BibleProject - Spiritual Warfare - God E3

Episode Date: July 30, 2018

This is episode three in our series outlining the development of the character of God in the Bible! In this show, Tim and Jon walk through the big ideas of the “Divine Council” and spiritual warfare. In part one (00:00-23:40), Tim outlines a strange story in 1 Kings 22:19 about the prophet Micaiah. Micaiah said, “Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left." Jon asks what a “host” is in the Bible. Tim explains that "host" is used to describe an army or a set of advisers. Tim says the point is that God is depicted as a military captain with a set of lower ranking officers. This theme continues in other passages like Job 1:6 and 7:6. "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and the satan also came among them." "The Lord said to Satan, 'From where do you come?' Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” Jon asks who are the "sons of God are. Tim explains that it is a turn of phrase used to represent a class of spiritual beings. Followers of Old Testament prophets were often called “sons,” not to demonstrate physical sonship, but to demonstrate a sort of relationship where the greater power was in a position of authority over a lesser power. Tim says the point is that the Bible portrays God as having a sort of staff team, or mediators, that do his bidding in order to interact with the world. This is God’s “divine council.” In part two (23:40-49:48), Tim outlines a very strange section in the Old Testament: Deuteronomy 32:8-9 When the Most High [Yahweh] allotted the nations, and set the divisions for the sons of humanity, He fixed the territories of peoples According to the number of sons of God [Heb. sons of elohim] For Yahweh’s portion is his people Jacob his own allotment. Tim says there is a large biblical scholarship debate over the interpretation of this passage. To explain this passage, Tim quotes from Jefferey Tigay: “Deuteronomy 32:8-9 refers to an early tradition, that when God was allotting nations to the delegated authority of other divine beings, he made the same number of nations and territories as there were such beings. Verse 9 implies that He then assigned the other nations to those divine beings, and states explicitly that He kept Israel for Himself. This seems to be part of a concept hinted at elsewhere in the Bible and in postbiblical literature. When God organized the government of the world, He established two tiers: at the top, He Himself, “God of gods (ʾelohei ha-ʾelohim) and Lord of lords” (Deut 10:17), who reserved Israel for Himself, to govern personally; below Him, seventy angelic “divine beings” (sons of ʾelohim), to whom He allotted the other peoples. The conception is like that of a king or emperor governing the capital or heartland of his realm personally and assigning the provinces to subordinates.” Jon seems flabbergasted. God put other gods in charge of other nations? Jon asks how this view can be reconciled with actual knowledge of world history and human development. Tim says this is a theme in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 4:16-19, Moses says to Israel, “Don’t act corruptly and make a image for yourselves in the form of any figure… And don’t lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the Lord has taken you...to be a people for His own possession, as today." Tim says this hints at a concept in Hebrew culture that portrayed a spiritual rebellion against God that coincided with a human rebellion. Tim says the human rebellion is told in detail in the Bible, but the spiritual rebellion is only hinted at. The complex story of the “sons of God” sleeping with human women in Genesis 6 could be viewed as them going into rebellion and crossing a line. Tim says this theme reaches its culmination in the Old Testament in the book of Daniel and the story of the Prince of Persia. In part three (49:48-1:01:26), Tim says the Jesus carries these themes of other elohim forward into the New Testament. The greek word for “demon” in the New Testament is connected to the word “daimonion” (δαιμόνιον). Demon is a word that means “demi” or lesser god. In Hebrew categories, it would be a son of elohim. Tim says he has a tough time reconciling this with a western “rational” worldview. He says Jesus and the authors of the New Testament clearly believed in a world that included unseen spiritual forces. Tim says that the New Testament passage in Ephesians 6, referring to the "armor of God," shouldn’t be appropriated as passages about spiritual warfare of demonic attack; rather, they should be seen as warnings against elevating differences above unity in the body of Christ. The point of Ephesians is for the church to learn how to live in unity with a group of diverse people. Therefore a spiritual warfare attack is when Christians are not living in unity. In part four (1:01:26-1:07:18), Jon asks how to interpret all of this with a modern view of human development. Tim says the purpose of the Bible is not to tell me about the origins of the physical universe, but to be a unified story that leads to Jesus. Tim says that attempting to place spiritual and human rebellion narratives into a chronological order that makes sense to modern people can be dangerous because you lose the context of the original stories. Jon says his temptation is not that, but to think that there is no spiritual realm, not that there is a complex one ruled by a divine council. Tim agrees and says that all of the same idols that existed in other cultures exist in our culture, but modern people worship money, sex, and power, not as named deities like Mammon, but just as objects in themselves. In part five (1:07:18-end), Tim previews the next part of the – God’s complex relationship with the world. If God is portrayed as having a set of staff, these staff interact with the world consistently throughout the Scriptures. One example is how the Angel of the Lord appears many times acting on behalf of God. Next episode we will have a Q+R. Send us audio recordings of your questions to [e-mail]. Please mention your name, where you're from and keep your questions to about 20 seconds. Thanks! Resources: “The Divine Council,” The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Larry Hurtado: Books: "One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism" and "Ancient Jewish Monotheism and Early Christian Jesus Devotion" Interviews: "Early High Christology on Trinities Podcast" Michael Heiser: Books: The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, and Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World and Why it Matters Podcast: The Naked Bible Podcast Videos: "The Divine Council" and "Divine Council Introduction" Produced By: Dan Gummel. Jon Collins. Matthew Halbert Howen. Music: Defender Instrumental: Rosasharn Music Moments: Tae the Producer

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

I've always thought this whole thing was just super weird. I found it actually really difficult to even believe. I have actually been avoiding studying this topic. I came to realize this about six months ago and being very honest, it doesn't jive. This is John at the Bible Projects. On this podcast, we have been going through a series of discussions about the identity of God. How God alone is the one true, all-powerful creator over everything. But how the Bible uses the word God, the word Elohim, to refer to other spiritual beings that also exist, and like God have power and authority. They're called the sons of God, the hosts of heaven.

I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of heaven were standing by him on his right and on his left. Moses talks about them. They show up in the story of Job, they're seen in Kings and Daniel, and when we play out these stories and we look at their implication. What it means is that Yahweh runs the world with the staff team, with delegated authority. Bible nerds, biblical scholars have come to refer to this category or this idea as the divine council depicting God as like a commander in chief of a staff of Elohim. But wait a second, these other gods are often pretty evil. They move nations towards child sacrifice and injustice. So what went wrong?

There was a human rebellion happening at Babylon, and then you read on to the Torah and you realized there was also a rebellion among the host of heaven. Those other gods weren't satisfied with delegated authority. They wanted more for themselves. There's been a lot of speculation about how this unseen realm of spiritual forces actually works, and the Bible doesn't give us a lot of detail about it. One rebellion is told in detail to human ones. One rebellion is merely hinted at, and that's the spiritual one. It's actually hard to put them all together to a coherent narrative. Despite our lack of clarity, about the heavenly hosts, the divine council, angels, demons, the rebellion, how they interact with the world today, despite how confusing it is and

how limited our understanding of it is, this theme of spiritual warfare is a very important biblical theme. It was an active part of G.ioza's way of viewing the world. It was an active part of Paul's way of viewing the world. Paul uses this vocabulary of spiritual powers, rulers, authorities. The apostles in Jesus seemed to really want me to be aware that there are realities of good and evil that I'm not aware of. I can't sense with my five senses, but that doesn't

mean they're not real and don't have some degree of influence. So let's trace the theme of spiritual warfare through the biblical story. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. We're talking about God and we're talking about the God of the Bible. We're going to make a theme video on God and who he is and how the Bible talks about God. This is the third episode. The first hour we talked about how the Hebrew word Elohim means more accurately a broad category of spiritual beings.

Yeah. Kind of like the way K9 or Feline works to describe a whole host of creatures that are maybe alike or unlike in some ways, but they all have in common one feature. So this word Elohim, if you were to say do biblical authors believe there are other Elohims, you would have to say yes, they do. They talked about the Elohims of Egypt, they talk about Samuels, Spirit being in Elohim, Demons being Elohim. Paul says there are other Elohim, but that really kind of seems to rub up against come conflict with other statements

that you find in the Bible a lot, which is the very Jewish statement of, there is no other God, there is no other Elohim, but Elohim. But Yahweh. But Yahweh. Yes, he is alone. Yeah, he is. There is no God Elohim, but Elohim. But Yahweh. But Yahweh. Yes. He is alone.

Yes. There is no God besides Yahweh. Yeah. So in the second hour we talked about what does that mean and how by saying that you aren't saying there are no other Elohim saying there's no other Elohim that is at the category. Yeah. The supreme power that Yahweh has.

And the thing is, when we say God, we typically just mean the supreme, right, we don't mean just Elohim. We would typically use the word spiritual being. Being. Or lowercase, G-O-D-S. Lowercase G-O-D-S. So, that all in mind, the question on the table

then is, what are these other Elohim that exist and have dominion? And how does it by will talk about them? So you're going to walk us through that. Let me just say at first, I think most people listening and myself included have categories for angels, whether it's a good category or not that I have in my head, I have it demons, Jesus cast them out. And Paul talks about spiritual forces, power,

authorities and so on. Yeah, yeah. What's all that about? So there's something. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't grow up in a tradition that really emphasized that. Infocized it and liked to really dig in. We didn't read Frank Prattie, like we didn't like get into that stuff. Infocized it and liked to really dig in. We didn't read Frank Peretti, like we didn't like get into that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, there are some Christian traditions that are really interested in this set of topics. It usually falls under a category called spiritual warfare. Right. Yep. Which assumes that there's a conflict going on among these spiritual beings. Yeah. So where did all that come from?

Right. First of all, where did the conflict image come from? And before that, where did the ideas of these spiritual beings with some measure of power or influence? Where does that all start? Yeah. Yeah, that's the question. Okay, let's start with a handful of biblical passages

that are just clear as day about this. Bible nerds, biblical scholars have come to refer to this category or this idea, this theme in the old and New Testament as the divine council. This theme that you're about to tell us about. Yes, called the divine council. Okay. In other words, it language, an imagery depicting God as like a commander in chief of a staff of Elohim. Yeah. Of other King with his lieutenants. Yeah, so whether it's a king, yeah, with his general with his lieutenants or something. Yeah, that's right.

Exactly. The divine council. And there's a handful of passages that actually use this language of commander-in-chief type of situation. So in the book of kings, first kings chapter 22 there's a prophet Micaiah who's brought before Ahab, one of the kings of Israel, and Micaiah tells him what the god of Israel wants to say. So he says, I had this vision. Here's the word of the Lord, I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne and all the host of heaven were standing by him on his right and on his left. You get the scene here. It's Yahweh, the chief Elohim, and then there's all these other beings on flanking.

Well, yeah, that's a weird translation, host of heaven. So, okay, here we go. Host of heaven. Yeah, so you know the word heaven skies. Yeah. So it's the entities that populate the skies the host the heavenly hosts. Yeah, so I'm familiar with that word because I grew up in church Hosts, but I don't actually really understand because I don't use I don't a host is someone who like organizes a party. Yeah, I got it. You would never say, yeah, you're right. Yeah, okay. So this obviously is from some old English. Yeah, that I don't use anymore. Yeah, it means army. Oh, it means army. Yeah, most means military staff. So if you had a host in Hebrew, Sava, military, military staff.

So in Old English, you can use host to describe an army, a multitude, especially an army organized for war, and that comes from mid-century Old French, host, host. There it is. And from medieval Latin, hostess, an earlier use, a stranger or foreigner, in classical use and enemy. So originally this word host or host,

hostess met a stranger or an enemy, but then eventually it became to be used, to refer to a multitude specifically in army. Oh, I see. Usually a host is a stranger. Oh, right. Yeah. Showing hospitality to you. Yeah. Sure. So somehow it went from that to meaning also a multitude like an army. And now we just use it to refer to someone who entertains. So in hospitality. Yeah, fascinating. Yeah. So yeah, that English word does not help us in our Bibles. Host. I don't think. I don't think. The host of heaven. We would say the army of heaven? Army. Oh, interesting. The new international version renders

this multitudes of heaven. Okay. The host of heaven comes to us from the King James. Of course. Yep. Yeah, makes sense. The real battle. Because 400 years ago, the word,

that's what I'm at. Host in English. A mill, a multitude of soldiers. Yeah. So the point is in this scene, God's depicted as, yeah, a military captain with his officers. Because in Hebrew it's very clearly a military word. Yeah. Sava, yeah, Sava Shamyam, the army staff of military staff of heaven. Wow. Now so concretelyely it's the stars. It's referring to so the stars in most human cultures that are polytheists are represent gods spiritual beings divine beings of some kind Venus Mars. Yeah, but for an Israelite

Yahweh is the Elohim now those might represent Elohim Yahweh is the Elohim. Now those might represent Elohim, but they're just God's officers of his steppes. Because where's God's Biblical conception? That thing above us is a solid dome. Yahweh is above the heavens. He's in the heavens above the heavens. His thrones above it all, which means that his throne is above the heavenly hosts. So they're below him, they're his subordinates. And so now we're taking that concept and turning it into a word picture where Yahweh is the chief. I saw the Lord sitting on a throne and below him are the stars now the stars now By him depicted as standing by him as

spiritual beings and the Lord said I've got a mission I need somebody to go in Tis a. Hab to go to battle so he'll die So and this is a bigger context a. Hab has been a really horrible person He's now a murderer. yeah, by chapter 22, he's a murderer of innocent people, and God's like, I'm done with this guy. So, he's gonna orchestrate A-hab's downfall. I need somebody to do that for me. One, and then look at this.

One said this, another said that. This is in the story. This is what the prophets over there, they just start hearing. So one's like, ah, I know Lead him to this cliff and I'll push him off. There's like no have him stumble and have him whatever Then verse 21 a spirit a Ruach a Ruach. Yeah came forward and stood before Yahweh and said

and stood before Yahweh and said, I will entice him and on goes the story. God accepts this spirit beings plan to bring about the downfall of Ahab. So is that kind of a synonym then here? Like the rock is the heavenly host? Yeah, so notice we have a diverse vocabulary to refer to these beings. We have Elohim and now we have

Rua, a non-physical being. Yeah, yeah. And notice it's not controversial to call these the armies of heaven. It's not controversial to call them a spirit, but somehow in English it is controversial to call that being a God. Yeah. Anyway, just pointing that out. You're right. Okay. So, okay. Now, this story just introduces this scene.

Yeah. Just like where did this come from? Yeah. Right? Are you with me? It's just like, whoa. Okay. God's, there's all these, wow.

This is fascinating. Yeah. This is exactly the same scene as the beginning of the book of Job. Yeah. So there was a day when, in this case, it's the sons of God, the sons of Elohim, came to present themselves before Yahweh and the satan, the one among the sons of Elohim, who is the accuser, the opposer, was among them. And then the Lord said to the opposer, Ah, where were you patrolling today?

And the Opposer said, Ah, it's going about doing my mission, just like I always do. Roman the earth, Roman the earth. So sons of God. Yeah, so it's a new title in our conversation. The sons of Elohim. Yeah, that's not landing for me.

It's not work for you. Yeah, what do they like? Yeah, so the first is God procreating. Okay, no, no. This is a Hebrew turn of phrase. You can put the word sons or daughters of something in front of a noun, and what it means is the members of that class. The best example is in the book of kings where Elijah and Elijah, with these really powerful prophet figures, and they get this following of other prophets who form around them and they're called the sons of the prophets, which doesn't mean that they were all born to prophetic figures. What it means is they've joined this group and they all are aspiring young prophets. Some membership of sorts. It's membership,

yeah. There's another phrase often the villages in any large city today. There's almost always a network of suburb, sub-erbs around them. And that's true in the ancient world, you could have Jerusalem, and then the little daughter villages around them, and those would be called the daughters of Jerusalem. Oh, is how those are often referred to. Okay. So it's the members of a class.

So the sons of Elohim are. Yeah, okay. There are members of this class of Elohim. Yeah. So who defines, right? We're back to this feline category here. So who's the Elohim that defines what it means to be Elohim? Well, it's the Elohim. Is Lewis picking up on this when he calls like in Narnio and he's like, you are Son of Adam when he's talking to like Edmund and stuff. Oh, actually that's another example of this Hebrew turn of phrase. The Son of Man. Son of Man. The Son of Adam when he's talking to Edmund and stuff. Oh, actually, that's another example of this Hebrew turn of phrase.

The Son of Man. Son of Adam. Okay. Which just means a human. A human. Yeah. Yeah. Son of Adam or daughter of Eve.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good, yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. That's another good example. So a son of Elohim is a lesser Elohim. But we are actually in some way procreated from... Oh, got it, yes. So here, the procreation...

It's not part of the deal. It's just part of the turn of phrase. Just like Jerusalem didn't give birth to that village. Yeah, kind of metaphorically. Maybe. Oh, but maybe think like in Portland, down south is Oregon City. It's now a suburb of Portland.

It's a daughter of Portland. But Oregon City has its own heritage. It's way older than Portland. So technically Portland's a daughter of Oregon City. But you would now call it, you would call Oregon City the suburb or the daughter of Portland. The point is it's just a turn of phrase. Has nothing to do with where it came from? Correct. the suburb or the daughter of Portland. The point is it's just a turn of phrase. Has nothing to do with where it came from? Correct. Or what hierarchy it has even?

I see. Yeah, I'm trying to think. It's usually a lesser, a member of the category of which the one is what defines the category. Elijah and Elijah are the prophets, but there are the sons of the prophets. Who follow them around. So in this case, you are the sons of the prophets. Who follow them around. So in this case, you have the sons of God.

So these, the sons of God appear here in the being of Job. The first time they appear is on page 6 of the Bible. The sons of God. See human women and have sex with them. Yeah. Whole other rabbit hole. That's in the Bible. That's in the Yeah. Whole other rabbit hole. That's in the Bible.

That's in the Bible. Tell me about it. So let's just pause on that. Okay. Let's actually just take that out of the Bible. Here's another example. Okay. Psalm 89.

The heavens proclaim your wonders, Yahweh. Even your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones. Who in the skies is similar to Yahweh? Who among the sons of Alim is compared to Yahweh? He is the great God, which is the Hebrew word L, not Elohim. He's the great L, feared among the council of holy ones. He's revered among all those surrounding him. So here we're taking this image of Yahweh as the chief of staff. And among all the other holy ones, we're calling them holy ones, the sons of God, Slow down here and those surrounding him. The whole start with that.

In the assembly of the holy ones, holy, meaning, if I'm a trimmer, Kadovsh. Yes, good, good job. What does that one mean? Unique. Unique. One of a kind and set a person. Here's the thing, man.

I forget things so easily. What's fine? I think that's why I'm good asking questions. Good. Okay. All right. So if you forget that you asked the same question, I guess, yeah.

So the unique ones, the holy ones, yeah, the kadoosh. The kadoosh ones, the holy ones. There's this assembly of unique ones. They're unique in the sense that they are all Elohim, which is pretty unique for the world of humans. Yeah, yeah, or in this case, who's the ultimate holy one?

Yeah, that way. He is the only Elohim who's made all creation, including the other ones. These other ones are called holy ones. Yeah, they're the sons of Elohim. They share in God's holiness because they like Elohim But they are not a the Elohim got it. So they're the holy ones. Yep. Yep. Okay And the whole point of this poem is even though they're like their sons of God. Uh-huh. They are not the Elohim

No one yes, okay, so yeah, we simply Holy Ones. Who is similar to Yahweh? Who of the sons of gods? Now, why is it Elim? That's not one that we have. Yeah, well, it's not Elohim, which is the plural, or Eloah. You have Eloah, and then the plural of that's Elohim. Then you have the noun L, or the plural of that, and you can just put the plural of that is on Elim. All right. Yeah. I know it's confusing. So what are words? I'm following. So who of the sons of the gods? Mm-hmm. The sons of the gods? The sons of the Elohim? The sons of...

Who is the son? The sons of Elim. That might just be my... I think this is my English translation. Oh, because it's plural for God. Oh, yeah. I put my, I think, I think this is my English translation. Oh, because it's plural for God. Oh, yeah, I put the word then there, because in English, you wouldn't say, who of the sons of gods? God, it. Yeah. But it's very clearly a plural.

So, in other words, it does say- There's membership of the class of gods, not of Yahweh. Right. So out of all the holy ones, Yahweh is the greatest. Yeah, yeah, you got that's it. So so far we've got the host, they're called the host of heaven, the army of heaven, the army of heaven, the sons of God, the sons of the gods, the holy ones. Yeah, there you go. Creatures, spiritual creatures, creatures, creatures, makes me think of physical physical. Okay, so being being. These spiritual beings are mentioned all different parts of the Bible, and they're always depicted as subservient to Yahweh, who's the Elohim,

but they're also under his command, like they do stuff. They run errands for Yahweh. They're his staff, which means they have some kind of delegated authority in influence. Right? He's played out. So they can do stuff. It's only what they're allowed to do, but they can do stuff. That's in terms of if we're playing out scenes and their implications, what it means is that Yahweh runs the world with the staff team, with delegated authority. That seems to be what these mean on a face value reading. Right. Now, could it mean that who really knows how things work in the spiritual realm and this is just the way that God communicated with them because this is the world

they lived in. Sure. In the same way that God doesn't live in tabernacles but he had him build a tabernacle. Yeah God, or God doesn't just live up in the skies. Right. But that's the way of talking about it. So yeah, one way to think about what's going on is all the biblical authors live in a world where this is normal. This is the nature of structured power. Yeah.

And the greater the power of a monarch or king, the more staff they have. So to depict Yahweh as the chief of a huge staff is within their available framework to say, yeah, that's right. So the question is, however, do those spiritual beings are they just parts of the metaphor? Right.

Or does God actually seem to interact with the world through some kinds of mediators, or delegated authority figures? And as we're going to see, this doesn't seem like it's just part of a metaphor. There are lots and lots of stories, and of the biblical story where people are interacting with Yahweh by means of a mediator. We'll have to lay the groundwork for that. It's called the Divine Council. Okay. Okay, so here's where things get even more interesting. There's this poem that Moses speak to the people we've already looked at at once in Deuteronomy 32. And he is trying to convince the Israelites before they go into the promised land.

Like, hey, follow Yahweh, he rescued you. You're going to go into the promised land, the Canaanites worship all kinds of Elohim. You shall have no other Elohim before me. It's the first commandment of the Ten. Very practical. Very practical. So, the big part of this poem is he's retelling the story of Genesis 1 through the Exodus story, and he's retelling the story of God choosing the family of Abraham and choosing Israel and so on.

And he gets this point in the story so fascinating, verses 8 and 9. And he says, before this, he said, go back to your ancestors and ask them about the days of old. Go back to the stories of our ancestors, Genesis, and he says, verse 8, when the most high, which that word, El Yon, the most high god, was allotting out the nations when he was setting the divisions for the sons of Adam, the sons of humanity. He fixed the territories of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Elohim.

Now, Yahweh's portion is his people, Jacob, referring to the people of Israel, that's Yahweh's allotment. So there's a lot happening. We're recalling a time in the past when God's ordering the nations. And we're told that every nation gets its own territory. It's the way of talking about God's sovereignty over the human history and where people go and what people do. And then we get this interesting line. He fixed or assigned the territories of nations according to the number of the sons of Elohim.

Yeah. So, I mean, it makes sense for someone from that culture to think that, right? To say, okay, there's all these different types of people, and they're separated by language and custom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also by who they worship. Yep. And so, why is this? Well, it wasn't an accident. Our God, the most high, he said it all up. And the way he said it up was that he said, cool, this people,

this God is going to be the one over you guys. This Elohim. This Elohim. Yeah. Yeah. It's like he, yeah like he partitioned everything, put like a team captain basically over all these. Yeah, that's right. Different. Unless they're Elohim. Sun of Elohim. Yeah.

But then notice the contrast. It seems silly. Hold on, knows the contrast then in the poem. All these other nations, they have a son of Elohim. But we have. But we have Yahweh, the Elohim. Yeah. He took, is the family of Abraham from among all the nations as his own special.

He wanted to directly rule over them, not to be delegated authority. That's the concept here. Yeah. It'd be kind of like, this is going to be a very American centric again, but if like, you know, we have 50 states and there have senators and governors and stuff, but we have a president. And if the president got his own state. Right? Yeah, interesting. Yeah, okay. Sure. And it's kind of like, the presence above all these guys, and he happens to be our, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You could probably,

in a way that would work for any modern nation state would be like mayors. Yeah, mayors. Something. Every city has its own, you know, appointed governing leader elected or appointed. Yeah. But then it would be as if the prime minister or the president of the whole nation state chose one particular city. Yeah, and said directly, and I'll be in charge of this one. I'm in charge of this city. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it. You'd feel special if you're in that city. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it.

You'd feel special if you were in that city. Yeah, that's good. That's good analogy. Before we try and match this onto what we can reconstruct of human history. Human history. Where is this? This is the fifth book of the Bible. It's clearly a hyperlink.

Right. One of these book will hyperlink to some earlier story. Right. In the Torah. Yeah, what would that be? So, dude, the rabbit hole. The rabbit hole goes deep. First of all, the translation that I just read to you is from a number of modern translations. The King James reads differently because it's based on a different form of a Hebrew text.

King James and other translations that follow this particular Hebrew text read, when the most high divided up the nations, he fixed the territories of the peoples according to the numbers of the sons of Israel, Israel, according to the number of the sons of Israel. Now we're just talking about Israel. Yeah, so all of this is hyperlinking back

to the table of nations, the table of 70 nations in Genesis chapter 10. So here's what seems to be happening. To say that God divided up the territories according to the numbers of the sons of Israel. How many sons of Israel were there? Well Jacob, whose name got changed to Israel, and when he goes down to Egypt with his big family, we're told there were 70. He went down

with 70 down into Egypt. So not of his actual sons, but members of the clan. Correct, members of his clan. And lo and behold, how many nations are numbered in Genesis chapter 10, the sons of Shem, Ham, and Japheth 70? Okay. So, first of all, there's an early tradition, linking, and it's from a medieval Hebrew text. It's actually one of the main Hebrew texts that most English translations are based off of.

Maserati. Reads the sons of Israel. However, there are some early translations from, like are some early translations of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, reads or translates here according to the number of the angels of God. He uses the Greek word angels of God, which is very strange. People who often scratch their heads, how did this translator get the idea of angels of God from the sons of Israel? And then the deceased scrolls were found, and there were sections of Deuteronomy discovered that did not read the word Israel. It read the word L or Elohim. There's a... Suns are well. Yeah. So here's what almost certainly happened.

Was that a scribe somewhere in between the period of the second temple or later on, God Arash, when they read this phrase that God divided up the nations according to the number of spiritual beings. You thought that's dumb? Well, more I think that can't be what the Bible says. Right. There's no God but one. We have to explain how you get... You wouldn't say that. You wouldn't say, oh, there's no God but one. There's only one point God. There's only one point. Yeah, I think what you would have to say is scribe either was certain that Oh, by, there's no God but one, there's only one point God. There's only one point God. No idea. Yeah. I think what you would have to say is, uh, scribe, either was certain that that couldn't

be the correct reading. Yeah. Or it was a mistake. It was a mistake. It was, was, thought it was a mistake, or thought that it was theologically dangerous. Yeah. And was aware of a tradition of Jacob's 70 descendants corresponding in Genesis, there's a mapping of Jacob 70 and the 70 in Genesis 10 of the nations. And so, change. Connecting it to that. Change the word L to.

But most likely it was originally. It's a rouse. Suns of L. Correct. Meaning that there's the original one we're talking about. Yeah, there's every nation got its own lesser Elohim as a captain, as a mayor. Yeah. And that this did pick up their spiritual mayor. And once again, to pick the God as the head of the council, you get this one, you get that one, you get that one, and so on.

And there's actually another passage in Deuteronomy. And now let's stop it. This doesn't mean that they're evil or malevolent. No, they could be part of his man's center. Yeah, totally. Some reason in my mind I'm thinking like, oh, he's putting them on demons in chart. Yeah, no, there's no indication that they're necessarily evil.

However, once, surely like Moab, the Kemosh, the God worshiped by Moab or Ba Baal, the Baal worshiped by the Setonians. These were God's known for demanding child sacrifice. Oh, something's gone wrong. So... Well, so did Yahweh. I mean, he didn't go through with it, but he asked for it with Isaac. Oh, with Abraham and Isaac? Yeah, separate conversation. So eventually, as it turns out, all is not well among the sons of Elohim. There's been a rebellion, but that's not what being talked about here. Here we're just talking about the original plan. It's God designing a staff team. Yeah. Right? And for world governance. Okay, it gets even more interesting. This was actually talked about earlier on in Doanami 4, where Moses said to Israel,

hey, Israel, don't act corruptly, don't make any images for yourselves than any figures, don't lift your eyes up to heaven and look at the sun, the moon, the stars, the armies of heaven, the host of heaven. Let's see. And be drawn away and worship and serve them. of heaven and be drawn away and worship and serve them, those which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the people under the whole heaven. God set it up and those lesser Elohim are for governing those other people, but Yahweh has taken you to be his own possession. It's the same idea. It's just in a different biblical passage. Just in case you're wondering like, what, this is just one biblical passage? No, it's actually a theme in Deuteronomy.

That Israel is Yahweh's special people, the other people worship other gods. And even that is itself by God's allowance. But what's gone wrong as the biblical, as the steam develops, is that those other gods weren't satisfied with delegated authority they wanted More for themselves. Here's a quote from a Jewish scholar. Wait, is there is there part of the Bible? Talks about that the rebellion We'll talk about that. Okay

Such a crazy conversation. Yeah, I'm with you. This is yeah Not a normal thing that I would think about. Here's Jeffrey Tige, his commentary on Deuteronomy. He's talking about these passages in Deuteronomy. He says, these passages refer to an early tradition about God allotting the nations to the delegated authority of other divine beings. And he made that the same number of nations and territories as there were such beings. However, verse 9 implies, and he's referring back to the statement of, he fixed the territories according to the number of the sons of God. States explicitly then that he kept Israel for himself, but Yahweh's portion was his people. This seems to be part of a concept hinted at elsewhere

in the Bible and in later Jewish literature. When God organized the government of the world, there were two tears. At the top, there's Yahweh, God of gods, and Lord of lords. He reserved Israel for himself to govern personally, but below him were 70 angelic sons of Elohim, to whom he allotted the other peoples. The conception is like that of a king or an emperor governing a capital or heartland of his realm and then assigning the provinces to different subordinates. So that's the setup, that's the conception here.

Yeah. However, if you go back to think back, where is what is 70 coming? This is a hyperlink back to the 70 nations of Genesis 10. What's the next story in the book of Genesis? Or, yes, I don't know. Yeah, the rebellion of Babylon. And the scattering of the nations at Babylon. So, what's happening here actually is hyperlinking back to something odd going on in those stories, because Genesis 10 gives you 70, right? 70 nations, and they're all organized, and it says, each according to their own language. And then Genesis 11 comes along and says,

everyone, right, the whole land had one language. You're like, wait, no, they don't. So the stories have been intentionally put out of chronological order. So Genesis 10 gives you the 70 and then you're like, well, how do they all leave all those languages come from? Let me tell you. Let me tell you. And then the story of humans, they come together and they don't want to be scattered, they want to come together, and they want to build a temple to exalt themselves to the place of God. It's another, we talked about the cycles of the fall, and just went through 11, and how you get different layers of it, nuances of it, you get out of a need, you can't enable, and then you get the tarp babble, it's like

it's another example of the fall. Exactly. Genesis 3 to 11 is the biblical fall narrative. And what is likely happening here is all these hyperlinks are saying there was a human rebellion happening at Babylon. And then you read on to the Torah and you realize there was also a rebellion among the host of heaven. That that human rebellion matched a rebellion among the host of heaven. Where? Does it say that? Ah, It doesn't say this explicitly in the Torah.

Oh. You have to follow the logic. How did we end up with God assigning all of the other nations to their, with their own lesser Elohim? And why do we have all these languages? Why do all these nations worship other Elohim? And why is it that when these other nations worship other Elohim, it's just like really destructive.

Like they offer their screaming infant children to these gods, and it's terrible. In what kind of world am I living where this would ever happen? If God's the chief Elohim, how would he allow this? Right. Genesis 1 through 11 is all just plain. Genesis 1 through 3 through 11 is all just plain. Genesis 1 through 3 through 11 is trying to explain that to us.

And the sons of God narrative in the flood, all the way back up to Genesis 6, are there's two moments in the Genesis 3 to 11, it's mapping the spreading human rebellion, and it seems to be what these traditions are saying, is it's mapping at the same time a rebellion among the host of heaven. The Nephilim and stuff, all that stuff. Yeah, well, the sons of God came and slept with the women. Overstep their authority.

Okay. That they are called to govern the humans. So embedded in the fall narratives of 3 through 11. Yeah. Is kind of the seed of this. Of the spiritual rebellion. Spiritual rebellion. Yeah. And we don't get to learn about it very explicitly. Yeah.

But it does seem kind of mouth on to it. Yeah. It also connects with the question of what on earth is that snake talking snake doing in the garden. Right? Yeah. That's part of the same rebellion. It's at least a part of the same question.

Here's a creature that's in rebellion against God. Where did it come from? And so here's the thing, is that all we get are these little hints of some underlying narrative. But the more the biblical story goes on, the more it seems to be looking back to those early narratives and genesis as telling the stories of a twin rebellion. One rebellion is told in detail, the human one. Yeah.

One rebellion is merely hinted at, and that's the spiritual one. Mm-hmm. It's hinted at in terms of there's this malevolence snake serpent. And then there's these sons of God, like, do something they shouldn't be doing. Yeah, they're supposed to be governing humans, not having sex with them. Right.

That's Genesis 6. Yeah. And then tradition of God assigned each nation its own deity, but why? Well, because of the rebellion of Babylon, which was all about humans. If the sons of God's story in Genesis 6 is about them crossing a boundary, then Babylon in Genesis 11 is humans crossing a boundary to make themselves into God. The biggest question though, if there was already a spiritual rebellion happening in Genesis 6. Yes. Why would God appoint them over the nations?

Yeah, let's get it. So there's two traditions here. There's one is that the scattering of Babylon is God giving all the nations over to their rebellion. And to the... You wanted this here, you think you can have it. You want to be gods? Great.

I'll give you over to be governed by these rebel Elohim. That's one tradition. The other way of doing it would be to say these are actually two separate way back when these were two separate ideas. One is originally positive that God's the chief Elohim, he runs the world with his staff of Elohim. And then that's just the idea. And then you have another story of somehow those sons of Elohim rebelled. This would be like Tige. We have in the Bible, there's a later author that's created a coherent narrative out of those two. You have other guys. Well, it's not coherent though, in the sense that you get Job and you get... Yes, that's right.

The other passage where it seems like God has this command team. You're still working with this command team. Yeah, they seem like they're on board. Correct. There's the guy who's opposing, but it's not, you know. Yeah. In other words, all these passages, it's actually hard to put them all together into a coherent narrative.

Right. So there's some early set of traditions about all of this, and you can see something of a narrative arc among them, but there you go. And that's where I met with this theme in the Bible. Yeah. So let me try this sub-theme. Let me try to see if I can. There's a few more steps to it, actually. Oh. But let me try the sub thing. Let me try to see if I can. There's a few more steps to it,

actually. Oh, but let me try some. Okay. Oh, the Bible. My head's spinning. Okay. So we've got this divine council idea. And it's basic core of this idea is that Yahweh is the commander in chief. There are other Elohim, they're called the hosts of heaven, the armies of heaven. Also, when you talk about the stars in their imagination, that's kind of that speaks to who these these are because many people thought the stars were gods. They're called the sons of God. They're also called the sons of the gods. And it's very clear in the biblical imagination, they are lesser than Yahweh. Yahweh runs them. And there's stories of God actually Yahweh saying, you know,

delegating tasks to this divine counsel and Job and in First Kings. Now, that's a very clean and Job and in First Kings. Now, that's a very clean story. Although in Job, there is a guy who is called the accuser. And so there is a sense of like, well, that guy is not completely on board with God. Right. So there seems to be a little bit of something on there. But if we go back to this,

like our very like proto stories in 3 through 11, you get this picture of a rebellion amongst yeah, these spiritual things, the sons of Elimium. In Genesis, is it six? They overstep, they sleep with women and that's not rad. It is much less than rad. In the eyes of the biblical author. Yeah. It's the opposite of rad. The opposite of rad. Yeah. And then you got the talking snake. You got this talking snake. I mean, he shows up right away.

I mean, this is like kind of before the humans were well. And he's in opposition of Yahweh. Is he a Elohim? It doesn't say he's an Elohim. It's a talking snake. Yeah. Now, in Deuteronomy, you get this passage, two passages, where Moses is saying, hey, look, back in the day when all of these nations, it's kind of answering the question,

how do they get there? Why are they worshiping their own gods? Why are these other gods kind of corrupt? And why are we chosen by Yahweh who's above all of them? And he's like, look, here's the deal. Yahweh, back in the day, set this all up. He set all these nations up and he put other lesser deities, Elohim, in charge.

And that's what's going on. Don't worship those other Elohim. Yeah, they're not your Elohim. And so if you go, well, why do I gotta do that? Cause those gods are pretty screwed up. Well, there was a rebellion. And this whole thing, the whole timeline, chronology of it is really weird.

So it's like, did they just not think in the terms of that same of the chronology? Did that not matter? Or is there something we're missing? But it seems like all these stories are kind of meshed together as almost like coexisting. Yeah, they're hyperlinked. They're all talking about the same thing.

They're all talking about the same thing. But there's no like narrative structure of this happen, this happen, this happen. Because you've got a talking snake before the rebellion of humans. And then you got God appointing the Elohim. Yeah. And but there doesn't seem to be any rebellion.

But they had rebelled in Genesis 6. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And he hadn't done it until Genesis 11. Yeah. But then in first Kings and Joe, but seems like he's got this support staff. That's pretty legit. So like, but if you just throw it all together on one boiling pot,

it kind of, you get this picture of there's this spiritual reality of powers and authorities that God has delegated, but there is some sort of rebellion. And it's mapping, it's not separate. The conflict in the heavens, among the heavenly staff team, maps on to the misfortunes of humans, right? Because they're governing. Yeah. And so the misfortunes of humans is itself a window of the consequences of the heavenly rebellion and the heavenly rebellions connected to the human rebellion. Yeah, that's a good summary. There's no way to tie this up and I just wanted to have this conversation with you. I don't want this to be in the video at all. The God video. It's not going to be helpful. The Divine Council. No, but it's just once you bring up the other Elohim, it does raise this

question of, well, what are they? What's their story? And it's piecemeal. And I, it's going to be... I've been Michael Heiser, have I got an explainer video video on this. Oh yes, Chaos one. I'll talk about Hyde's work in a second. So two, just so you know, we're not just making this up out of all these different stories. When you get to the book of Daniel, the book of Daniel is tracking with all of this. So you have Daniel who's sitting in Babylon as an exile and prisoner, who's sitting in Babylon as an exile and prisoner, Jerusalem smoldering, and he's praying to Yahweh to bring comfort and restoration to Jerusalem. And he sits and prays for a while,

and then eventually a holy one comes to him. And the holy one is one of these Elohim, some develop him, except called a holy one. And this being gives their name Gabriel, which means God is my warrior. And he says this, he says, listen, we heard your prayer, we were coming your way, but then the prince of Persia was resisting us for 21 days, took us three weeks to get here. Because there was that other Elohim, the one assigned to Persia.

He was resisting us and so he got in our way, but finally we made it to you because Mikhail, who was like El, who was like God. Who was like God? That's what it's named. Mikhail means who was like El, who was like God. Michael came and he helped me. I was able to get away from the King of Persia.

So now I'm here to answer your prayer. Geez. That's the story. And that's where all Frank Peretti's stuff comes from. Exactly. So, but in other words, do you see how that story is itself a reflection on all of this earlier stuff about lesser Elohim assigned.

There's been a rebellion. Now the battles on period, the speculation on these things just go off the charts. There is such fascination with angels and these figures, and there's whole books dedicated to them. It's a famous... Is Enoch about Enoch? Yeah, totally.

Yeah, there's a collection of actually, originally, independent works called the Book of First Enoch, which is an amalgamation of a number of works, but yeah, it has a whole sections where it names them, and how many are there? They're 70, and they all get names, and there's a chief, and they're all arranged in these higher rooms.

Now there's not 70 people groups. No, but there is according to Genesis 10. It's mapping on to Genesis 10. Yeah, but but once you're in like second-time Judaism, how do you like? Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it stops for them.

It's all about this exogetical universe that they're living in of the Hebrew Bible. So there's all this discussion going on. Then you have Jesus comes onto the scene. And he's announcing the restoration of Israel and God's kingdom has arrived. And a whole bunch of lesser Elohim, which the Greek word for is Dimonion, demons, lesser gods, start rearing their heads and like Jesus walks around and these beings start like springing the life.

So you're saying there's a direct connection of the demons and Yes, yeah, the word demon is just a Greek word for lesser God. Is it demi-god? Oh demi-god Even the word demi but the EMI is connected to the the Greek word Dimonion Demonion demigod lesser god. Yeah, yeah, is a lesser God, a son of Elohim in Hebrew categories. But specifically one that's bad. But specifically one that's bad. Yeah. So these Dimonion, right, are like going off straight on. So is an angel, a son of God then too? Like Michael? Yeah.

That becomes the title that refers to usually to ones that serve Yahweh. And ones that don't serve Yahweh that are part of the rebellion are referred to in the New Testament as Dimonion. And then also think about Paul's vocabulary. Paul uses this vocabulary of spiritual powers, rulers, authorities. Where do you get all this? Right. He gets it from the Hebrew Bible, and then mediated through a lot of this continued reflection in Jewish literature about, what is all this?

So everything that fits under the category of spiritual warfare comes from these biblical texts and this tradition. It was an active part of Gio's way of viewing the world. It was an active part of Paul's way of viewing the world. So this could be a theme video on spiritual work. This conversation right now. This could be its own theme video. Yeah.

So, and, okay, so just a footnote, this. So I can sense it in you, and I'll just be perfectly honest. I've always thought this whole thing was just super weird. Yeah. And I just, I found it actually really difficult even, believe. I just came to a place and being very honest. With you and with a lot of people. But there's no other way to roll.

Okay. I have actually been avoiding studying this topic. I came to realize this about six months ago. I've been avoiding learning about this because I don't... You don't like it. I don't... Doesn't jive. Yeah, it doesn't jive.

I don't resonate. It doesn't map on to any experience, my experience. Like life in this world. You have one experience of coming to contact with something. I have one experience. That's true. I was speaking hyperbolicly. I have one experience. Yep I do. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I just realized that I think I was reading a book on a plane or something and I was like, oh my gosh, I've been avoiding this. That's not honest. That's certainly not being what I think good scholarship is. So I just decided to dive in. Yeah. And obviously 32 pages and notes later. This is how Jesus and Paul the Apostles, Biblical authors, seem to have seen the world. So what's here? Like what am I missing?

As a modern Westerner, I'm clearly not tracking with this way that the Bible describes reality. I trust that that's to my detriment. There's something here that I need to see. I, my hunch is that it's not, that the faithful way to respond to this. My gut is that it's not the faithful way to respond to this. My gut is that it's not going to be like the most extreme forms of the Christian tradition that have gone towards finding the names of these demons and begin going on prayer sword,

going on prayer missions, nothing like that in the New Testament. But at the same time, especially the apostles in Jesus, seemed to really want me to be aware that there are realities of good and of evil that I'm not aware of, I can't sense with my five senses, but that doesn't mean they're not real and don't have some degree of influence. And not, so it's just under construction. I'm six months in to finally owning up to this part of my worldview and I'm actively exploring it.

But it's a big factor when we start talking about the word God and other God. Yeah, because underneath that whole conversation is this world. This is storyline. Which is fairly opaque for how much text there is in the Bible. Mm-hmm. There's not a lot. There's not a lot, but there's not nothing.

But there's not nothing. It's just weird that in the New Testament, I mean, they do talk about it, but nothing in the like practices. That's true. Yeah. Does it emphasize? Yes. Really caring assumes.

It's true. Other than just, hey, don't be stupid. Like don't go to the Zeus temple. Down the street, Paul says. Peter says, Well, and there's this kind of like, hey, when you're experiencing problems, it's because spiritual evil exists.

And you need Jesus and His righteousness to guard against that. Yeah, but at the same time, these evil realities are not described as a real viable threat. I'm thinking of the armor of God. Yes, yes. Isn't there like the flaming arrows of the evil one or something? Yep, that's right. What's he talking about?

Like it's like, oh, dude, well that gets you into the whole thing of Ephesians. Okay. Because Ephesians is all about the creation of a new humanity, out of all nations. Out of all nations, God's raised up one human who has God become human, right? That whole thing. So let's arm this human. So that you and I can become the new humanity. And then when you move into Ephesians 4, it's all about

So what's the new humanity based on one Lord? It's the Shema one Lord one God one faith one baptism Yeah, with the twist is the Messianic Shema. Yeah, we'll get there eventually so cool We're talking about the Messianic Shema So what the new humanity needs is to have its unity protected. The multi-ethnic people of God that's the new humanity that's going to overcome all previous socio-economic, national boundaries and love each other in the name of Jesus. That's what Jesus created in Paul's... The Christian globalists.

Yeah. And so then he goes on in the rest of the letter to talk about how keeping that unity is going to be super hard. All the ethical exhortation and Ephesians is about maintaining that unity. And then you get the armor of God. So in context, the armor of God is primarily, I think, in context about how the spiritual powers of evil, which are connected in Genesis to the scattering and diversity of humanity. They want to keep us divided.

They want to keep us divided. And so, whenever you see people elevating, dude, whenever you, this is what Paul's saying, to talk about ancient texts being relevant, when Paul's saying when Christians elevate political, ethnic, socioeconomic differences above their unity in Christ and divide the body of Christ, that's spiritual evil, fracturing the new humanity

in Jesus. And what's a flaming arrow then? A flaming arrow is apparently precious, right? In the body of Christ. It's apparently allowing different political opinions to mean that I'm not going to honor you as a brother or sister in Christ, right? And so you need the armor of God. It's all corporate. It's very powerful stuff. So actually that's one area. The way Paul appropriates the spiritual warfare motif isn't Frank Pretti style. Yeah, it's this. It's to our unity and protecting that unity. Yeah, because the original role of the lesser Elohim was to be over the nations. Yeah, and

what Paul says in Ephesians and in Colossians is that Jesus is now exalted above all other principalities and authorities. He's the chief one. And so... So the emphasis in Ephesians 5 is about unity. The armor of God. The armor of God in the spiritual forces that are fighting against the new human. And the New Testament is spiritual warfare connected also to just the martyrdom and the...

Yeah, that's right. And John's letters to the churches and the Revelation, he talks about how some of the churches have martyrs, people have been killed. He describes that as the attacks of the Satan, the Opposer. He connects it to spiritual evil. So when you see his Roman soldiers and Roman propaganda against Christians to scapegoat them and so on. So that's how it usually comes up in modern context, it seems like. Oh, Christians are getting the bad end of the stick, that's spiritual affair. Or if someone is disrespecting.

Yeah, correct. And then there's just the classic, like in the gospel stories of people under the influence of evil beings that you can't see. And they need to be prayed for and healed. And so that's another way. How interestingly, that's not the dominant way that the apostles describe spiritual evil as you leave the Gospels and Acts. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

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1 tbc 1 tbc So there you go, man. This is the whole thing. I don't know how to... you can't tie a bow. How do you try to reconcile the allotment of nations and spiritual beings with a modern evolutionary view of how humanity developed. Oh, I see. Well, I think similarly to how I think we need to approach the creation stories. So God is using biblical authors and their historically located way of viewing the structure of the world as a three-tiered universe. And so the purpose of the Bible isn't to tell me about the structure

or the origins of the physical structure of the universe. It is designed to be a unified story, the least, of Jesus, to give me wisdom about how God is saving the world through Jesus. So this is what's still under construction then. So the whole thing about 70 nations, that's all clearly. Because if you want to be literal about it, it's like, yeah, it starts to get the chronology

is weird. Oh yeah. Like the 70 seems symbolic. Yeah. I don't think we should be trying to use Genesis 10 and 11 to reconstruct spread of humanity. It almost seems like you're not really supposed to take Genesis 3 through 11 and really try to construct the chronology and the stories of how to say it. Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true. Because those narratives are all,

they're brilliantly crafted as a literary and theological statement. And they're all really clearly in dialogue with other Canaanite and Babylonian stories and about teaths. They're interacting. They're doing theological sparring with these other traditions. St. Genesis 12, then you get the Israelite tradition of the family of Abraham going forward. So yeah, Genesis 1 to 11 is interacting with an international, ancient, international conversation about these topics, which provides a really coherent understanding of what, of the claims that those narratives are making. I

think those narratives stop making the sense that they do when we try and take them out of that context and map them on to whatever modern. But we do need to map them on to our modern context in order to make these seem Important in a way. I mean one thing I've been thinking about was mapping the message the theological message Yeah, yeah, cuz for example this whole like don't have any other gods, but Yahweh That is not the Attemptation is modern culture. I mean, and maybe in a metaphorical way that Christians do this a lot, Christian preaching where you're like, is your idol sex, or your idol money.

Well, those were actual deities in the ancient world. Sex and money? Yeah. Yeah. Mom won. You can't worship God and ma'amon. But it was also a God. Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. So you're saying those two things were very tightly connected a God. Exactly. Exactly. So you're saying those two things were very tightly connected? Correct. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, the things that typified the worst tendencies of the human condition in the modern world were all deities in the ancient world.

God, sex, money, all of it, power, sex, and money, Freud, Marx, and... Seems like the temptation that I experience and other people experiences, maybe there's no spiritual realm. Exactly. Totally. And so... That's my struggle.

Yeah, so to me, out of all the different options, Yahweh is your God. Yeah, that's right. It's more like, Hey, this is legit. Yahweh exists. There really is a God. There really is a God. Because probably, yeah, that's right. It's more like, hey, this is legit. Yahweh exists. There really is a God.

There really is a God. Because probably, yeah, that's right. If I'm talking to my neighbors, oh, for sure, it's that like, yeah, they're not even sure there is a God for the claim of the Shemaah is worship Yahweh alone. It's temptation isn't like, well, yeah, yeah.

And it's something beautiful it is. Yeah, it's pretty good Well, and maybe that's where the analogy in our own day is all the same idols exist. Yeah in our culture You could make an argument from this perspective that modern Westerners are simply blind to the much more mysterious and dangerous realities that lurk behind the surface of money, sex, and power. It's true, like what is it about these realities

that can enslave humans? And dehumanize, turn people into beasts trying to get money, sex, and power. You know? And you, sure, you can give a psychological, physiological explanation of that. Right. But are you leaving out something really significant?

Are you leaving out something else insignificant? And I think that's where I'm at. I want to understand what I'm going to miss out on if I don't factor this theme into my worldview. The God video won't be about this, but the God conversation is. The God conversation raises this. 1 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 So, next we're going to talk about God's complex relationship to the world. Which? plug it. So one way that God can interact with the world is by governing mediators.

And one of those mediators could be these other alaheim. But here's what's fascinating is that the biblical narratives and poems, all of it, especially in the Hebrew Bible, create a really sophisticated set of categories for God's working in the world through mediators, through intercessor figures, through His own divine attributes that somehow take on a life of their own in the world, like God's word and His wisdom, His name and His glory, which are God, but then they become something. They are depicted as if they begin to become distinct.

They are God and distinct from God at the same time. The angel of the Lord is a figure who is a human-like figure who is both Yahweh and distinct from Yahweh. All right, so there you go. So if you thought you were confused. Oh, did. The rabbit hole. It's wonderful. And this will be our next conversation. It's how God's complex relationship to the world depicted by the Hebrew Bible

gives us the seedbed for the concept of the Trinity that comes to birth in the New Testament. Okay. So this whole conversation about the Divine Council, we're not going to make a video on it, but if this really peaks someone's interest and they want to keep reading. Yes, yeah. Yeah, there's actually a lot of really great resources out there. Many of them are free. So one we've mentioned already, there's actually a lot of really great resources out there. Many of them are free. So one we've mentioned already, there's a Hebrew Bible scholar

who's doing a lot of popular level work, named Michael Heiser. And he has a book called The Unseen Realm that's really helpful. He takes deep dive in all this stuff. He has a podcast and a YouTube channel called Naked Bible, by which he means the Bible stripped of all of the weird modern stuff that we put on it. So he has some like videos about this. Yeah, he's making his own like, like, like, explainer videos, but it looks like videos. Yeah, totally. They're cool. But they're like, they're really focused on, so he's got one on the gods of the Bible part one Mm-hmm, and then gods of the probably part two. I haven't seen that one. Sarah Fim and Sherbin

He's got a whole nightmare video on those. Yeah, it's great actually he and I went to the same Hebrew department we went to school together and Way back. Oh, he's got a video on God versus Seemasters. God versus Seamasters. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think he's been frustrated with how misunderstood all of the ancient context of this spiritual warfare stuff is, and so he's creating a lot of really accessible stuff. It's helpful. That's a great place to go.

There's another scholar, a New Testament scholar, named Larry Hurtado, and he has a number of different books. If you just go to Amazon and look up Larry Hurtado, H-U-R-T-A-D-O, we'll have a link in the show notes. And just Google his name and monotheism and his books and videos will come up too. Cool. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bible Project Podcast. If you're like me, the last three conversations, last three episodes on this podcast have been really challenging.

And it creates a lot of questions for me. And I'm sure it's creating a lot of questions for you as well. So the next episode of the podcast, we're gonna do a question and response episode. Please send in your questions about Elohim, about the God of the Bible Yahweh, and this whole idea of the Divine Council, anything about this conversation so far. And I'm sure there's a lot. Feel free to send it to us questions at at jointhebibletproject.com.

Please keep it to about 20 seconds. Give us your name and where you're from. Today's episode was produced by Dan Gummel, and today's music was made special by Tay the Producer. The Bible Project is a nonprofit animation studio we're in Portland, Oregon, and we're able to have these conversations and then make videos that explain the Bible as one unified story that leads to Jesus.

Everything we make is free. It's on our website, and it's thanks to thousands of people like you who have joined us to make this project possible. So thanks for being a part of this with us. My name is Meg, and I'm from San Diego. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We are a crowdfunded project by people like me. Find free videos, study notes, and more at thebibledproject.com.

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