Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 6

My Short Book for Seekers and New Believers (What Does God Want?) Is Now on Pre-Pub with Logos

My short, self-published book, What Does God Want?, is now available for pre-pub as a Logos edition. The book is a step back from Supernatural (as that book is a step back from Unseen Realm). It is designed to tell the story of the Bible (the supernatural epic in short form), lend clarity on what the gospel is versus what it is not, and has a short primer on discipleship. The book has a glossary of all the biblical terms, and a short summary of supernatural beings mentioned in the story as appendices. As such, it’s ideal for small groups that include seekers, new believers, and Christians for whom their faith has become a burden due to the subtle, imperceptible, and unintentional “transformation” of the simple gospel into a works-based merit system.

I self-published this book because I wanted to control the content. I sell paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon (links below), and now have licensed the content to Logos/Faithlife. My non-profit will use proceeds from sales and royalties from this book to fund its translation. My non-profit (MIQLAT) will give away the translations, and also (as we can afford it) purchases the paperback English version for churches to give away.

Links to other versions of the book:

Paperback: What Does God Want?[image error]

Kindle: What Does God Want?[image error]

I recently created a new “mission video” for MIQLAT. You can watch that here. It explains the phases of how I want to produce and give away content — i.e., there’s a plan here that will hopefully outlive me. Please consider supporting MIQLAT and purchasing What Does God Want? in all its forms. It all helps.

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Bible Project Archive of Spiritual Beings Videos On Which Mike Was a Consultant

Everyone – I just saw this link from the Bible Project in my Twitter feed. It’s a one-stop page / collection of the videos in their spiritual beings series. I was a consultant on the scripts for these videos. It’s pretty convenient, given the amount of material they produce.

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New MIQLAT Mission Video

I’ve made a new introductory video to explain the mission of my non-profit, MIQLAT. It runs just under 7 minutes. It has more detail than the old one and lays out our mission strategy. The video lives on the MIQLAT website here (please share), but I’ve embedded the YouTube location below.

Please give it a look!

 

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Registration for Last 2019 MEMRA Ancient Language Courses Now Live

The registration page for the last module of 2019 is now live. As with the earlier module, the courses are Beginning Biblical Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic.

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Naked Bible Podcast Given Kudos By The Federalist

The Naked Bible Podcast recently received recognition from the Federalist in a piece written by Holly Scheer entitled, “7 Provocative, Substantive Theology Podcasts You Need To Check Out.” The Naked Bible Podcast was described by Ms. Scheer this way: “This podcast covers theology in a deep but accessible way and discusses the Bible from a historical perspective, as people at the time would have seen it, and starts from the ground up.”

Yep; that’s what we do.

Our thanks to Holly Scheer and the Federalist for including us among podcasts by John Piper, Al Mohler, and Jonathan Pageau. We appreciate it!

 

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The Big Story of the Bible, Part 10

What follows is part 10 in a series by Dr. Ronn Johnson. – MSH

 

I have been away from this blog for some time, though it has been constantly on my mind. Since my last post, I have written and presented a course at our church on the big story of the Bible. It was rewarding, yet undoubtedly the toughest challenge I had ever faced as a Bible teacher. As I told the class several times, sometimes out of desperation, it’s one thing to teach a passage of the Bible, or even a survey of books within the Bible—most of us have tried that—but something entirely different to approach the text with the sole intent of tracking its largest narrative. Sometimes I felt like I knew where I was going, while at other times I felt very unsure of myself, even within an hour of walking into the class. Now that it’s over I look forward to stepping back and reviewing what I said, thinking through where my work needs improvement.

I would like to return to this blog for such a purpose, in fact: to review what I said in the class and hear myself talk. I invite your response if you have the time. In previous blogs my thinking has been largely negative, pointing out perceived problems with evangelicalism’s traditional understanding of the big story of the Bible. It will feel good to turn the ship around at this point and head in a positive direction. As you could guess, my understanding of the story will be categorically different from the Sin Paid For model that I have been talking about—where the punishment required for sin by God was voluntarily paid by a behaviorally perfect individual, with this payment then being applied to those who accept this gracious provision of Christ on their behalf. I realize that many people like this story because it offers God a way to relieve the tension between his justice and love through Jesus while remaining true to his own demands of grace and impartiality. But as I’ve recommended, this does not seem to be the tension played out in the biblical story. And once we change the tension or crisis of a story we are in effect writing a different story altogether.

In my class I developed the biblical story by working through the chronological flow of the text. This is easier said than done, I came to realize, and I’ll talk more of this below. But in general I tried to not give away what happened until it actually happened. I did this for those in the class who were unfamiliar with the Bible, as well as to experiment how this would work within my own presentation. For purposes of this blog I will lay out the whole story right up front, from beginning to end, then return back to go through the details in upcoming posts. I presume that readers of this website are familiar enough with the Bible to not be annoyed at being given the end of the story too soon.

I have used the analogy of a brick wall before, so I will continue the analogy here. What follows are the one hundred bricks which make up, in my opinion, the big story wall of the Bible. Ending up with this round number is not accidental, as you could guess, but mostly because I didn’t like the idea of ending on an odd number, like 89 or 105. I constantly reworked my pile to keep it at the century mark, which is unimportant in the long run. The number can certainly change. Here are my bricks listed in the order in which they appear (or occur) in the story, starting with Genesis 1:1:

God creates the universe
God creates elohim above humans
God creates humans below elohim
Humans fail a loyalty test
Humanity dies and awakens
Creation is sentenced to frustration
Adam’s family shows divided loyalties
Elohim interfere in human affairs
God destroys the earth
Elohim receive territorial rule

 

Elohim abuse their authority
God judges ruling elohim
Abraham switches spiritual loyalties
Abraham is promised blessing
Elohim come to earth as messengers
God designates loyalty as right
God designates disloyalty as wrong
Abraham’s family shows divided loyalties
God’s family is named Israel
Jacob bears twelve tribes

 

Joseph saves the family in Egypt
Pharaoh enslaves the family
God reveals his name
Passover redeems Israel
Israel accepts Torah
Israel worships Baal
God clarifies his jealousy
Loyalty is demanded
Disloyalty is predicted
Sacred space is institutionalized

 

Ritual is explained
Moral behavior is clarified
Rebellion is disallowed
Israel wanders for forty years
Israel reaffirms its loyalty
Joshua defeats Canaan
Tribal hostilities intensify
A Moabitess enters the family
David is chosen as king
David models loyalty

 

David is promised a king
David publicly sins
David is forgiven
Solomon welcomes idolatry
Idolatry divides the kingdom
A Gentile nation repents
Assyria conquers Israel
Babylon conquers Judah
Sacred space is destroyed
Jews are taken into exile

 

A new covenant is promised
A human is appointed to rule with God
A remnant remains loyal
Torah is reexamined
Judea is recolonized
Gentile destruction is assumed
God goes silent
Israel fights for independence
Jewish purity is recognized
Herod paganizes the temple

 

Righteous people await the messiah
John announces the messiah
A unique theos is born
God declares his love for Jesus
Jesus models loyalty
Satan cedes his authority to Jesus
Elohim recognize Jesus
Jesus exorcizes elohim
Jesus fulfills Torah
Jesus clarifies ritual

 

Jesus welcomes the impure
Jesus teaches in parables
Jesus confers authority to disciples
Jesus suffers
Jesus dies
Temple veil is torn
Jesus resurrects
Jesus ascends
Disciples preach Jesus’ lordship
Jerusalem believers scatter

 

Paul meets Jesus
Peter refuses Cornelius
God declares Gentiles pure
Holy Spirit confirms Gentile favor
Paul explains the shape of Abraham’s family
Jesus’ death is interpreted as spiritual victory
Jesus’ death is interpreted as new Passover
Jesus’ death is interpreted as ritual cleansing
Torah becomes redundant
Paul clarifies Jewish ethics

 

Paul collects Gentile money
Jesus’ kingdom is here but not here
Disloyalty remains a temptation
Paul appears in Rome
Believers battle defeated elohim
Believers anticipate Jesus’ return
Believers are ‘born again’
Believers switch roles with ruling elohim
Non-believers face God’s wrath
God restores creation

 

I believe these ideas form, when read from left-to-right, the story of the Bible. I am curious what you think of the list as it stands. I fear that something is being left out, or that I’m including something that doesn’t belong. I will explain my way through this list in future posts, tackling five to ten at a time, depending on how much explanation I feel they need. In the end I hope that my journey through this process leads you to develop your own list and your own big story of the Bible.

Some thoughts:

The best way to judge the accuracy of anyone’s big story of the Bible is not to ask whether we like it, or whether it is a good story, but to ask whether the story actually presents itself within the narrative. That sounds basic, but this has been the burden of my previous posts. The Sin Paid For model fails in the details. So my purpose in developing my list comes from taking my burden to heart and literally starting over. I simply tried to notice what happened in the Bible while keeping in mind that a larger story was being told.
As I said, I found the process of looking for the Bible’s larger narrative to be a unique exercise. It generally felt uncomfortable. When teaching the Bible we try to give account for nearly everything that is said; in looking for the Bible’s story, however, we jump from text to text, leaving out large portions along the way. This is because not everything said or done in the Bible moves its story forward.
This naturally presents a chicken/egg problem: How am I to know if an event in the Bible is important if I do not have a larger frame of reference by which to judge the importance of the event? Take, for example, the communion meal of 1 Corinthians 11. Christianity has traditionally interpreted the “Lord’s supper” as mentioned by Paul (11:20) to be a significant event, even to the point of treating it as a sacrament. So I was tempted to include it as a brick in my wall. But as I kept reading I noticed that outside of two chapters of this one letter (1 Corinthians 10-11) the supper is never mentioned again in the NT. So should communion be important to the story of the Bible? Judging by church history, we would have to say yes; judging by the Bible’s own story I would say no. My point is that it is difficult to know exactly when something should be considered important to the story of the Bible until the whole story is told, and even then difficult judgment calls still have to be made. There is no easy solution to this problem.
To make sense of my ideas you will need to understand the material found on the Naked Bible website. We are all indebted to Mike for explaining the divine council worldview so well to so many people. He has done the heavy lifting in making a very simple point: read the Bible the way it was meant to be understood. This includes a divine council worldview, or the idea that multiple created gods (elohim) have been assigned rule over the cosmos by the will of Yahweh. I have been sitting in a plural god worldview for almost twenty years myself, and my list assumes this kind of language and worldview right from the start (e.g., #2: God creates elohim above humans).
As foundational as a divine council worldview is to understanding the Bible, those of us who use it will still find ourselves disagreeing on many parts of the bigger story. This is to be expected, as the Bible is long and complex, and we have to navigate literally hundreds of decision points along the way. So expect my big story to be my own, and your story to be yours. We cannot inherit our story from someone else. I was once asked which theologian I agreed with the most, and I quickly said “myself.” My friend was a bit offended at this, but I made the case that we all think this way. We take a bit from this person, and bit from that person. We never believe everything someone says (or at least we shouldn’t), and in the end this means that we are forming our own theology as we go through life. Right now the theologian with whom you are most content is yourself, and this is fine. I know of no better alternative. It just means that your work is never done.
In working through my list, remember that many of the more popular evangelical bricks have already been set aside during my previous posts (e.g., original sin, God’s demand for moral perfection, God’s acceptance of substitutes, etc.). Do not add these bricks back in out of habit! One of the major differences this will make will be in the development of the OT storyline (#’s 1-53) where I will maintain that the first testament actually worked, or accomplished what God wanted it to accomplish, even prior to the appearance of Jesus. Evangelicals often assume that God’s story was corrected with the coming of Jesus, treating the OT like a problem that needed solution. I do not take this view.
My list generally follows the chronological flow of the text, though this is not always the case. There are times that I needed to place an idea into the story when it actually happened as opposed to when the canon finally got around to explaining it. For example, my 11th point (elohim abuse their authority) seems to begin to take place in the time period of Genesis 11, but it will be much later before biblical writers examine the idea with any clarity. So in trying to be a storyteller I felt I had to reveal some parts of the story before the original reader would have been told about it. This is another reason why reading the Bible beats reading someone’s story of the Bible!
At times I have included in my list a historical event or idea that did not happen in the Bible but which directly affected how biblical characters perceived their world. Herod’s embellishment of Ezra’s temple (begun in 20 B.C.) is not recorded in our canon, for example, though his work remains one of the most ambitious and impressive building projects in world history. More important to the Bible’s story, however, was what Herod accomplished in the negative sense: by openly displaying Roman symbols throughout the courtyard, and by importing Egyptian and Mesopotamian priests to conduct temple rituals, Herod thoroughly paganized Israel’s most sacred shrine. Though none of this is recorded in the Bible, all the stories of the NT need to be read in light of this sad reality. So it made my list as #60.
Every story of the Bible, including my own, will ultimately be judged by how it presents Jesus and what he came to do. God’s investment in Jesus is indescribable, quite frankly, leading to the honest fear that if we miss the meaning of Jesus we miss the story of the Bible. But here is where we need to be careful and not overreact or overreach. What specifically did Jesus’ ministry set out to accomplish? Answering this question brings with it the temptation to credit Jesus with things he never intended to do. For example, did Jesus’ advent make it possible for people to finally become righteous in the sight of God? While many versions of the Bible’s story would say yes, I am sensing otherwise, as the NT will begin with a group of already-righteous people awaiting the Messiah (#61). I use this situation to inform the question of how Jesus’ appearance relates to the question of being righteous.
So what is the point of getting the story of the Bible right? At least one benefit would be getting the gospel right. God has promised to work through the story he is telling, even to the point of compelling people to find it ultimately true—so true, in fact, that they want to become a part of it themselves. This may even be what becoming a Christian actually means: joining a story already in progress.

Thanks for listening, and I welcome your emails to ronnjohnson7@gmail.com. I will try to reply.

 

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Bible Project Video on Angels and Cherubim

Here’s the latest in the series of Bible Project videos I was blessed to consult on. Enjoy!

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Recent Review of Robert Alter’s Translation of the Old Testament

I’ve had a number of people ask my opinion of Alter’s new translation. I haven’t read it. I also had several people send me the recent Wall Street Journal review by Blaire French. (Thanks to all of them!) I’ve reproduced it below. It’s a good (and important) illustration of how Alter misses the boat in his (French’s words) “attempt to de-Christianize” some things (this criticism has popped up in other reviews in regard to different items).

Putting ‘Soul’ Back in the Hebrew Bible
A new translation is impressive, but its take on nefesh misses something important.

Has the soul been taken from the Hebrew Bible? In the King James version, the word “soul” is very much in evidence. Perhaps most memorable is Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd. . . . He restoreth my soul.” But no more.

Recently the word has gone out of fashion with scholars and translators. They argue that the traditional Hebrew word for soul—nefesh—should be translated as “life breath,” “the essence of a human being” or “person.” According to the new consensus, soul is too Greek: It connotes something separate from the body. Christian thought largely has accepted body-soul dualism. Yet it is alien to the ancient Israelite worldview, which considered the nefesh to be inextricably bound to life in the flesh.

Berkeley scholar Robert Alter, in his new translation of the Hebrew Bible, has made a decisive statement against soul. Nowhere in the text does he render nefesh as soul—because he believes it would import Christian beliefs into the Hebrew text. Mr. Alter’s Psalmist declares, “The Lord is my shepherd. . . . My life He brings back.”

In the attempt to de-Christianize the nefesh, however, Mr. Alter and others create a metaphysical gulf between the Hebrew Bible and traditional English translations. Nefesh has a range of meanings—many of which indicate that it is indeed intrinsic to corporeal existence. Animals and humans, at the moment of their creation, are called a “living nefesh” in the book of Genesis. In Numbers, a “dead nefesh” is a corpse. The word is also found in Sheol, the shadowy underworld populated by the deceased described in Psalms 49 and 88. This raises the specter of a nefesh unbound by flesh.

Then there is the prophet Elijah. When calling on God to bring a child back to life, he requests the return of the boy’s nefesh. It re-enters the child and he revives (1 Kings 17:21-22). However the verse is parsed, the nefesh exists apart from the body.

There is also inconsistency in the current effort to exclude a transcendent dimension of nefesh. The Hebrew word ruach, often translated as “spirit,” has not been excluded in the same way. Like nefesh, ruach straddles the material and the ethereal. It may be understood as “breath,” as when Job laments, in the midst of his afflictions, that his ruach has become repugnant to his wife. But it refers also to something not tied to the body.

Take, for example, Mr. Alter’s translation of God’s speech in Isaiah 42:1: “I have set My spirit [ruach] on him, he shall bring forth justice to the nations.” This line is part of an extended parallel. According to the New Revised Standard Version, the first half reads: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul [nefesh] delights.” The new translation eradicates entirely any reference to a nefesh: “Look, My servant, I have stayed him up, My chosen one, I have greatly favored.” This lets God keep his spirit but takes away his soul, diminishing the poetic beauty of the original.

Since God has a nefesh, it cannot only be tied to earthly flesh. Dualism is not foreign to the Hebrew Bible. To exclude “soul” as a definition for nefesh because it sounds too Christian does not do justice to the original text. Emphasizing the Hebrew Bible’s concrete approach to life should not obstruct its occasional reach toward otherworldliness. Nefesh deserves to have its soul restored.

Ms. French is an adjunct lecturer in biblical Hebrew at the University of Virginia.

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2019 Naked Bible Conference Date and Venue

Many of you have been waiting to hear about the 2019 Naked Bible Conference. It hasn’t been easy to secure a venue and, consequently, a date. Both of those hurdles are now behind us.

The date for the 2019 Naked Bible Conference has now been set for October 12. We had to move the date from August to get the venue. We’ll be holding the conference at the same location we held it last year, in Dallas, TX. We experimented with Kansas City, but nothing affordable worked out. Consequently, we’re confirmed at the Omni Dallas Hotel at Park West for Saturday, October 12.

Other details (speakers, registration cost, conference website, etc.) will be determined and confirmed shortly.

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My Interview on the Inaugural Episode of the Christian Post’s New Podcast

According to their website, The Christian Post is ” the nation’s most comprehensive Christian news website and was launched in March 2004, incorporated with the vision of delivering up-to-date news, information, and commentaries relevant to Christians across denominational lines. . . . Through the website, The Christian Post presents national and international coverage of current events affecting and involving Christian leaders, church bodies, ministries, mission agencies, schools, businesses, and the general Christian public.”

As an effort to reach across denominational lines, The Christian Post has begun a new podcast. I was it’s first guest! The podcast is hosted by Brandon Showalter, who has read The Unseen Realm and Angels, and listens to the Naked Bible Podcast. He’s familiar with, and enthusiastically encourages, the sort of content I try to produce and the mission to help people in the pews learn Scripture in context.

Please give the episode a listen and follow the Christian Post podcast!

 

 

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