Troublesome Topic: A SELF-SERVING INTERPRETIVE METHOD

When dealing with information from other ancient Near Eastern religions, Heiser picks and chooses what he wants and doesn’t want to use based on its level of benefit to his cause.

For example, he trusts the book of Enoch almost explicitly, without any doubts about its origins or its reliability. But when it comes to the size of the giants ,he does not trust the books of Enoch because they would cause him embarrassment. That I can see, he never reveals in Unseen Realm, the ridiculous size of the giants as given in the only versions of 1 Enoch that contain those measurements – the Ethiopic and Greek versions.

Another example is on page 46, where he admits that the primary gods of Ugarit, El and Baal, “were, to say the least, markedly different in behavior from Yahweh or Israel.” But then he goes on to accept what Ugaritic literature says about a divine council. Even though Ugarit had an evil religion, Heiser wants us to interpret our Bible using the assumption that their concept of a divine council was correct.

Michael Heiser ignores key issues. For example, he ignores the common use of symbolism in ancient Israel and replaces it with a realism that fits his other assumptions. A number of the things Hieser is talking about in this book were seen as symbolism by Jews of that day.

Another example is how he ignores the monotheism of the Israelite people, a trait they learned directly from God Himself. I deal with monotheism and henotheism in my section on the council of the gods.

He also ignores how divination brought the death penalty to any Jew who participated in it in any way. I will explain this when I discuss human judges being called Elohim, under the heading, A NARROW USE OF THE TERM ELOHIM.

Heiser uses circular reasoning. Michael Heiser sounds something like this – “I am convinced my worldview is right, therefore I give myself the freedom to interpret every passage in light of my worldview.”

He reminds me of Big Bang theorists who live by the unspoken motto – “the model we are committed to (the big bang) requires dark matter and dark energy, therefore, dark matter and dark energy must exist.”

Heiser tries to have it both ways at the same time. He says sin originated with Adam and Eve, yet it is also caused by the spirits of the Nephilim. He relies heavily on pagan literature to arrive at his conclusion about Genesis 6:1-4, yet he calls that passage a polemic against pagan religions. He says “Yahweh alone commands the nations and their gods. Other gods serve him” (p 156), but his book mentions many times how they have rebelled against God and ruled in evil ways. Dr. Heiser, you can’t have it both ways.

Heiser says on page 169 that “Israel was to be theologically and ethically distinct (from the other nations). These distinctions were obligations, not suggestions.” And yet Heiser is happy to bring in as much of paganism as he wants. He tries to uphold their separateness, but most of what he builds on to create his worldview is from other religions. Dr. Heiser, you can’t have it both ways.

Another way to say this is that Heiser sends many mixed messages. One of the problems created by a mixed message is that the reader will simply choose the option he likes best and ignore the other option. Nothing has been accomplished; nothing has been taught. The other obvious problem with mixed messages is that it causes confusion. If the reader does not have an opinion formed already and thus, does not know which option to choose, he will not know what to believe; he will be paralyzed in the middle.

Heiser strongly implies that the Nephilim were God’s children and thus imagers of God and part of God’s council. On page 110 he says that the Genesis 6:1-4 passage is one of three passages (along with Gen 3 and Deut 32) which are foundational to his worldview. This connects everything he says in the next few pages about the disinheriting of the nations, to the Nephilim.  So even though he does not use the word Nephilim on pages 113-115, they are still part of that discussion and thus, it is strongly implied that God gave the other nations to the spirits of the Nephilim. In these pages he refers to the “sons of God” several times.  But see page 203 where he write, “Israel is at war with enemies spawned by rival divine beings. The Nephilim bloodlines were not like the peoples of the disinherited nations… The Nephilim had a different pedigree. They were produced by other divine beings. They did not belong to Yahweh, and he therefore had no interest in claiming them. Coexistence was not possible with the spawn of other gods.” This seems like a strong contradiction. It leaves the reader wondering which one is actually what Heiser believes.

When Michael Heiser is dealing with specific passages from the Bible, he usually offers only the options that will help his argument. As I read his book, I often wanted to shout, “Why aren’t you showing all the options?”

When he discusses how the Nephilim existed after the flood he gives only two options, one of which is absurd, and the other is the one he favors (see page 189).

Regarding Dan 4:17, on pages 53 & 54 Michael Heiser uses the word “watchers” but it is usually rendered “angels” by Christian translators. The word means to be “awake, alert” and seems to have referred to guardian angels who were to watch over and protect humans. What I consider to be the normal translation is fine here, there is no need to turn this into a reference to the spirits of the Nephilim, who are demons! Nor is it necessary to consider this to mean divine figures other than angels. Doing so would make the Israelites henotheistic rather than monotheistic.

On page 54, regarding Daniel 4:24-26, Heiser says, “the phrase “heaven is sovereign” is interesting.  The Aramaic word translated “heaven (shemayin) is plural and is accompanied by a plural verb. The plurality of shemayin can point to either the members of the council or the council as a collective.” The only options he gives are the members of the divine council or the council as a collective. Also, I am bothered by the fact that Heiser implies that the use of the plural was unique and pointed to something different than the singular form would have. In Aramaic there were/are indeed singular and plural forms of the word “heavens”, but the singular was rarely used. It was so rare that the plural form of this word was used for both singular and plural uses most of the time. So, in reality, the plural form can mean “the abode of God, God Himself, or all those abiding in heaven (which Christians interpret as God and His angels).” I’m sure that Heiser knew that the plural form was commonly used for both singular and plural, but he chose to present it as evidence for his divine council idea anyway. I consider that purposeful deception. What’s more, the “heavens” does not need to refer to a divine council. To say “the heavens are sovereign” is another way to say “God is sovereign”.

Heiser freely mixes demons and disobedient deities with angels. He assumes that God puts up with their disobedience for long periods of time.

Heiser makes one assumption after another and then builds on each one as if they are all true. He starts with his assumption, and then makes it a rule. Examples of such assumptions are: Elohim is a place name and always refers to divine beings, God works with a divine council, the members of the divine council are also “imagers” of God, the serpent is a member of God’s council, sexual relations between gods and humans are possible, the phrase “sons of God” always has a heavenly context, disembodied Nephilim became demons, at Babel God give the nations into the hands of the spirits of the Nephilim, the term angels is interchangeable with members of the divine council, Jesus came to restore Eden, we will one day become divine.

Allow me to select one of those examples mentioned in the last paragraph and explain it. Let’s look at what Heiser says about the phrase “the sons of God” as he explains why traditional interpretations of Genesis 6:1-4 are incorrect.

On page 97 Heiser states, “The plurality of the phrase “sons of God” and the heavenly contexts of its use elsewhere show us there is no exegetical reason to exclude the occurrences of the phrase in Genesis 6:2,4 from the list of supernatural beings.” By “elsewhere” he means elsewhere in the Bible. He assumes a supernatural, heavenly context for all the passages in the Bible that use the phrase “sons of Elohim” and then he turns his assumption into an interpretive rule.

On page  99 Heiser says the following: “All Jewish traditions before the New Testament era took a supernatural view of Gensis 6:1-4.” If you look at the footnote you will see that the basis for his statement is the book of 1 Enoch and some other late Jewish writings from what is called the Second Temple era, i.e. after some Israelites came back from captivity in Babylon. Some of the Second temple era Jewish writings reflect the mythology of the Babylonians and Persians in whose lands they had been living. There were other Jewish writings from that era that do not show the influence of paganism, specifically the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Notice that the writings of those prophets are in the Bible, while the writings that show a heavy reliance on paganism, such as the books of Enoch, are not in the Bible. So I disagree with his statement that all Jewish traditions before the New Testament took a supernatural view of Genesis 6:1-4. Only those influenced by pagan religions did so. The truth is that all faithful Jews were monotheists, and adopting the ideology of paganism was strictly forbidden.

In the next paragraph Heiser says, “But biblical theology does not derive from the church fathers. It derives from the biblical text, framed in its own context.” Then he goes on to show what he means by “its own context”. He devotes most of the rest of the paragraph to Second Temple Jewish literature, the Mesopotamian context, and the Mesopotamian background.

He ends that paragraph, now on page 100, with the statement, “Filtering Genesis 6:1-4 through Christian tradition that arose centuries after the New Testament period cannot honestly be considered interpreting Genesis 6:1-4 in context.” I say, neither can interpreting it with pagan mythology! The early church fathers, in the creeds they created to protect against the influence of other religions or movements, creeds which Heiser despises, were doing their best to interpret Scripture from Scripture, not from foreign mythology.

My point here is that Heiser does the very thing the Jews were strictly prohibited from doing – he relies on pagan religions to help him interpret the Bible! Heiser’s starting point for interpreting the Bible is pagan mythology, which is the wrong starting point, one that was spoken against throughout the entire Bible. If you start with the wrong assumptions, you will inevitably end up with the wrong conclusions.

God wanted to shape His chosen people into an instrument He could use to influence the rest of the world for good. But to do that, He needed a people that did not think and act the same way that the pagans did. That’s why He wanted them to be different from the religions of the people around them, not the same.

As you can plainly see, many things in Heiser’s book are based on an assumption that is not well grounded, but he holds to each of them tenaciously and builds on them as if they are a solid foundation.

I will go so far as to say that I am convinced that Heiser even resorted to making statements that he knew were false. I will never accuse Michael Heiser of a lack of intelligence. He was both intelligent and highly educated. Therefore, some of his statements are all the more egregious because he had to have known better. I almost included this point in the Fatal Flaws, but I refrained from doing so because I cannot conclusively prove this allegation I am making. But if a neophyte like myself was taught these things in my first year of studying Hebrew, Dr. Heiser had to have known them as well.

Allow me to illustrate why I make such a strong statement.

Example # 1: He pretends that the plural usage of “heavens” cannot have a singular meaning and therefore must refer to a council of gods. With his level of education in Hebrew and other Semitic languages, he had to know that the plural “heavens” was basically the only form of the word used; it stood for both singular and plural meanings.

Example # 2: The meaning of the word Nephilim in Aramaic. Heiser gives us the verb behind the Hebrew word, but only the singular noun behind the Aramaic plural noun. He pretends that the words come from different roots. But he had to have known that nouns in both languages came from verbs. The verb behind the Aramaic noun is the same verb as the one behind the Hebrew noun. He was being deceptive here.

Example # 3: Regarding I Cor 8:5, he says it is wrong for translators to place the words “gods” and “lords” in quotation marks because “the Greek manuscripts have no such punctuation.” They had no punctuation at all! Heiser had to have known about their total lack of punctuation and how they crammed all the words together with no spaces between words. This means translators had to interpret meaning and intent.

The next lesson in this series is ALL PEGS ARE ROUND IN THE END.