Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 59

Naked Bible Annual Statistics Report

Time for the annual review of how this blog did for the year.

Of my three blogs, this one is in the middle for traffic (a bit behind PaleoBabble). This year 190,378 people visited this blog. All time (a little over five years’ running) there have been 631 posts to date at a word count of 317,448.

Some related sites of interest:

My Divine Council site

unique visitors: 20,006

number of visits: 32,080

website hits: 183,191

My Two Powers in Heaven site

unique visitors: 6,853

number of visits: 10,090

website hits: 58,216

My Ancient Near Eastern Languages site

unique visitors: 20,733

number of visits: 65,102

website hits: 312,340

I don’t really do anything with these other websites. They are basically static (save for the recent changes on the divine council site).

More comprehensively, my homepage averaged just under a million hits per month. (I need to start doing something intentional here … and that will happen soon … to get over that hump). Here are the homepage stats:

unique visitors: 362,522

number of visits: 1,034,272

website hits: 11,578,595

Thanks!

Technorati Tags: ancient, bible, council, divine, east, languages, MEMRA, near, two powers

What is it with the Hebrew Roots Movement?

I’m not that familiar (or interested) in the Hebrew roots movement, but in the past month or so I’ve gotten several emails about it and its ideas. I’m presuming that not everyone associated with the movement thinks as poorly or oddly as the folks I’ve been directed to for commentary on their teachings. At least I hope that’s the case. If anyone can tell me what drives this bunch, feel free.

Anyway, a lot of the consternation has been about Rob Skiba and Russ Houck and their Christian (?) or Hebrew (?) or Pagan (?) denial of Trinitarianism. Others have commented on him at length, so I’m directing readers to that work. Cris Putnam has put a good deal of effort into this movement, as has Natalina at the Extraordinary Intelligence blog. The arguments by the Hebrew roots writers are deeply flawed and propelled by non sequiturs. My impression is that the arguments are old and deeply flawed, almost as though the point is “hey, look at us over here – we can argue as poorly about Christology as the Zeitgeist folks.”

Technorati Tags: God, hebrew, houck, Jesus, roots, skiba, trinitarian

Last Week for MEMRA Enrollment

Just a reminder.

Enrollment for the module beginning January 6, 2014 ends on Christmas day. There’s a little over a week left. I’m not sure when the next module would be.

Available courses are:

Beginning Biblical Hebrew
Beginning Biblical Greek
Beginning Ugaritic

All courses are full first-year grammar courses. They are scheduled out as 52 weeks long, but you can work at your own pace, with me available for questions and help. See here for course descriptions and information on textbooks.

Registration ends Christmas day.

New Resource Help for Reading the Greek New Testament

Well-known Greek grammarian and NT professor Dan Wallace recently posted his endorsement of A New Reader’s Lexicon of the Greek New Testament on his blog. For those who don’t have Bible software (like Logos) where you can make your own vocab lists by chapter as you read, this is a great resource.

Divine Council Site Changes

I just wanted to post a short heads up about changes I made tonight over at my divine council site. Many of you have poked around there and know that I had some excerpts from the draft of my book (in process), The Myth That Is True. All that has been taken down, along with the draft of the book from the page on my homepage where it was sold.

The reason for the changes is that I am now under contract for the book. I will be taking substantial time in 2014 to do a revision and some other related projects (that I can’t describe just yet). Part of the contract necessitates removing the material described above.

The only thing that is really “gone” is the draft. The other items have been replaced by material from the Faithlife Study Bible and the Lexham Bible Dictionary (LBD).1 Some of my conference papers are still at the divine council site, along with two journal articles that have been linked on the web by permission.

Frankly, the content is better than what I had there previously. I should have done this a year or so ago. The centerpiece is my LBD article on the divine council. It’s 24 pages long and touches on a variety of facets of the divine council in biblical theology. It’s the longest treatment you’d find on the divine council outside of a book or my dissertation.

If you haven’t downloaded the FSB you should. I did close to 400,000 words of the thing and there is a lot of divine council content in there. The LBD comes with it. ↩

Technorati Tags: angels, assembly, council, Deut 32, divine, elohim, gods, Heiser, monotheism, Psalm 82

Inerrancy, Adam and ETS

It’s been two weeks since I attended the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (held this year in Baltimore). The theme this year was inerrancy. I know it’s a tired subject for many, but it’s still quite current within ETS, due in no small part to recent books that force the question. I speak here primarily of issues surrounding the historicity of Adam.  Consequently there were whole sessions devoted to inerrancy and the historical Adam, subjects about which I’ve blogged here at length.

For those who didn’t attend, there are two convenient ways to get a good feel for the discussion.

First, the major session on inerrancy is included these speakers and topics:

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)

Classic Inerrancy is Necessary for Evangelical Integrity

Peter E. Enns (Eastern University)

Abandoning Inerrancy Is Necessary for Evangelical Integrity

Michael F. Bird (Ridley Melbourne College of Mission and Ministry, Australia)

Inerrancy is Not Necessary for Evangelicalism Outside the USA

D.A. Carson (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)

An Evaluation of Some Recent Discussions on the Doctrine of Scripture

Ben Witherington III (Asbury Theological Seminary)

The Truth will Out: an Historian’s Perspective on the Inerrancy Controversy

Panel Discussion on Inerrancy

These sessions are accessible by audio. I found links to the audio of the sessions on Google Drive (hover over the files at the link to see the session titles). I’m not sure what Google Drive really is (i.e., if you have to have a GMail address), but there you go.

As far as the historical Adam discussion goes, the four scholars below and their topics can all be found in the book, Four Views on the Historical Adam (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology).

Denis O. Lamoureux (St. Joseph’s College, the University of Alberta)

No Adam: The Evolutionary Creation Position

John H. Walton (Wheaton College)

Adam and Eve as Archetypes

C. John Collins (Covenant Theological Seminary)

Adam and Eve: Who They Were and Why We Should Care

William Barrick (The Master’s Seminary)

A Historical Adam, Young-Earth Creation View

Technorati Tags: Adam, evangelical, historicity, inerrancy

Update on Myth That is True Book and Prayer Request

Thanks to all those who alerted me in the comments and by email that they were praying for my request. The meeting I alluded to in the earlier post went amazingly well. Really all I could have hoped for. I can’t share specifics, but I can tell you that my “Myth” book will be published and shepherded through the whole process (editorial, PR, marketing, etc.) by a group of people who know what they’re doing and have a long track record of success. My major concern was that all those involved understood the book — why it’s unique and the controversy it will create. I have no doubts that everyone involved “gets it” completely (and they loved the book to boot). It will be a lengthy process with many facets, but it’s officially underway. Stay tuned here and at Twitter in 2014 for details when I can provide them.

Blogging to Resume Soon – And Prayer Request

I’m nearly home from being away for two weeks at the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society, Society of Biblical Literature, and the American Academy of Religion (and some family reunion time). I’ll be blogging about some of what I heard and experienced soon.

For those who have followed my work on the divine council, I have a prayer request. I have an important meeting on Friday, Dec 6 in relation to that work appearing in print. That’s all I can say now. Pray that everyone involved will have complete clarity of thought as to what we discuss.

In a related matter, I’d like any of you who are in the ministry (any sort of pastoral or chaplaincy position) who have been blessed by the divine council work to email me. I’m especially interested in hearing from those of you who have tried to teach the divine council material in your ministry in any way. I’ll give you details and an explanation in a reply. My email address can be found under “About”.

Thoughtful Review of MacArthur’s “Strange Fire” Book

Thanks to Nijay Gupta’s note on Twitter that directed me to this review by Craig Keener.

I’ve not followed the controversy over John MacArthur’s “Strange Fire” conference (a pugnacious criticism of the charismatic movement), which I presume was in part arranged to promote his book. (I didn’t even know there was a book until today – I don’t follow popular preachers at all). But I read the review. Keener is a charismatic scholar I met a couple of years ago at the Pastorum Conference where we were both speakers. I really enjoyed his session and chatting with him. He’s a committed NT scholar with a long history in the charismatic tradition, so the review caught my interest. It’s very good – thoughtful and attentive to detail, offering both positive and negative commentary. If you’re interested in this subject area, this would be something you’ll want to read.

Technorati Tags: fire, keener, macarthur, review, strange

Yahweh and Satan in Samuel and Chronicles

What follows is the pre-edited version of an article I wrote for Bible Study Magazine a couple years ago.1 As the publication title suggests, the magazine is aimed at the lay person. I usually contribute two pieces to each issue (roughly sixty articles so far). I hope that encourages readers to subscribe — but there’s a lot of other good stuff in each issue. The goal of the magazine is to produce content for the lay person that goes beyond what they’d get in church.

God or Satan?

Who Provoked David to Number the People?

One of the more vexing problems in the Old Testament is how to parse the parallel accounts of 1 Chronicles 21:1-17 and 2 Samuel 24:1-25.

1 Chronicles 21

2 Samuel 24

1 Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. 2 So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number.”
1Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” 2 So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army, who was with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people . . .

The two accounts are nearly identical, save for one glaring disparity: the Chronicler’s version has Satan as David’s instigator, while 2 Samuel names Yahweh, the God of Israel, as the provocateur. The Chronicler’s account notes that David’s act “was evil in the sight of God,” but this line is omitted in 2 Samuel. Both accounts have God posing three punishments before David, but David leaves the decision to the Lord. The Angel of Yahweh executes a plague on the land in both versions.

The two accounts as they stand are explicitly contradictory with respect to who provokes David to number the people. The options for resolution are all troubling. If we want the blame to be placed on Satan, we must identify Yahweh as Satan. The reverse strategy requires that we identify Satan with Yahweh. If Satan can somehow be removed from the picture, then we are faced with the fact that Yahweh incited David to do something for which Yahweh punished him. Is there any way out of this mess?

The solution to the identity of the instigator is actually straightforward. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word satan is not a proper personal name.  This is because it is nearly always paired with the definite article in Hebrew (the word “the”). Like English, Hebrew does not permit the definite article to be paired with a proper personal name (I don’t call myself, “the Mike”). The common noun satan paired with the definite article means “the adversary” — not “Satan” as in the proper name of the Devil.  This is why some English Bibles have “the Adversary” in passages like Job 1:6 and not “Satan”.2

There are only a handful of places in the Hebrew Bible where satan is not preceded by the definite article. 1 Chron 21:1 is one of them, and so many interpreters see this is a rare instance of the being known as Satan in the Old Testament. If this is the case, though, we have a blatant contradiction. There is a better solution.

The only other place in the Old Testament where satan lacks the definite article and the term is used of a divine figure is Numbers 22:22, where we read that the Angel of Yahweh stood in the way of Balaam and his donkey “as an adversary (satan).” The Angel was opposing Balaam; he was a divinely-appointed adversary.

This connection between the word satan and the Angel of Yahweh is crucial to understanding the discrepancy between 1 Chronicles 21:1 and 2 Samuel 24:1. In both accounts the Angel is present as the one who dispenses God’s judgment upon David (1 Chron 21:14-15; 2 Sam 24:15-16). Since God and the Angel of the Lord were frequently identified with each other in the Old Testament (e.g., Exod 3; Judges 6), the best solution seems to be that we don’t have Satan, God’s cosmic enemy, in the Chronicles passage. Rather, we have two writers both referring to God—one using “Yahweh” and the other referring to Yahweh in human form, the Angel (cp. Joshua 5:13-15) in another adversarial role.

One question looms, despite this solution: Why? Why would Yahweh incite David to do something he would later punish him for? Both accounts begin by saying Yahweh was angry with Israel, not David. Yahweh chose to use David as his instrument of judgment against the nation, much in the same way he had used Pharaoh centuries before. As Pharaoh was still accountable for his actions, so was David. Judgment and its means both belonged to the Lord.

For a scholarly journal article that argues for the angel connection / explanation in the piece, see Paul Evans, “Divine intermediaries in 1 Chronicles 21 an overlooked aspect of the Chronicler’s theology,” Biblica 85:4 (2004): 545-558. ↩
As I have blogged before, by rule of Hebrew grammar, there is no “Satan” personage in the Old Testament, which is not to say the Old Testament knows of no evil arch-enemy of God. That is evident from Genesis 3. Although the Old Testament never makes the connection, later Jewish writings label the enemy of Genesis 3 with the word satan. Consequently, by the time of the New Testament, the identification was secure. ↩

Technorati Tags: angel, census, chronicles, David, Samuel, satan, Yahweh