Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 80

Mike's Divine Council Book First Draft Now Completed

Many of you know that I've been working (puttering is more accurate) on a book for non-specialists (i.e., lay people and pastors, not the academy) on what I refer to as the divine council worldview fo the Bible. It's entitled The Myth That Is True. I've been at it for years. The day has finally come — the first draft (329 pages) is finally in the can. You can access the draft here.

As far as what "in the can" means, please see the notes on the front page of the file. Among other things, they make it clear that this file will be removed at the end of this month.

For those who were former subscribers to my newsletter years ago, no user name or password is required to download the file. You should have received an email about the draft, but I can imagine that many email addresses have changed over time.

The logic behind the draft is to lay out Old Testament theology without all the academese and plethora of footnotes for the interested non-specialist. Granted, there are still two hundred footnotes, but many of them simply direct people to a URL that I will be using for technical, scholarly discussion and bibliography for many points in the book (that URL is not live yet, and will not turn live until the book actually gets published). Consequently, don't bother me with emails like "your argument for XYZ missed this or that" or "this argument isn't supported by secondary literature." If you do that I'll know you didn't read (or understand) this. Trust me, what I cover in the book is where I live as a scholar. I am familiar with all the literature (which is why — also on the side — I have built a 250 page bibliography on all things divine council).

Please also note that the file is not for distribution. if you know someone who wants it, you can give them the link — but don't mass email it.

Again, it will disappear at the end of January. Feedback is welcome as always (see the notes on the first page).

Technorati Tags: Biblical theology, divine assembly, divine council

2011 Naked Bible Stats

As is customary, my first post of the new year is about the stats of the previous year. Here they are:

Visits to the site: 288,949

Page Views: 929,949

Of my three blogs, this one has the most page views, but not the most visits (that goes to PaleoBabble, with 340,559). Thanks to everyone who visits and reads!

Gerber's Baby Christian Food

A friend sent me the image below. I loved it and thought it was worth sharing for a good laugh (or cry). I don't know anything about sacredsandwich.com (see the stamp in the lower right corner). Seems like a good-natured site satirizing Christianity (i.e., it's not antagonistic). I actually had a site like that back in grad school. It was a lot of fun. I should note, though, that I believe God can use seeker approaches, though such churches peddle a lot of pablum (and worse) and never seem to take anyone beyond that (nor intend to). And the pablum problem isn't isolated to seeker churches by any means.

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Naked Bible Survey Updates

Just wanted to give readers a brief update on the Naked Bible's two running surveys.

Back in October I opened the competition to the first annual Harold Camping Bunkagesis award. With only a couple weeks to go to the deadline, Harold is running away with his namesake's hardware. He has 51% of the votes among the four candidates; the others are in the twenties.

In regard to the survey about the future of the Naked Bible. I've had a hundred respondents. The input is appreciated – especially the nearly thirty of you who chose to type out suggestions and / or thoughts about the questions. Here is the breadown for the first question, which was in my mind the most important:

The "church" question has actually gained ground in the past week or so, but the written responses to it are overwhelmingly negative. I have to confess that I don't have much enthusiasm for the idea as well. I have been asked a number of times to do sermon content, so I thought I'd seek a wider reaction to the idea. My feeling is that there is a lot of sermon content on the web and not much of the sort of thing I do. If I am going to commit to a MEMRA second year (and I am) and give the site (and course offerings) an overhaul, and produce a lot of video content for the courses *before* the term begins (which is the plan — already underway), I would have little time for sermons anyway. Podcasting is also going to be a definite go. The plan is to edit the existing content (at least start with that) for podcast delivery (10-12 minute segments). I'll say more about it in January. I hope to have some completed by February – i.e., have my format down with musical intro included, that sort of thing.

Lastly, the final question about subscriptions was interesting. Just over two-thirds of respondents voted for "probably" or "pretty certain" in regard to $1 a month or something like that. I'm less certain about that than I am the podcasting. The latter seems like a logical next step.

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The Christmas Story and the Biblical Text

Anyone engaged in serious Bible study knows there are incongruities between the story as we have all seen it portrayed in church and TV and the details of the text. For example, the matter of the "three wise men" comes to mind right away. The text never says there were three wise men. That number is inferred from the three gifts given to Joseph and Mary. Oh well.

But still, every now and again, it's nice to be reminded of the need to pay attention to the text. Helps to put the story in the right framework.

The Bible Places blog has an interesting summary of the "no room at the inn" issue. And that is juxtaposed with this short piece from our (Logos') own Bible Study Magazine: "Away in a Manger, but not in a Barn," by Gary Byers.

 

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Technorati Tags: bethlehem, Christmas, Jesus, manger

Looking for Reader Input on the Future of Naked Bible

Over the next thirty days or so, I'm hoping to garner a lot of responses to this short (three question) survey about the future of the Naked Bible. The future of MEMRA and my general efforts to put out biblical-theological content are also in view. Some of the questions deal with suggestions from readers that involve financial support. The "church" question is included since I have been asked about "doing church" online a number of times (i.e., producing sermon content on a weekly basis — not baptizing anyone in cyberspace!)  I thought it best to get broad input.

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How Do Scholars Know the Occasion and Audience of a Gospel?

I recently came across this short but interesting piece by NT scholar Ben Witherington entitled, "Latinisms, Western Diction, and the Provenance of Mark's Gospel." Despite the jargon-loaded title, certainly not designed to attract any lay people's interest, it's worth a read by non-specialists since it provides a succinct description of the kinds of clues scholars detect in biblical books that provide guidance in discerning the circumstances of a book's authorship, occasion, and audience.

Most Bible students have heard or read things like "the gospel of Mark was intended for a Gentile, not Jewish, audience." It's easy for the lay person to wonder what oracle was consulted for that sort of information. But the reality is that texts do drop distinct hints that shed light on such things, or rule out certain possibilities. Not all biblical books have useful information as to authorship or audience or circumstances, but some do. The gospels fall into that category.

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Technorati Tags: audience, authorship, books, date, New Testament, occasion, provenance

There's a Lot to Think About When Translating Genesis 1:1-3

Way back in September of 2010 I had posted a lecture I gave at church where I attempted to explain the real issue involved in translating Genesis 1:1-3. Rather than meanings of words like bara', the real issue is the relationship of the clauses (and the nature of those clauses) in these first three verses. Since my talk was aimed at lay people with no knowledge of Hebrew, I tried to go easy. One of my doctoral classmates from the UW-Madison, Rob Holmstedt, provided a recent glimpse of the complexity involved. Rob's stature as a Hebrew linguist and grammarian is rapidly rising, so I'm not offering this merely out of camaraderie. His post is very readable, even though it's more involved than my baby-step lecture attempt. I'm hoping those able to follow that lecture will benefit from Rob's summary of the issues.

The real point: Translations that differ from the traditional rendering many folks grew up with (and which affect the creation theology of the text) do not read the way they do because someone doesn't like Ken Ham or Henry Morris or the gap theory. They read the way they do because of that thing evangelicals consider inspired: the text, given to us as it were with its own grammatical and syntactical rules and framework.

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Technorati Tags: Genesis 1:1-3, grammar, holmstedt, translation

Did the Religion of the Biblical Writers Evolve from Polytheism to Monotheism? A Paper and Response to Thom Stark

Here is my second ETS paper, entitled, "Does Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible Demonstrate an Evolution from Polytheism to Monotheism?" My answer is "no, and the question is somewhat misguided."

The paper was an invited one; it was requested by the committee that planned a session on the Old Testament and Ancient Near East connections. I was grateful for the invitation, especially since I had the privilege of being on a follow-up panel discussion with Dan Block (OT professor at Wheaton) and Alan Millard (an Assyriologist from the UK, now retired after many years of teaching). I met Dan some years back (he's a wonderful guy, honestly), but this was my first occasion to meet Dr. Millard, having benefited from his writing on numerous occasions. I really enjoyed meeting him. He was every bit the Englishman and scholar.

The paper was well received, and the panel discussion went well. There were some good questions as you might imagine.

I'm sort of well know for this topic (hence the invitation) since I have had some scholarly articles pertaining to the topic published in journals, and have given several papers at regional conferences relevant to the topic (they are referenced in the paper with links where they can be obtained). I'm also known on the internet for the issue. Some time ago (quite a while) a writer named Thom Stark posted a lengthy response to one of my papers. Stark takes the common view that the biblical texts witnesses to an evolution from polytheism to monotheism. I thought it a good idea to post a response to him once I posted this paper. Some comments are in order here, though, so readers don't get lost in my response.

Stark's response was very long, as it included portions of my article. I didn't want to produce something just as long that would require readers going back and forth between two documents. As such, my strategy was to append my replies to his responses to his posting as a PDF. When you read through this response of mine , the document consists of his posting (which I converted to PDF) along with 8 or so pages of my responses at the end.
To facilitate reading the above PDF file, I have inserted LINKS enclosed in red boxes that lead from something Thom says directly to my response within the document. I have also inserted sticky notes when my reply could be briefer. The reader will see them floating at various places in the PDF. Hopefully this was a good strategy for helping you all navigate the discussion.
At various points in my response to Stark , I refer the reader to my most recent ETS paper on the issue , the one linked to at the beginning of this post. You would do well to read that first, since my references back to it will make more sense that way.

Some of you might be wondering about why I'd bother to respond to Stark's response. First, he put a lot of time into it, so I thought I owed it some attention. Although I think that he regularly misconstrues things and uses some startlingly poor logic in places, it was something that deserved not to be ignored. Second, a number of readers have requested it. It's taken months to get to (it was posted back in July), since I didn't find anything in there I hadn't heard before. I don't let such things dictate my schedule (I can't, even if I wanted to). So, as promised, here it is — but read the paper first if you want to follow along well.

I should also note clearly for Thom Stark that this most recent paper and PDF response will be my reference point for any discussion from this point. Both my paper and the response make clear that there are specific items Thom needs to produce to make his case. Failure on his part to do so will not prompt me to waste any more time on this. I will merely point readers back to this post and the files herein. If Thom cannot produce the textual data — the stuff of philology (read the response for that term), then I will consider him unable to do so.  For those new to the discussion, my position is simple: Israelites in the ancient world believed lots of things about God, the gods, and the nature of those beings, including polytheism. However, I do not believe a textual case can be made that the biblical writers would have embraced polytheism, or that "orthodox Yahwism" was at one time polytheistic. That is the standard academic view–one that I objected to and undermined in my dissertation. If my arguments were so misinformed and illogical as Thom wants to make out, I have to wonder how none of my readers caught those problems. Maybe Thom is just smarter than all of them, or maybe not.  Every argument I have made in my dissertation I have also taken to wider peer review. I deliberately have published and delivered papers on all the key ideas in my dissertation. I have taken them directly to peers in the field for analysis. That is, I work without a net. I *want* to hear (from experts) if there are things I have overlooked with respect to the data. As of yet, I haven't had anyone object to the data. The disagreement stems from the fact that one side (the mainstream) assumes certain ideas about how monotheism "worked" in the mind of the biblical writers, while the other side (me and those who have adopted my positions) are saying the emperor has no clothes — there are serious fallacies amid the assumptions that need to be owned and addressed. These fallacies are outlined and discussed in my paper and the response to Thom Stark.

Lastly, Mr. Stark may want to take some time to read the recent book (2009) by Benjamin Sommer, a well-respected scholar of biblical and Judaic studies, entitled, "Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel." I've appreciated the book, as Sommer makes several of the points I made in my dissertation, though along different trajectories. Sommer's book was broadly about the problems with how monotheism is talked about in scholarly circles. He developeda theory of "divine embodiment" to explain what he sees in the data (and which does not conform to the usual discussion). As several reviewers have explained it (my emphasis):

"Sommer's central idea is that in both monotheistic Israelite and polytheistic Near Eastern thought, a deity could have many fragmented and/or overlapping selves, and that this "fluidity of divine selfhood" was manifested in the "multiplicity of divine embodiment. . . . He observes that this multiplicity was not simply native to polytheism (distinguishing the Near Eastern phenomenon from polytheism in Greece) and suggests that the classification of concepts of the divine in terms of fluidity will be more instructive for Israelite and Near Eastern religion than are the common distinctions between monotheism and polytheism or immanence and transcendence. . . . While some may not be convinced by his arguments on that front, his goal of showing that the monotheism – polytheism polarity is insufficient for describing Israelite religion is an important challenge. . . . This book will have serious implications for thinking about the nature of divine self and embodiment in the Hebrew Bible." (Esther Hamori, Journal of Religion, University of Chicago Press)

"Sommer's thesis is, as the title of the book implies, not that the God of Israel has a body, but that he has several bodies which have various locations. Hence, the two tasks he sets for himself are, first, demonstrating God's multi-corporeality and, second, exploring its implications for religion associated with the Hebrew Bible (which is not to say only ancient Israelite, but modern religion as well). By way of introduction he lays out simply and effectivelythat the Hebrew Bible's depiction of God is as a bodily being; the number of texts that casually make this point are too numerous to allow the reader any other conclusion. . . . The volume concludes with a lengthy Appendix on monotheism and polytheism in biblical Israel. Sommer includes this because the tendency in

recent years is to define the debate about Israelite religion as monotheism v. polytheism. This book proceeds from the position that the Hebrew Bible is monotheistic, and Israelite religion was not unusually monotheistic in the biblical period. That said, Sommer also recognizes that much of the recent discussion about these two concepts fails to capture the complexities of the divine portrait in the Hebrew Bible." (Todd Hibbard, Journal of Hebrew Scriptures)

But to get it right from Sommer, here are some excerpts from his appendix "Monotheism and Polytheism in Ancient Israel" (all from p. 145, with comments and emphasis of my own):

"It is a commonplace of modern biblical scholarship that Israelite religion prior to the Babylonian exile was basically polytheistic. Many scholars argue that ancient Israelites worshiped a plethora of gods and goddesses, including Yhwh as well as Baal, El (if or when he was differentiated from Yhwh) , Ashtoret, and perhaps Asherah. Pre-exilic texts from the Hebrew Bible, according to these scholars, are not genuinely monotheistic; the first monotheistic text in the Hebrew Bible is the block of material beginning in Isaiah 40, which was composed during the Babylonian exile. Some scholars recognize the existence of a small minority of monotheists or proto-monotheists late in the pre-exilic period, but stress that the bast majority of ancient Israelites were polytheists before the exile. Another group of scholars, however, argue that the exclusive worship of Yhwh as the only true deity was widespread in ancient Israel well before the exile, perhaps even well before the rise of the monarchy." [MSH: Note I am not alone here; I would only add that the debate proceeds along a faulty understanding of the word "elohim" -- that this misunderstanding is what leads us as moderns to produce and perpetuate this debate; see my paper on that issue).

"In what follows, I hope to accomplish two tasks. I intend to show that the Hebrew Bible is rightly regarded as a monotheistic work and that its monotheism was not unusual for Israelite religion in the pre-exilic era. At the same time, I hope to explore the limitations of the term 'monotheism' in light of the discussion of the body of this book. . . . The polarity 'monotheism - polytheism' has some explanatory value, because it helps us notice something we might otherwise have missed. At the same time, its explanatory value has bee overestimated, because it obscures connections that transcend this polarity.

"In order to understand why we can rightly label the Hebrew Bible monotheistic and also in what specific ways doing so is important, we need first of all to address two issues: how the term 'monotheism' is best defined and the difference between asking whether ancient Israelite religion was monotheistic and whether the Hebrew Bible is monotheistic." [MSH: Bingo. I would answer the first of these in the first half of my new paper, the material on a right understanding of elohim. Sommer flirts with the problems of the current (mis)definition but doesn't quite get there. But it's gratifying to see a reputable scholar acknowledge there is a problem. His second issue is spot on. Many biblical scholars fail to even think about making such a distinction in their questioning of monotheism. Thom Stark misses this distinction as well. Sommer has hit on a crucial item.]

I mention all this to let readers know that part of any response to Thom Stark mandates demonstrating that he needs top first acknowledge that scholars are aware of the sorts of problems I bring up. I am not the only one, and I am no idiosyncratic in this regard.  Sommer is a scholar that cannot be ignored, and so Thom Stark must address Sommer's criticisms of the consensus view of monotheism along with mine. Again, failure to do so will mean I'll just direct readers back to this post in the future. I'm only going to spend further (internet) time on this issue if the contrary data to my views is produced from the text. Those who take the time to read my paper and my response to Thom will know exactly what I mean.

 

 

 

 

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Technorati Tags: divine council, El, Elyon, Heiser, Israelite religion, monotheism, monotheistic, most heiser, most high, polytheism, polytheistic, thom stark, Yahweh

The Name Theology in Israelite Religion

Here is the first of my two ETS papers, "." Hope you find it interesting. I think it's a good succinct summary of the history of the discussion. Of course I throw my own two cents in toward the end.

The second paper on the question of the alleged evolution of Israelite monotheism is in a separate post.

Technorati Tags: angel of the lord, Angel of Yahweh, divine presence, Hebrew Bible, immanence, Israelite religion, , trascendence