All of my articles answering the questions we did not have time for during the Youtube interview I did with Steven Bancarz. Link to the discussions is in the first post.

Introduction and Some Miscellaneous Topics

Utilizing Liberal Higher Critical Scholarship and the State of Old Testament Studies

Identifying Asaph

Revisiting Psalm 82 and the Case for Human Elohim

Psalm 89 and the Divine Council

Early Christian Writers and Deuteronomy 32

Early Christians Writers and Deuteronomy 32

I continue with answering questions about Michael Heiser and his Unseen Realm theology. I want to address the questions and comments regarding early Christian writers and what they believed about angels, specifically how they may have interpreted Deuteronomy 32:8. I will also address how the Jewish sects during post-exilic/intertestamental period thought about this passage. 

Q: In light of what appears to be a universal understanding of Deuteronomy 32:8 among the earliest Christian and Jewish writers, and in light of the prevalence of this interpretation in pre-Heiser evangelical material, do you not think it’s an overstatement to refer to Heiser’s position as “novel” and “cultic” “new doctrine that no one considered before”? Do you agree that he didn’t “conjure up” this reading of Deuteronomy 32:8?

Let me respond to a few of the comments stated here within his question.

A Universal Understanding of Deuteronomy 32:8 among early Christians and Jewish writers

When Steven Bancarz and I had our discussion for his YT channel, we spent some considerable time talking about what early Christians believed about angels and whether or not they affirmed Heiser’s view that Deuteronomy 32:8 is describing when God handed the gentile nations over to governing elohims after the Tower of Babel. That discussion starts HERE, around the 2:06 mark on the video if anyone wishes to see the handful of sources Steven references. I personally believe Heiser and his fans are overstating what early Christians and second temple Jewish sects actually believed about angels as it relates to Deuteronomy 32:8. 

While it is true that the Essenes and other intertestamental Jewish sects believed guardian angels were appointed to watch over the nations, that was a belief unique to those particular fringe groups. Surveying the history of that period and the literature written during that time, those groups had a cult-like fixation on the end-times and angels in general. (Honestly, it is a similar fixation on the same subjects we see among modern charismatics today, who write about visitations with angels and world-ending scenarios and events). Their fascination with angels is largely the imagination of superstitious men adding to God’s Word, and is found only in the literature they wrote and that was not grounded in the revelation of Scripture or taught among orthodox Jewish believers and the Christian church. So there was never a “universal understanding” of angels as Heiser teaches, and it was certainly not a view derived from Scripture. It is read into the Bible from sources outside of the canon of the OT and what is found in the Christian NT. Paul more than likely had these groups in mind when he condemned the imbalanced and unhealthy fixation men had with angels in Colossians 2:18 when he wrote, “Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, going into detail about visions he has seen, being puffed up for nothing by his fleshly mind.” 

How was that fixation with angels played out among these individuals? For example, Scripture only reveals the names of two angels, Michael and Gabriel. The Jewish sects during that time, however, wrote about Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Sariel, and Remiel, names of angels that are only found in the non-canonical book of First Enoch. The idea of hierarchies among angelic beings was detailed during the intertestamental period and that is when we get such categories as virtues and dominions and a structured heavenly court. It is also when they taught that angels were assigned various stewardships like overseeing the elements of the world, or the weather, or the movement of the stars and planets. 

Those Jewish sects also wrote out their theological lore about angels in what we now know as the pseudepigrapha, books like First Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. The Book of Jubilees, for instance, is an expansive retelling of Israel’s history. The “angel of the presence” begins with Genesis and explains to Moses how God created the world in six days. That “angel of the presence” is not named in Jubilees, but in the second book of Enoch, Uriel is identified as the “angel of the presence.” There is also the “angel of Sanctification” noted in Jubilees, and a hostile, fallen angel named Mastema who asks God to give him the spirits that survived Noah’s flood as a means to tempt and test humanity. Interestingly, Jubilees contradicts one of Heiser’s major doctrinal talking points about the divine council. Heiser teaches that the members of the divine council were already in existence and present with God in the spiritual realm before He created the physical realm as outlined in Genesis 1 and 2. They were the “morning stars” and “sons of God” singing together and shouting for joy who were mentioned in Job 38:7. Jubilees 2:2-3, however, states that all the heavenly hosts, which would have to include the divine council members, were created on the first day, 

For on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before him -the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctification, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds, and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices and of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer and of all the spirits of his creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, eventide <and night>, and the light, dawn and day, which He hath prepared in the knowledge of his heart. And thereupon we saw His works, and praised Him, and lauded before Him on account of all His works; for seven great works did He create on the first day.

Steven also reads from Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who wrote a commentary on the Torah that allegorized the text of Genesis. The section from Philo he shows on the screen during our discussion is a quotation from Philo’s works, book 8, chapter XXV, section 89. But the citation is Philo only quoting from Deuteronomy 32:8 about national boundaries. His main point in book 8 is explaining about Cain in exile after he murdered Abel. There is no genuine commentary or theological discussion with how we are to understand Deuteronomy 32:8 and whether or not God appointed elohims over the gentiles.

Moving to early Christian writers, he cites Clement’s first letter to the Corinthians and Irenaeus’s Against Heresies. Let me look at them in turn. 

First, Clement, who is probably writing the same congregation at Corinth that Paul wrote, exhorts the Christians in chapter 29 to lift up holy hands and give God praise with a pure heart because God has made them partakers of the blessings of His elect Israel. Clement then quotes Deuteronomy 32:8 as a reference of that election by God. That is a fitting passage demonstrating his exhortation, because Moses was likewise recalling Israel to covenant faithfulness by recounting how God elected them as a people as far back as the Tower of Babel incident before He even called Abraham to follow Him. Again, Clement just quotes the passage to provide biblical support for his exhortation to the Corinthian believers. He offers no additional information about who the sons of God are or whether or not they were over the nations. 

Secondly is a quotation from Irenaeus from his third book Against Heresies chapter 12. In section 9, he shows how Paul taught the gentiles about the same sovereign creator God that is revealed in the Old Testament to the Jews. He is not a different God. One proof-text that Irenaeus references to make his argument is Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill in Acts 17. He then follows his citation of Acts 17 with a reference to Deuteronomy 32:8 where he writes,

Now in this passage he does not only declare to them God as the Creator of the world, no Jews being present, but that He did also make one race of men to dwell upon all the earth; as also Moses declared: When the Most High divided the  nations, as He scattered the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the nations after the number of the angels of God; but that people which believes in God is not now under the power of angles, but under the Lord's [rule]. For His people Jacob was made the portion of the Lord, Israel the cord of His inheritance.

Irenaeus seems to explain how God is the absolute sovereign over humanity and is the one who establishes their national boundaries and exercises rule over them. He is not commenting on the elohim who are allegedly governing the gentile nations. 

I should note that Philo, Clement, and Irenaeus are using the Septuagint and the reading of Deuteronomy 32:8 will say “angels of God” depending on the version they are using, some say “sons of God.” However, none of them are making any comment about the textual variant in that passage. They all merely cite the verse for what particular argument they put forth. So it is a bit disingenuous to conclude they believed like Heiser that elohim were appointed to govern the nations. Certainly, like many early church fathers and Christian writers, they might very well have believed in guardian angel figures watching over nations, but these references from their works are not saying that. It further needs to be made clear that the idea of guardian angels appointed over the gentile nations is taught in sources outside the authority of inspired and inerrant Scripture and not within Scripture itself. 

The pre-Heiser evangelistic material 

Steven also highlighted some commentaries written before Heiser began popularizing his divine council theology since the mid-2000s or so that I need to consider.

I was clear in my initial articles that Heiser’s views were not unique to him. The idea of a divine council with God and 70 other lesser elohims began to come into vogue among OT academics in the mid-to-late 1800s. Those academics were nowhere close to evangelicalism. Rather, their higher critical OT studies had a profoundly negative influence within Bible-believing universities and seminaries so that the Bible was no longer treated as God’s inspired revelation, but was just one of many ancient sources of religious mythology, legend, and lore. As I noted in my second article in this Q&A series, those higher critical academics changed the focus of OT studies from an affirmation of the OT history telling the true story of God’s dealings with His people Israel and His promise of bringing a savior to the entire world through that special nation, to one of merely determining how Israel fits into the ancient Near Eastern worldview and to what extent that worldview influenced and shaped Israel and ultimately, Christianity.

Steven lists out a handful of commentaries on the book of Deuteronomy written over the last 40 years before Heiser began publishing his divine council views. Those commentaries are traditionally understood as evangelical, and I would agree that many of them are conservative leaning, but upon further evaluation, it is clear those authors, as fine of men that they may be, were taught and influenced by modern OT scholarship. A student should cautiously evaluate their work with that perspective in mind.

Is Heiser’s position “novel,” “cultic,” and new doctrine that no one considered before? Do you agree that he didn’t “conjure up” this reading of Deuteronomy 32:8?

Heiser’s position is novel in the way that he has re-imagined the storyline of OT revelation, especially as it pertains to God’s redemptive purposes. He marries his ideas about a divine council with a heavily Arminian–almost near Pelagian–view of mankind in which God takes a “risk” with radical freewill creatures in order to work with them to carry out His plans. Christ’s mission was not to seek the lost and save sinners and make them righteous and reconciled to a holy and gracious God, it was to defeat the rebellious elohims who war against YHWH in the spiritual realm. But that was never the storyline of any orthodox Christian even in the early church who may have believed in guardian angels watching over the nations. That is a theology absolutely foreign to the plain reading of Scripture that comes only from a spiritless academic, higher critical approach to understanding Old Testament history. 

Psalm 89 and the Divine Council

I am continuing in my response to a series of questions I was sent asking about my disagreements with Michael Heiser’s divine council/other gods theology. With this post, I wish to briefly address Psalm 89, as well as references to the angelic assemblies mentioned in Job.

Let me begin with Psalm 89. Steven comments,  

Q: Psalm 89 says God is “greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones” (Ps 89:7), and this text seems to indicate YHWH is making decrees through them. Help me understand why you don’t see this passage as YHWH making decrees through his holy ones?

Q: Psalm 89 says there is a “council” (v. 7) in a heavenly “assembly” (v. 5) who are “all around” YHWH (v. 7). Why is the council in Psalm 89 not a good parallel for what we see in 1 Kings 22?

What is Psalm 89 About Anyways?

Heiser believes Psalm 89 is also an important proof-text bolstering his divine council/other gods doctrine he derives from Psalm 82. When I wrote up my original critiques of Heiser’s worldview, I didn’t think the psalm was relevant to the main proof-texts he uses–Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32–so I never really touched on it in my articles. 

I am responding with the conviction that those three passages, Psalm 82, 89, and Deuteronomy 32, are unrelated when it comes to teaching Heiser’s divine council/other gods doctrine. It is my view that he reads speculative ancient Near Eastern mythology into those passages, synchronizing Gnostic, pseudepigraphical literature with what brief OT revelation we have been given about the spiritual realm and angels. 

Coming to Psalm 89, it was a psalm written by Ethan the Ezrahite. There are a handful of individuals named Ethan mentioned in Scripture, but the one who carries the designation of “Ethan the Ezrahite” is first found in 1 Kings 4:31, where the Scriptures declare that Solomon’s “wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the sons of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt, and he was wiser than all men, than Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol…” (1 Kings 4:30-31). It is surmised that Ethan the Ezrahite was probably the same Ethan of the Levites that David appointed as worship leader along with Heman and Asaph, (1 Chronicles 15:16-17). 

Psalm 89 is the final psalm in what is recognized as the third book of the psalms that contain Psalms 73-89. Those various psalms record themes that speak of God’s judgment, Israel’s exile, lamenting over the wicked having rule over the righteous, and the writers crying out to God for Him not to abandon Israel His people and remember His covenant with them. Psalm 89 specifically zeroes in upon the Davidic covenant God made with King David and His promise to maintain David’s throne and the hope for a future, coming redeemer King who will rule over all of Israel. However, as Allen Ross points out in his commentary on this Psalm, the writer is troubled by what appears to be the collapse of the Davidic line. Ross writes,

This long psalm is concerned with the disruption of the monarchy in spite of the promises that God made in the Davidic covenant. The first section (vv. 1–18) is a hymn praising God for his loyal love and faithfulness in the many mighty and marvelous things that he has done in the world. The second part (vv. 19–37) is a review of the Davidic covenant, how God chose and established David as his anointed, and what promises God made to him in the covenant….The final section (vv. 38–51) is the lament over the great misfortune that befell the monarchy. [Ross, Psalms 1-89, 823-824].

Commentators are uncertain when the Psalm was written. Most of them believe it was during the Babylonian exile. My immediate thought is that Ethan may have written it when David had to flee from Jerusalem during the rebellion led by his son Absalom in 2 Samuel. Whatever the case, the Psalm is focused upon God’s covenant faithfulness to David and the hope for the divine continuance of the Davidic monarchy. 

The verses that Heiser and his acolytes find relevant to his views of the divine council are 5-7, which read,

The heavens will praise Your wonders, O Yahweh; Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy ones. For who in the sky is comparable to Yahweh? Who among the sons of the mighty is like Yahweh, a God greatly dreaded in the council of the holy ones, and fearsome above all those who are around Him?

Heiser claims the mention of “the assembly of the holy ones,” “sons of the mighty,” and “the council of the holy ones,” speaks to a heavenly divine council of elohims over which YHWH presides. That council, according to Heiser, came into existence by God at some point in eternity past, was present with Him and watched as He decided to create the world, and formed a spiritual board of directors of sorts who were assigned to watch over and govern the individual nations of the ancient world according to Deuteronomy 32. 

Yet, if we look at those three verses, are they really telling us about a divine council of elohims? While those verses do tell us that there exists a heavenly realm of spiritual beings we know traditionally as angels who surround God’s throne, praise His wonders, and are incomparable to Him, there really is no indication that what is mentioned here is a council of elite supernatural elohims who help God make decisions, and who were appointed by Him to provide their oversight of humanity. 

In the context of the Psalm, the focus is on the Davidic covenant God made to the royal monarchy, a monarchy that will be capstoned by the coming Messiah in the future. Interestingly, Luke’s birth narrative records how an angel announced the birth of Jesus, and after that announcement to those startled shepherds, an entire multitude of the heavenly host joined in praising God and giving Him glory in the highest, (Luke 3:13), similar to what is recorded in Psalm 89:5. That is a similar picture we see revealed in Isaiah 6, Daniel 7, and eventually in Revelation 5. Those scenes clearly present supernatural beings involved in worship, praise, and the glorification of God and in the case of Revelation, pronouncing Jesus as God’s worthy lamb. A divine council as Heiser has defined it, one in which YHWH has assigned elohims to govern the nations, is never presented. That idea has to be read into the various texts. 

Those who defend his divine council view will point out Psalm 89:7 that says, “A God greatly dreaded in the council of the holy ones.” But the word for council, sod in the Hebrew, speaks to intimacy and familiarity, secrets that are not generally or publicly known. Rather than an idea of a governing council, the passage is saying these “sons of the mighty”–angelic hosts–experientially understand why He is to be dreaded and is fearsome above all those who are around Him; they have intimate knowledge of who God truly is because they are continually in His presence. It is like when Scripture says that Adam knew his wife. We know he had more than just knowledge of who she was, but that his knowledge was a special, intimate and familiar knowledge that only he was privy to. 

Is the Divine Council mentioned in Job?

Steven also asked me about the three passages from the book of Job when the “Sons of God” are mentioned, chapters 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7. 

Job 1:6 and 2:1 describe when the Sons of God came to stand before YHWH and Satan was with them. The interrogation God makes of Satan sets up the personal calamity Job experiences and the discussions between Job and his friends for the remainder of the book. It is important to note that Heiser does not believe that this “Satan” is the devil Christians know from Scripture, but that he was one of the divine council members who was appointed by God to act in the role of a prosecutor and accuser against Job. Of course, that is pure conjecture on Heiser’s part because that is not at all clear with a simple reading of the text and what we know about Satan in the whole of Scripture. It is a conclusion made after he reads his divine council theology into the events. 

It should also be pointed out that there isn’t a divine council highlighted anywhere in these two accounts. What we do see is the Sons of God/angelic beings presenting themselves before YHWH and that the Adversary, Satan, was also among them. All the text is telling us is that angels do gather in God’s presence, which we know from other sections of biblical revelation, and Satan, even though he has fallen, can also present himself before God. That speaks to God’s sovereignty over all His creation both natural and supernatural and their obedience to Him. A gathering for the purpose of offering counseling to God is not in view at all in these texts. 

Regarding Job 38:7, the verse says, “when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” The passage is a description of when God created the heavens and the earth. He is challenging Job’s knowledge of God’s ways and pointing out the fact that he doesn’t know, because he wasn’t there.

Heiser suggests that the passage is proof of a divine council of elohims existing with God before the creation of the world, and this is describing those elohim witnessing Him creating. He takes that understanding of the text because he is errantly insistent that when Genesis 1:26 says, “Let Us make man in Our image,” the “us” and “our” is not a decision between the persons of the trinitarian Godhead to create man, but rather, the “us” and “our” are the elohim of the divine council that God is addressing.

There are a couple of observations we need to make with the text. First, I believe Heiser is correct that the sons of God mentioned here are the heavenly host of angels praising God for His creative work. The question the text doesn’t answer for us, however, is WHEN were these heavenly hosts created? Is this a scene telling us they existed with God BEFORE Genesis 1:1 prior to Him creating? The biblical record is unclear here in Job and in other sections of Scripture. Yes, the heavenly host exists with God in His presence and they worship and serve Him, but at what point in time during God’s creative work did they come into the picture? Saying they existed with God in eternity past before Genesis 1:1 before He began creating the heavens and the earth is pure speculation on Heiser’s part. 

Secondly, Job 38:4-6 does offer some hints that tell us when God created the heavenly host. The verses state, 

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you know understanding, Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone,

The description is of the 3rd day of creation when God separated the water from the land and the dry land appeared. That tells us that the heavenly creatures, the Sons of God, could have been created the day before when God created the heavens. Angels are the “heavenly host” and their dwelling place is among the heavens. 

Is that absolute proof of when angels were created? Not exactly; but the notion that Job is presenting a pre-creation divine council that existed in eternity past and that God announced to them about His intentions of creating our universe and all that it contains including mankind, is pure conjecture designed for the purposes of holding up Heiser’s theories.

Utilizing Liberal Higher Critical Scholarship and the State of Modern OT Studies

I am continuing my response to a series of questions and comments I received from when I was invited to discuss Michael Heiser’s Divine Council theology. Part one and the introduction can be read HERE. 

Steven asks:

You said in the review with Justin Peter’s video that Heiser data-mines liberals to get divine beings in Psalm 82. They are liberal scholars who treat the Bible like it's like Homer's Odyssey. This is echoed as well in the articles: “If you read the footnotes, Heiser is heavily dependent on liberal scholarship. By “liberal scholarship” I mean he is citing academic types who are certainly unbelievers” … “I think his eccentric view of the spiritual world has led him to repurpose higher critical liberal scholarship that otherwise has disdain for Scripture and treats it like a book of folklore and mythology, and he reads that material into the text. In my mind that is not credible scholarship.” 

But, the fourth footnote of The Unseen Realm references 10 scholars connecting Psalm 82 to divine beings. 8 out of the 10 he listed hold to the divine inspiration of the Bible. 

Q: Help me understand how the scholars Heiser cited for divine beings in Psalm 82 are compatible with the claim that he relies on liberal scholars who treat the Bible like folklore.

I noted in my original articles interacting with Heiser’s divine council theology, that his understanding of the OT is largely shaped by the scholarship that was developed over the last 150 years or so ago in the fever swamps of the higher critics. They take the research that emerged from discoveries within the ruins of ancient near eastern cultures and draw the conclusions that what we find in their cosmology and mythology recorded in their cuneiform tablets was a similar religious experience shared across the region, including Israel. 

For example, the ancient Babylonian king, Hammurabi, developed a law code a few hundred years before Moses wrote his Mosaic law code contained in the Torah. There are similar, overlapping principles of justice and legal matters pertaining to personal property, assault against a neighbor, and family matters. It is then concluded that Moses, who was familiar with Hammurabi’s code, borrowed from it and used it for forming the principles for OT ethics, so that the Mosaic law is just as much Hammurabi’s as it is Moses writing on behalf of YHWH. 

Another example is the suzerain-vassal treaty, in which a suzerain, or what is a powerful ruler, dictates terms of a treaty to a vassal, or a lesser, powerless individual or a community of individuals, for the purpose of protection and stability. Those treaties, that were common in the ANE world, are repurposed in the OT in the form of the various covenants God makes with His people, Israel, or with His monarchs, specifically David. 

Old Testament scholarship that took shape during the Enlightenment era began seeing Israel as just another ancient people group with parallel religious experiences and practices with their other neighbors. The more extreme OT scholars, influenced by evolutionary philosophy, believed a paleo-Israel was originally polytheistic, but over the centuries, their religious worship developed a monotheistic system recognizing their tribal god, “YHWH,” as the only true supreme being. Other ANE cultures may have had a supreme god at the top of their religious hierarchy, but that god was just the most powerful within a pantheon of gods. That understanding of OT research made its way throughout the university and seminary academies, and it began reinterpreting Israel’s place in the ancient world, and ultimately how we read the Bible. John N. Oswalt, OT professor at Ashbury Seminary, wrote about this development in OT studies in his book, The Bible Among the Myths. His opening remarks to his book are worth quoting in full:

By the late 1940s two world wars punctuated by a world-wide economic depression had raised some serious questions about the evolutionary paradigm inherent in the philosophy of Idealism. And since that paradigm was all but inseparable from the standard higher critical views of the Old Testament that had prevailed for the previous fifty years, there was cause for some rethinking about the Old Testament and the religion it promulgated.

That rethinking was led by William F. Albright and his students, among them G. Ernest Wright of the Harvard Divinity School. Speaking for much of the scholarly community of the time, Wright argued that the differences between the Israelite way of thinking about reality and the way in which Israel’s neighbors approached that topic were so significant that no evolutionary explanations could account for them. But now, nearly sixty years later, it is widely affirmed that Israelite religion is simply one more of the complex of West Semitic religions, and that its characteristic features can be fully explained on the basis of evolutionary change. 

What has happened to cause such a dramatic change in thinking? Have some new discoveries made Wright’s position untenable? No, they have not. The literatures of the ancient Near East, including that of Ugarit, which are now cited to prove the case against Wright, were already widely known at the time his book was written. The Dead Sea Scrolls were just coming to light, but they have not materially altered the picture of ancient Israel that was known in 1950. So what is the explanation? I do not wish to belittle either the ability or the motivation of current scholars. Their mastery of the field and their genuine concern to ferret out “the real facts" are not in question. Nonetheless, I am convinced that it is prior theological and philosophical convictions that account for the change and not any change in the data.

In 1950, largely because of the work of Karl Barth, the scholarly world was ready to entertain the idea of revelation in ways it had not been for at least a couple of generations. Undoubtedly, the near destruction of European civilization in the previous forty years contributed to that readiness. Revelation assumes that this world is not self-explanatory and that some communication from beyond it is necessary to explain it. Ready to believe in such a possibility, Old Testament scholars in the 1950s saw evidence for it in the manifest differences between the understandings found in the Old Testament and the understandings of all the peoples around Israel. None of that data has changed. The differences between Genesis and the Babylonian account of the origins of the world, for example, are unmistakable to anyone who reads them side by side.

But the idea that this world is not self-explanatory and that revelation from beyond it is necessary to understand it is profoundly distasteful to us humans. It means that we are not in control of our own destiny or able to make our own disposition of things for our own benefit. This thought, the thought that we cannot supply our ultimate needs for ourselves, that we are dependent on someone or something utterly beyond us, is deeply troublesome. This is especially true in the light of the revolution in thinking that occurred in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. The turn away from outside authority of all sorts to extreme individual autonomy was utterly inimical to the idea of revelation. So, although the biblical and ancient Near Eastern data had not changed at all, the possible way of explaining that data did change. [Oswalt, 11-13]

Now. I will admit that it is grossly unfair to say Heiser is a complete adherent to that radical change in OT studies that Oswalt highlights. Heiser himself even claims that he rejects a lot of it, for instance, the JEPD theory or the idea that the people of Israel were a polytheistic religion who evolved into a monotheistic one, so I am left having to take him at his word. However, as I noted in my articles, he was heavily dependent on the academics and researchers who do hold to that radical change. He was obviously educated by them during his seminary studies and his favorable citation of their works appear throughout his published material as unbiased, reputable biblical research. 

This is true of the academics Steven mentions in his question above. In the fourth footnote in his third chapter of The Unseen Realm, Heiser cites ten academic scholars who have done extensive research in the ANE literature and notes how their research aids in our understanding of Psalm 82 as describing YHWH at the head of a divine council of elohims from which He rules the world. Those individuals listed are, E. Theodore Mullen Jr., Lowell K. Handy, H. W. Robinson, David Marron Fleming, Min Suc Kee, Patrick D. Miller, Ellen White, Matitiahu Tsevat, James Stokes Ackerman, and Willem S. Prinsloo.

Steven states in his comment that 8 out of the 10 hold to the divine inspiration of the Scripture. But after a brief search on each of the persons, where they taught or still teach, and what they actually believe about the Scripture, there are really only three out of that group that one could say adheres to the standard evangelical Christian doctrine of divine inspiration, David Fleming, Min Suc Kee, and Willem Prinsloo. Ellen White (not to be confused with the founder of 7th Day Adventism) is a Mormon and so isn’t even a genuine Christian, and Matitiahu Tsevat is Jewish. They, along with the others, are higher critical scholars who do not hold to any orthodox conviction on the inspired authority of God’s Word. 

Consider another example: In a 2015 blog article, Heiser links to a journal article by Amar Annus, an Estonian Assyriologist at the University of Tartu. He published in the Journal for the Study of the Pseudopagrapha, an article entitled, On The Origins of The Watchers: A Comparative Study of the Antediluvian Wisdom. Heiser makes these gushing remarks about it, 

This article deals a death blow to any non-supernatural (or non-mythic as some prefer) interpretation in the sense that, if you care about interpreting the Bible in context, no human interpretation of the sons of God can work. It violates every point of context. Annus’ article is the most current study on the Mesopotamian apkallu. It supersedes ALL preceding work on this subject. That means your standard academic commentaries that all pastors are using are hopelessly out of date and mis-informed. Anyone commenting on Gen 6:1-4 hereafter will have to account for this article or else be academically inept. Read it and be amazed. This is what comparative analysis is supposed to look like. The Sethite view was incoherent before. Now it’s become the position for ostriches.

Putting aside his ridiculous, eye-rolling comment saying that anyone who takes the Sethite view of the “Sons of God” in Genesis 6 is “non-supernatural” (read anti-supernatural), Heiser wildly exaggerates the research presented in the article. If one were to actually take the time to slog through it, rather than making any modern OT commentary out-of-date, Annus’s arguments are bland and unpersuasive. He basically takes the standard, higher critical view of the OT and Israel, that being, Jewish OT sources borrowed from, and were shaped by, pagan mythology throughout the Mesopotamian world and not by direct divine revelation from God. For example, he writes, “It goes without saying that from our contemporary perspective, Mesopotamia clearly provided the model, which the biblical writers quite creatively followed and modified.” A little later he explains how there are two different adaptations of Mesopotamian lore in Genesis in respect to the pre-flood world. He then concludes by writing,

“However, the oral traditions concerning Watchers may be much older than this literature. For the present author, there is no doubt that the author of Gen. 6.1-4 already knew a variant of the mythology of Watchers that s/he [s/he? What on earth!? – edit.] retells in an abbreviated version. The birth of the oral lore about Watchers must belong to a period in history, when the Jewish culture was extensively exposed to Babylonian influences. An obvious candidate for such a period is the Babylonian exile.”

Why Does This Matter?

Several folks will ask, “Isn’t all of this just a “poisoning the well” logical fallacy? Why does it matter if a researcher is a Christian and affirms the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture? All that matters is the research and its relevance to OT studies.” 

But it does matter. This pseudo-historical academic research ultimately undermines the integrity of the biblical text as a special and unique revelation from God. If the biblical writers are merely borrowing from the cosmology of their ANE neighbors and repurposing their mythology in order to build their own religious narrative as those higher critic academics insist, that has serious theological ramifications on the overall revelation we have been given about God, His attributes, and His dealing with Israel, the Church, salvation, and the consummation of history. 

Are there similarities in certain stories between pagan ANE societies and what Scripture tells us? Of course; but that is only an affirmation of what Scripture tells us, not that the biblical writers borrowed from primitive, superstitious mythos to create their own religio-cultural narrative. For instance, all of those societies have a creation event, the bringing of evil into the earthly realm in some fashion, a sacrificial system to assuage that evil, and of course, a global flood that wipes out everything except a family in a box with all the animals in the world with them. Those similarities are telling us that all people in the ancient world were very much aware of their origins, but over time, created their own “history” from those details.

Yet the Holy Bible, beginning in Genesis, presents an entirely unique and unmatched revelation on those origins of the universe and mankind. It treats that revelation as the true and real historical events, not borrowed mythology. It explains clearly how God really created the universe and all life in it. How man truly fell into sin, bringing a curse upon the creation, and ruining that perfect work of God. And then as the rest of Scripture unfolds for us, it puts on full display God’s gracious lovingkindness, His redemption of fallen mankind, and the rescue of the created order. No other ANE mythology is like it. 

I am critical of Heiser for him introducing immature believers to those anti-Christian sources without any criticism or acknowledgement of their hostility toward the OT as a true, infallible revelation from God. He pretends as though they are worthy of our attention and that these academics have something useful for our study of Scripture, rather than material Christians should red flag and consider cautiously. I believe the blind commitment to these sources, instead of building up the integrity of Scripture in the minds of Christians, can ultimately ensnares them in error.  

Introduction and Some Miscellaneous Topics

Recently, I once again had the opportunity to participate in a YT discussion on the theology of Michael Heiser. Steven Bancarz, who operates a channel dedicated to engaging Christian apologetics, largely towards New Age thinking and beliefs, invited me for a discussion on Heiser after he had seen my interview with Justin Peters back in November of 2025. My interview with Justin riled up a lot of Heiserian fans, who spent a few weeks afterward denouncing me and proclaiming how I was “misrepresenting” him and what he taught. Steven, who likes Heiser and agrees with his theological take on the unseen realm, had a more level-headed response to the interview and wanted to cross-examine my assertions about him with a friendly chat. I was more than happy to oblige. Here’s the discussion,

Was Heiser Right?

In preparation for that discussion, I was sent about 10 pages worth of questions and comments that would lay the groundwork for the interview. He offered some excellent challenges that helped clarify and sharpen my profound disagreements with Heiser’s Unseen Realm/“other gods” theology that has seeped in among churches and even splintered a small Reformed Baptist denominational fellowship. I asked Steven if he would be okay with me working the questions into blog articles and he granted his permission and even said he would respond to them. I told him I would be happy to link his responses within the articles and alert people on X when he did so. 

I want to begin in this introduction addressing a handful of miscellaneous questions that we were unable to discuss due to our time constraints. If memory recalls, we passed the three hour threshold, and we really didn’t get half way through what he wanted to ask me. He wanted to mention these questions in the video for his audience and asked if I could write up something in conjunction with the video posting.

Old Earth/Deep Time creationism and Theistic Evolution

Steven asks,

In the review video you mention that Heiser believed in an old earth. Others who were at least sympathetic to it or affirmed it were BB Warfield, Charles Hodge, Francis Schaefer, CS Lewis, and Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon says “We do not know how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam. Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God.” James Montgomery Boice and Robert Godfrey with Ligonier are others.

Q: Given that many of our heroes were open to this, would you agree that on its own, believing in an old earth is not enough to raise skepticism about someone’s credibility?

My main reason for noting Heiser’s views of old earth creationism has to do with the fact that the way one understands Genesis, creation, and deep time generally reveals how one reads and interprets Scripture. In the case of Heiser, one of his key “rules of engagement” for reading the Bible correctly is his insistence that Christians should not explain away weird stuff in the Bible. He even writes, “Why is it that Christians who would strenuously defend a belief in God or the virgin birth against charges that they are unscientific or irrational don’t hesitate to call out academic SWAT teams to explain away “weird” biblical passages?”

The creation week, during which our Sovereign, omnipotent God created ex nihilo the entire universe, our planet, and all the biological diversity it contains in the space of just one week of time, is certainly a “weird biblical passage” from a human standpoint. We are immersed into a secular, naturalistic worldview that has force-fed us Darwinian evolution from our earliest childhood. That anti-supernatural worldview is everywhere in our society from our popular entertainment to our highest educational colleges. For Heiser to lecture Christians who disagree with his divine council theology as non-supernaturalists who are avoiding the “weird” parts of the Bible, but then embrace the wildly non-supernaturalist views of creation by capitulating to Darwinian, theistic evolution, is just ridiculously inconsistent and hypocritical on his part. 

I believe I can say the same thing about the other men Steven mentions. I appreciate B.B. Warfield, Charles Hodge, James Boice (who I had the privilege of meeting), and of course Charles Spurgeon. I have their books and have learned much from them. However, the Princetonians like Warfield and Hodge lived during the time geology was developing as a discipline. While they rightly recognized that Darwinian biology was largely atheistic, the influence of classic Thomism and Thomas Reid common sense philosophy informing their theology caused them to mistakenly believe that the geologists claiming the Earth was millions of years old were unbiased researchers and were correctly interpreting the geological evidence they put forth. They unwittingly compromised Scripture’s authority to those secular, geological assertions of their day. Sadly, that concession in the areas of creation and the age of the earth was one of the catalysts that drove Princeton Seminary into liberalism and unorthodoxy. Terry Mortensen writes about this compromise in a chapter from the book, Coming to Grips with Genesis, that is available online, “Deep Time” and The Church’s Compromise. I would also recommend Mortensen’s book, The Great Turning Point, that goes into much greater detail on the compromise by the church on the issue of Genesis.

On Panspermia, Alien Civilizations, and Christianity

Steven comments and asks:

Panspermia: at 9:27 in the video review, you said “He kind of held to panspermia”. Heiser said in his essay on the topic, “To date there is no conclusive proof for the extraterrestrial microbial life that is critical to panspermia hypothesis...This intellectual scenario, of course, is presently the stuff of imagination.” He believed in creation on earth ex nihilo, but did a theoretical exercise on if panspermia were true, how could this be reconciled with Biblical creationism? 
Q: Any thoughts on this?

When I did the interview with Justin, we were limited on time and I wanted to provide a basic background on Heiser for his audience. I highlighted a book from 15 years ago or so in which Heiser was a contributor entitled, How to Overcome the Most Frightening Issues You Will Face This Century. Chapter 10 in the book is the article he wrote called, Panspermia: What It Is and Why It Matters. The chapter is posted at his blog as a stand alone article that folks can read themselves. I wrote an article about it for my blog back in 2011 because it was around the time that he was involved in an online dustup with James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries over his “other gods” theology and our understanding of what Jesus was saying in John 10:34. White had done a podcast taking apart Heiser’s interpretation of John 10:34. Someone alerted him to the podcast, and a written article by James on the subject and he then wrote an arrogant response to his detractors treating them with scorn and contempt by waving them off as unqualified to engage him because none of them were his academic equals. He has no time to deal with amateurish, ill-informed online apologists, and only fraternizes with Ph.D level individuals who offer serious “peer-review” of his material. 

Heiser’s attitude toward fellow believers who challenged his views was so off-putting, that when I came across that conspiratorial potboiler in which he contributed an article I laughed out loud. Mr. academic elite publishing an article in a fringe wackadoodle book that included a couple of KJVO kooks, Chris Pinto and Joe Chambers, and a host of other similar cranks writing on such topics as nuclear annihilation, HAARP and weaponizing the weather, total economic meltdown, prophecies of doom, and living off the grid. 

With that background in mind, when people hear the word “panspermia” they think extraterrestrials coming to a primordial earth and jump starting biological evolution with engineered DNA strategically sprinkled in the oceans or something. While Heiser doesn’t affirm panspermia caused by biological seeding coming from advanced, non-human ancient aliens in outer space, he doesn’t necessarily reject the idea of panspermia. In other words, he seems to take the cosmic stardust view of panspermia, that life came here to earth via a comet or some other natural force. He suggests that kind of panspermia was directed by God as the one who seeds the earth in a theistic evolutionary fashion, by using a divinely sent comet, or some other mechanism. So when I said he holds to panspermia, that is what I had in mind and it is tied to his theistic evolutionary views that I wanted to focus on during my conversation with Justin. 

The one major problem with his article is that Heiser doesn’t tether his presentation to Scripture and the biblical understanding of creation. He treats the history of Genesis as mythology, and ridicules any biblical creationists who hold to a historical reading of Genesis (again highlighting why I mentioned his old earth views – see above), He builds strawmen against their position with such silly arguments like a literal reading of the creation week would have the earth under a big solid dome, and other similar nonsense. 

The Two Powers in Heaven

Two YHWH’s: Heiser believes in one Being that is YHWH, but that multiple distinct persons are both ascribed the name and attributes of YHWH, such that we have YHWH interacting with YHWH (Gen. 19:24). Two persons both called YHWH is orthodox so I am confused as to what’s being objected to.

Q: Do you agree that Jesus, the Spirit, and the Father are distinct persons who are each called YHWH in the Bible? If so, what is it about Heiser’s view of the Trinity that is being called into question?

What I have noticed reading through Heiser’s material is his tendency towards sloppiness when using theological terminology and concepts. So he will claim in his lectures and YT videos that he holds to orthodox Christian doctrine, like saying that he is a “normal” Christian dude who believes in the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. However, he doesn’t clearly convey orthodox terminology in his published works, so one is left wondering about his convictions on those matters. For instance, in the article he published in the Mormon journal FARMS, where he outlines his “other gods” theology, he writes about YHWH Father in visible form and YHWH Father in visible essence that is not in human form. He goes on to describe them as “manifestations,” but they are not mere “modes.” While he correctly distances his language here from modalism, a Christian heresy, his terminology of manifestation is strictly speaking, heretical. What does he mean by “visible form” and “visible essence” of YHWH Father? Christians historically do not speak like that, and use theologically precise definitions grounded in Scripture when defining the persons of the Trinity.

Additionally, many of the academic sources he references are written by liberal higher critics, and in many cases, unbelievers, and so they are certainly not teaching Christian orthodoxy. His fans don’t seem to think that is a big deal with discussing his theology, but they would do well recognizing those disconnects and inconsistencies between what he claims and what he actually writes and the sources he cites. This is purely speculation on my part, but I am guessing he never had any mature and faithfully sound men in his life who pointed out those conflicts to him. They either didn’t know enough about the esoteric scholarship he utilized from liberal higher critics when he discussed his “other gods”/divine council theology or they were just too intimidated by his so-called academic credentials. 

Heiser’s two powers in heaven material is a good example of what I mean. In chapter two of The Unseen Realm, he lays out another of his “rules for engagement” when studying the Bible. That is, we read the OT in the context of how the OT writers would have understood the OT. In other words, we as modern Christians cannot read our Christian theology of the NT back into the OT. The proper context for interpreting the Bible, specifically the OT, is the context of the biblical writers. It is not Augustine, nor church fathers, nor the Catholic church, nor the Reformation, he dismissively explains. However, that “rule of interpretation” should immediately raise red flags in the hearts and minds of Christians.

Obviously, a solid, hermeneutical rule for studying and understanding the meaning of Scripture is considering the grammatical and historical context in which the writer wrote. What Heiser is waving away, however, is the full and final revelation that God gave to the spirit-filled Christian church and the Holy Spirit divinely directing God’s people in recognizing and affirming that complete biblical doctrine establishing what the Church believes as it pertains to interpreting Scripture. It is the “Faith which was once for all handed down to the saints,” (Jude 3). Regarding the Trinity, he is essentially saying that the spirit-filled Christian Church that possesses God’s complete revelation cannot interpret those veiled OT passages that are clearly hinting at the doctrine of the Trinity. Heiser even argues that there is no mention of the three persons of the Trinity spoken about in the OT. For instance, when discussing Genesis 1:26, where God says “Let Us make man in our image,” he argues that the “Us” cannot be an inter-Trinitarian discussion. He writes in a footnote in The Unseen Realm, 

“Seeing the Trinity in Gen 1:26 is reading the New Testament back into the Old Testament, something that isn’t a sound interpretive method for discerning what an Old Testament writer was thinking. Unlike the New Testament, the Old Testament has no Trinitarian phrases…”[The Unseen Realm, 384].

Note his comment saying that reading the NT back into the OT isn’t a sound interpretive method for discerning what the OT writer was thinking. But if we have all the full revelation God gave the Christian Church, and it tells us God is Triune, those previous OT passages that were mysterious and “weird” as Heiser likes to say, are now made perfectly understandable. 

Instead of relying on clear Scripture to inform unclear Scripture regarding the Trinity, Heiser appeals to the “two powers” in heaven doctrine that was believed among various mystical Jewish sects during the inter-testamental times into the second temple period as his authority on the matter. He cites two Jewish unbelievers for establishing the importance of the two powers doctrine: Alan Segal, a Reformed Jewish professor of ancient Jewish studies who wrote a book documenting the two powers idea and that he also personally believed was heresy, and Daniel Boyarin who is likewise a scholar on ancient Hebrew studies who published academic books and articles on what he terms, binitarianism. 

While those two men point out interesting insights to how ancient Jews were perplexed by what we as Christians now know was Trinitarian revelation in the OT made clear by the NT, their overall research draws some rather significant erroneous conclusions. A major example is that both men identify an angel named Metatron (not to be confused with Megatron, the evil transformer and leader of the Decepticons!), as the second YHWH figure in the two powers doctrine. Boyarin concludes that Metatron is Enoch, who the Lord took to heaven in Genesis 5:24, a view he says developed among Jewish mystics from their traditions gleaned from the Enoch literature. Heiser even states that the two YHWH figures reflect an Israelite adaptation of the Canaanite structuring on the top tier of the Canaanite divine council [See his footnote in The Unseen Realm, 384]. So one can see how invoking the two powers in heaven doctrine as a means to explain Christian Trinitarian theology is rather problematic, and frankly, bizarre, especially coming from a guy who insists he is a normal Christian dude. 

Moving forward, I hope to address some of the other questions Steven asked, including Heiser’s study of Psalm 89 as it pertains to the divine council, and a deeper look at Psalm 82 and who exactly Asaph was and his relevance to understanding the Psalms he wrote.