a good number of people who promote the flat earth idea are actually atheists posing at Christians to make the faith look stupid (listen below):

http://drmsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Hugh-Ross-Refutes-Flat-Earth.m4a

Ross’s suggestion actually makes a lot of sense, though I don’t think Hugh’s thought is more than an impression at this point (perhaps based on some personal situations or observations). It makes sense because of the endgame — to make Scripture vulnerable to debunking and make the faith look irrational. It’s a coherent strategy and, frankly, an effective one.

I wish Christian Middle Earth (CME) would wake up. I’ve said a number of times that I have a fondness for it because it’s filled with people who have not quit the faith when they didn’t get answers to questions — they tenaciously seek to teach themselves. But CME is bloated with ignorance and deeply flawed thinking. It is doubly cursed by über-literalism and contextual ignorance. To be blunt, most of what CME “researchers” think is truth was said 150 years ago and has been repeatedly debunked ever since.

Without the intellectual crises that snowballed after the age of exploration (16th century), the decipherment of the Sanskrit Vedas (17th-18th centuries), the decipherment of ancient Near Eastern languages in the 19th centuries, and Darwin’s Origin of Species (19th century), CME would be a ghost town. What crises? The discovery of other human beings in lands not mentioned in the Bible . . . The discovery that Sanskrit was actually related to Latin and Greek . . . The discovery of alternative world chronologies that rivaled those of the OT . . . The discovery of stories of human origins and a great flood that were quite similar to those in the OT. These discoveries collectively led to, on one hand, bizarre Bible interpretations about racial origins and diversity, pre- or co-Adamic humans, the nonsensical gap theory with its imaginary pre-Fall Fall, aligning dinosaur fossils with a pre-Eden Eden, etc. People predisposed to despising the creation stories and pre-flood history of “Jews” (OT) found in these other texts alternatives (especially the Sanskrit Vedas). They developed their own theories about earth’s history — for example a series of “roots races” and habitation of earth, first by disembodied spirit-beings from space, on to Atlantean giants, whose knowledge was preserved in human lines peripheral or antecedent to Adam’s — a master race whose ancestry came from superior races (in some versions, white and Nordic). This in turn fed the fires of anti-Semitism and the non-Jewish Jesus, descended of course from the master race. (I fictionalize some of this in The Portent, my sequel to The Facade).

CME folks have actually built a theology ON this sort of material to (they think) combat the occultic versions of the same material (that gets peddled on Ancient Aliens). It’s like fighting cancer with the bubonic plague. Folks — ALL these ideas have discernible intellectual histories that are well-documented. This is why I have said that a lot of CME (and non-Christian Middle Earth — stuff like ancient astronaut theory) are neither biblical viable, nor historically defensible, nor arguable from serious study of the primary texts. People (Christian and otherwise) *used* what they could from non-biblical primary texts and then bent the Bible to their will to bolster their agendas (either “the Bible said this all along” or “the Bible is trash”). Bad hermeneutics, ignorance of the ancient languages, dismissal of the context of primary sources, and just plain flawed thinking (the non sequitur is the sacrament of middle earth in all its denominations) has produced untrue truth. It’s madness. And the spirit of the age — where the death of expertise is glorified since “we have the internet now” — compounds the problem.

The solution is simple: Let the Bible be what it is. God picked the writers and let them be who they were in their own context. Put another way, don’t make the Bible be what it isn’t. It’s not a science book. It’s not a repository of exhaustive knowledge covering everything that’s ever happened. It’s selective. It has its own (God’s) agenda in mind. It’s targeted to certain truth propositions. And, like any other piece of communication, its writers did NOT intend to be understood literally all the time. (See the last question and my answer on my FAQ for more).

So, please, can we just let the Bible be what it is, interpreting it in its own context, doing exegesis of its original language in that ancient context? Without imposing our own modern ideas and questions on it, making it “answer” questions that its writers never raised or addressed? Can we do that?

Maybe I need a faith infusion today, but I’m thinking the answer is just going to be more madness. Dig the trenches deeper and “defend the faith” that at some point popped into our imaginations while we visited Christian Middle Earth.

 

House Church Network in Houston

I just posted about Houston flood relief, and this second group came to mind — not only for flood relief, but also to anyone who follows the podcast and my content who might be in or near the Houston area. The Church Project has begun its own fundraising campaign for flood victims. This is actually a network of home churches (a couple dozen of them), mostly just north of Houston proper. Check out the website. I know one of the home pastors in this network.

Houston Flood Relief Note

If you’re considering donating to help with flood relief, check out this link. It was recommended to me by Joe, my web designer. Joe is pretty thorough about vetting things and has helped the cause himself by designing the artwork for the fundraising campaign. The funds go to Texas Search and Rescue.