BibleProject - What Is God’s Name? – Re-Release in Honor of Michael Heiser

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

This episode is a special re-release of an interview we did in 2018 with Dr. Michael Heiser. Mike has been a significant influence to Tim’s own scholarship and, by extension, much of BibleProject’s content, as well as to thousands of other people. Mike is in the final stages of his battle with pancreatic cancer, and we want to honor his incredible life by sharing this episode again. View the original episode →Timestamps Part one (00:00-18:05)Part two (18:05- 33:00)Part three (33:00-44:30)Part four (44:30-59:18)Referenced ResourcesOld Testament Theology, Gerhard von RadThe Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel, Peter F. EllisThe Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, Michael S. HeiserAngels: What the Bible Really Says About God's Heavenly Host, Michael S. HeiserInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.You can experience the literary themes and movements we’re tracing on the podcast in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“Faith,” “In the Distance,” and “Moments” by Tae the ProducerIf you are interested in assisting the Heiser family with meal donations or in donating to help cover expenses in the coming weeks, please use this link. If you’d like to send a card to the Heiser family, you can write to the Awakening School of Theology. They will collect all cards and deliver them to the Heiser family.AWKNG School of TheologyP.O. Box 23621Jacksonville, FL 32241If you wish to donate directly to the Heisers via Venmo, search for their account at @Mike-Heiser-4.Show produced Dan Gummel and Jon Collins. Re-released with assistance from Producer Cooper Peltz with Associate Producer Lindsey Ponder, Lead Editor Dan Gummel, and Editor Tyler Bailey. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

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 in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. If you've been following along in the podcast, you'll know that we're in the middle of a series exploring the identity of God in the Bible. How the ancient biblical writers thought about what it's like to experience a transcendent God. If you've been listening along, you'll recall that we did a question and response episode where Tim referred to Dr. Michael Heiser.

But we had the privilege of hanging out with Mike Heiser here in Portland at our studios last week to talk shop and get an outside voice in our script writing process. So while we were hanging out with Mike, the topic of the name of God came up. And this is something we talked about on the podcast before, how the name of God is an attribute that becomes more than an attribute. And as soon as we start talking about it, I realize, man, we need to record this conversation. There's some really good stuff here. About what does it mean to take the Lord's name and vein?

What it means to just take the Lord's name and any capacity. And how's that related to taking the name of the beast, which is actually the phrase used in Revelation? We talk about all that and more. A little bit more about Mike. He did his graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in ancient history, and then he did his doctoral studies at the University of Madison, Wisconsin in Hebrew Bible and Semedical languages, which is the exact program that Tim went through.

He's currently a scholar in residence at La Gospible Software software which is North of Seattle in our neck of the woods. He's got a lot of great books. If you haven't read the unseen realm, I'd recommend picking that up. He also has a brand new book out on Angels. Oh and he has his own podcast, the Naked Bible podcast, where he weekly gets very nerdy about the Bible. It was a lot of fun to have him in the office. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Here we go. Okay.

We are going to talk about the name. Hashem. Hashem. In Hebrew. In Hebrew. The name as a theme throughout the Bible. Now, in the God series that we've been working through, we spent an hour talking about

many attributes of God and the name was one of them. But it's an opportunity to dig in deeper. And partly because we have here in the studio with us, the doctor Michael Heiser. Hi Mike. Hello. I am here. I just got embodied form. That will become important irrelevant later.

So if you've been following the God series conversations, I've referenced Mike's books and podcasts multiple times. So he's done a lot of both scholarly work and getting good scholarship out on a popular level about heavenly beings, the spiritual realm in the Bible, and then specifically about the Hebrew Bible roots of the plurality, the divine plurality of God's being in the Old Testament that is the seedbed of what eventually will be called the Trinity in the New Testament. And actually this topic is a key, and that old discussion is the name, the name of God in

the Old Testament and then the way Jesus appropriates and takes the name in the New Testament. Yeah, I've found a lot of people don't realize that the Old Testament has a number of passages where for lack of a better way of putting it, it's God as man or a man in the Old Testament And that provides a framework for what we see in the New Testament. Yeah. Yeah, that's right So for many people the incarnation the Trinity for sure or even the incarnation is often seen as a Christian Innovation some surprise. Yeah, that just blew everybody's categories because there were no categories for it in their day. Not so much. And it's actually the opposites of the case.

The categories were well-primed for people who grew up on the Hebrew Scriptures that the incarnation was a comfortable idea. And it was even an anticipated idea. Yeah, they would not have said what in the world are you talking about? I mean, they would know what you're talking about. But God has become a human. Yeah, and the only question for them is, do we see Jesus in that slot? That's right.

Do we want to embrace that? Do we think Jesus of Nazareth is the one? Right. That's right. You see where the trail ends, you know, with the incarnation. Yeah. So let's back the truck up.

We are already down. That's the train depot where it ends. That's where it's heading. Well actually, and it goes a little further. But the question is, where did that idea come from in the storyline of the Bible? Yeah. And then specifically, let's really focus in on this idea of the name. The name. And I just feel like there's a treasure trove in idea of the name. The name.

And I just feel like there's a treasure trove in there that I don't fully appreciate yet. And I want to like get in your heads and figure that out. So the name, like I have a name, you guys have names. We name things. That's just a common way to be able to refer to something. So we all don't get confused. So when we say the name of Yahweh, in one sense, we're just talking about the way to refer to Yahweh. We've talked, I want Mike to talk about this too, but in the series, we've explored the fact that Elohim, which is the common Hebrew word that gets translated as capital G God, but then also the lowercase G gods or spiritual beings. So Elohim's a category

descriptor word. Not a name. Not a name. It's a title that refers to a kind of being, namely, a being of the spirit realm. And so there are many Elohim, there are many spiritual beings in the Bible. And so the name of God becomes really important to identify the particular spiritual being whose story is told as the creator and ruler. So that's one way. Just just, I'm peeking back on what you said. It's a reference to the whole. Which Elohim is creator and king of the universe. So that's one kind of ground level function that the divine name plays. Yahweh, the Elohim, creator and king. Yeah, there's something operating in the Old Testament scholars have called the name theology.

And it is in part, you know, touching on the divine name, right, the four consonants. But it's also, to John's point, it's also sort of a more comprehensive identifier. The name Hashem and Hebrew is another way of referring to Yahweh himself, not by name, but sort of as an individual, as a person. Tim, I don't know if you, I won't give any names for our professors at the UW, but there was one in particular

when I was going through that we all got the little lecture about what happens when we encounter the divine name in reading text and what to do and what not to do. And so his instructions at the time were, okay, when we're reading text in class and you come to the divine name, I don't want to hear anyone try to pronounce it. So you either have the choice of saying Adam and I, which means Lord or Hashem, which is the name. So now this is an a secular context.

Yeah, that's right. And why is he concerned about? I think he just wanted to instill in us a little bit of the honorific sort of aura of the divine name. He didn't flip out on us if somebody forgot. He would sort of do that a little bit kidding,, you know, like, acting offended or something like that, but just to sort of reinforce that little point. But it was my first introduction to the concept of, you know, Hashem being a way, another way, ever referring to God, to Yahweh, the God of Israel himself.

And the reason why there's variants on how you say the name is because of the respect that people have for them. It's honorific. You know, there is, you know, there's an academic debate, but there's also sort of a religious phobia in if that's the right word, in Judaism about pronouncing the name because of the ineffability of it. Well, we can't really pronounce it

because we don't really know how it was vocalized and that's good because we're not supposed to pretend that we kind of have a chummy relationship with this transcendent being. There are a number of factors that go into it, but for me it was an introduction to something I encountered later in Deuteronomy. There are places in Deuteronomy

that talk about, you know, God tells Moses now, you're going to go into the land, you're going to do this and that, and you're going to go to the place where I will put my name. You know, the place where the Lord God shall establish his name in the third person, you know. So, or the place, this is in Deuteronomy 12, I will make my name to dwell there. Yeah, make my name to dwell. So does the God's name is a entity that can live somewhere. And the point is not, well, we're going to get in the land and then God's going to show us a place to scroll for consonants on the ground and say, well, that's the place. No, it has nothing

to do with spelling or vocabulary. It was a way of expressing the idea that when we get in here, God is going to choose to dwell among us in a particular location. It was sort of foreshadowing the temple. So the name, and God talking about his name, was a way of God talking about his own essence, his own presence being located somewhere. Yeah. Which is something I do, I don't talk about my name that way. Right. Yeah, we don't refer to, I'm not the mic, you know, it's just, yeah, that's right.

It's very foreign, you know, way of feeling. Yeah, you wouldn't like leave our studios and say, hey guys, I'm head back, North, but my name will be here. Right. Right. What are you talking about? Yeah, which wall did you write on? head back north, but my name will be here. Right. Run. What are you talking about? Which wall did you write on?

Did you carve your name? But there is a sense of saying, I'll be with you in spirit. We do have that. I know I'm going away, but the memory of me or something of me will remain here. Is it simply that's always talking about? I would say it's a little bit more

because when it comes to, you know, there are passages that describe the name as though the name were a person. You know, like, well, like, the name gets angry. The name has, you know, lips of fury in one place in Isaiah. The name does things. Yeah, I remember a couple of times, I've talked my head. You may know some too.

They're actually just important to read, and they have an effect. One is the beginning of Psalm 20. Okay. May Yahweh answer you in the day of trouble. Mm-hmm. May the name of the God of Jacob set you on high. May he send you help from the temple and give you support from

Zion. So if two poetic lines, it's more than memory there. Yeah, so Mary Yahweh answer you. That's first poetic line. May the name of God set you up on high. And then the next poetic line is may he referring back to both? Yeah. And you could say, well, that's just a poetic way of talking about God. May God help you, may his name help you. But that's kind of an odd thing to say. Yeah. And if you know the passage is like some trust in chariots and horses. Yes. But we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Yeah. So it's more than a form. But that's something like someone would say like going into battle. In the name of the king, we're doing this for Yes. So it's more than a fall memory. A fall memory. Someone would say like going into battle.

Like in the name of the king, we're doing this for the reputation, for the sake of the, because of him, we're doing this. But it's different in that. Trusting him. There, yeah, the name is something you represent. I'm trusting in it. Here, the noun Hashem, the name, is the subject of verbs

doing things. The name is protecting you. In a line poetically parallel with Yahweh answering you in trouble. While I'm out here hacking my enemy with the sword, it's more than I'm remembering the king. It's believing that his presence is actually going to help you in some way. He's going to be present with you. It comes a way of talking about God's physical felt presence somewhere, which is why these temple references are important to Deeraname. God's name takes up residence there. And when I go meet it, what am I meeting?

I see the glory cloud, I see fire, maybe, and I, what am I encountering? And in these texts, the name texts. Right. You're encountering something is important. Something that can be referred to one of way to refer into is the name. And is this, and I think I asked you this before, Tim, and I don't know if you're my, is this unique in Hebrew thought? this way of talking about someone's name? You know, I don't think we could say something like this is unique.

You do have the use of the name of a deity in other places to sort of represent, take the place of, the deity's presence. So it's not sort of a whole cloth invention on Israel's part. It would have been familiar to others who would have heard Israelites talking about this or talking this way.

They would have caught the drift. In our earlier conversation, I had this quote from a German Old Testament scholar, but I'll read it again just because... Is it in German? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is how he put it. He said the name Yahweh was committed in trust to Israel alone among the nations. He's referring here to the tradition of the Burning Bush as the revelation of his personal name to the people he's going to liberate. In the name alone lay the guarantee of Yahweh's nearness of his readiness to help. Again, the burning bush story, I am with you. God

says, what's your name? Who are you? I am with you to rescue you out of Egypt. Van Rad goes on, this name shared directly in Yahweh's own holiness. For indeed, it was so to speak a double of his being. Yeah, interesting language there. And so it had to be treated as holy in the very heart of Israel's worship to call on the name was equivalent to true worship of the one true God. So he's, specifically, he's unpacking the burning bush story. Yeah. But that story is itself the uniqueness of the name. It's I am.

We can see a person is being referred to when we look at the command, I'll show you know English translations, I'll show it not take the name of the Lord that I got in vain. Yes, it's actually not take. Yes. You know, like I'm going to rip something from your hand, you know, it's the verb is Nasa, which means to bear or to carry. To carry the name. Right, so it's this idea of where I'm just a register. This is important. It's one of the 10 commandments. Yeah, yeah, which one of the 10? Let's see, it comes in.

This isn't peripheral. No, this is one of the 10 commandments. There is the time Yahweh your God, you have to be a ship, have no other gods. Don't make any idols. Yeah, three. Don't. And then the phrase, Don't make any idols. Yeah, three. Don't. And then there's friends.

Don't bear my name. Don't carry the name. In a worthless matter. In a worthless way. It really does stand out like, in a way that's kind of like, it just seems inconsequential compared to like, don't murder people. And by the way, don't.

Don't. Don't cost. Right. It's like, no I don't. Three. No, but the Sabbath don't murder. And don't cuss for Right. It's like, no I don't agree. No, baby, the Sabbath don't murder, and no cuss forgiveness. Yeah, we're gonna say.

Clearly it means more. People are not clean. There's a little bit more going on. You know, and, I mean, to make it just as serious, you know, to bear the name of God as an Israelite, there's an aspect of ownership there, of belongingness that you belong to me, and therefore, when people interact with you, they need to come away with a higher reputation of me. You're representing me.

Like, if I go out and I say, well, I'm here in the name of Faith Life, okay, my employer. That's an easy illustration for us to understand how a person, in this case me, represents some other, in this case, a corporate entity. Well, it's the same idea here. You, Israelites were representatives of the most high, Yahweh of Israel, and they get there you get into the whole imaging concept you guys have brought up before. Just this sense of family belongingness, you're part of this group, and it goes right back to this command, so it was a big deal.

Yes, so you're drawing attention, just make it crystal clear. This is an important concept for me. So the English translations take the name of the Lord. It's not the most helpful. No, it's not. He reverbed Nasa, which is to carry or bear. And so to carry someone's name means to function as their representative. To carry the name of Yahweh in vain or falsely is about misrepresenting a person. A person. We get the same idea in the New Testament. Not just in my language, but in my behavior. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Paul tells Timothy, tells Timothy, let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Again, you're a bad representation of the one you claim to follow,

if you're living in sin or something like that. You get the same representational idea because we're supposed to be conformed as disciples of Jesus to his life. That's incongruous to be in sin since you name the name of Jesus. You claim to be following Him and being the image of Him. කැක්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න්න් Now the way we're using the name in this context is the stand-in for God in a way to refer to God. And there's something else happening in the Hebrew Scriptures where the name becomes more than that and you read a song

But it seems like here in the Ten Commandments. It's really just it's not Name theology necessarily. It's just kind of reference. It's something that operates You know alongside of what we would think of as name theology Yeah, does it have a connection to name theology? Maybe one way to think of as name theology. It does have a connection to name theology. Maybe one way to think about the name, even calling Yahweh the name, using the name instead of the actual personal name. It's the way of doing that transcendence,

imminent thing that we've explored in this series. You're honoring the holy otherness of the being I'm referring to. But that being wants to be known and is known and accessible to us. And so we use the name. The name can live in the temple. That's what we're probably gonna talk about. The name lives in a being called the angel of the Lord.

But in this case, it's that Yahweh even commits his name to a people to become physical human representatives of the name. Yeah, it's the other side of the coin of dwelling among them. I'm going to dwell, the name is going to dwell among you because when you go into the land, the Lord is going to choose a place to set his name and he will be in your midst, you know, he will be your God and you will be his people. And then the flip side of that is since that's true, since you have this personal God with you, then you need to be living in light of that reality

and representing him, carrying the name. It could take you in a number of directions, the whole sort of priestly role that Israel was supposed to play. You know, to others. That's what this is about. Priestly representatives of the divine. The whole kingdom to others. That's what this is about. Presley representatives of the whole kingdom of priests. That's right.

You know, this is actually, there's so much about the Moses stories tied in here. In the Golden Calf story when the people worship the idol, they break the first command. They worship another god. They're going to say, and then they cuss, is that what you're going to say. And then in Exodus 32 to 34 is this whole wrestling match where Moses intercedes on the half of the people. And what are the things that he says? It's fascinating.

Moses goes up to God to entreat him. He says, listen, I have known you by name. You and I have this very special thing going. I can just walk up into your living room on top of the mountain. Now, therefore, if I have favor in your eyes, let me know your ways, so that I may find favor. And remember, this nation is your people. You've chosen them to represent you and bear your name. They're really terrible at it right now.

And then God said, my face, my presence, will go with you and I will give you Moses rest. Then Moses said, but if your presence doesn't go with us, don't lead us up from here. And then this is the key line. How can it be known that I've found favor in your site and that we are your people? Isn't it by you yourself coming with us so that we may be distinguished from all the other people? So that you yourself, you yourself, the idea of Yalway's personal presence represented by his name, carrying the name, is the thing that distinguishes God's covenant people. His name, carrying the name, is the thing that distinguishes God's covenant people. You mean the context for that?

It's part of the context about their journey to the land. Yes. Oftentimes when I'm introducing this topic to a group or in a church or even in a conversation I'll ask a question, well, who was it that took the Israelites out of Egypt and into the land? Yes. And if you actually again spend the time, maybe if you're having trouble sleeping, you can do this at night.

If you actually take the time to look at, well, who is the figure who does this in the old testament? You actually get four options. Sometimes it's Elohim, you know, who does this. Sometimes it's the divine name, you know, Yahweh who does this. Other times it's the presence and other times it's the angel. You actually get all four options and that doesn't mean that the biblical writers are confused. It means these are all different ways of referring to the same God who is in charge of getting them out of Egypt

and taking them to the land. And then we see it play out in the famous passage about the Angel in Exodus 23. Yeah. So maybe let's talk about that. That's another key passage in this connection. So we've had the name living in Temple. We've had the name as a way of talking about Yahweh himself. It can do stuff, protect you.

And the name is something that Israelites are supposed to carry faithfully as a way of representing God himself. But then there's another being in whom the name dwells that's really important in this connection. So Mike, what makes this passage in Exodus 23-20? Yeah, so unique. Exodus 23, God, he tells Moses, and this is right after they've received the law, so they're about ready to get going here. He says, behold, I'm going to send an angel before you to guard

you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beyond your guard, before him, and obey his voice, do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression. It's an interesting line. Why won't he pardon our transgressions? Why is he special? Because the end of the verse says, well, since my name or because my name is in him. So God's telling Moses that essentially that I'm going to send this angel with you, again, along the way to be a help, be a guardian, again, probably a supervisor in some way,

to sort of a visible, tangible means to remind them that I'm making the trip with you. Now, would they be picturing, for them, angels are just people looking things to show up. So they pictureings like they're going to some guys going to come like who's that guy? Oh that's the angel. He's the one that's going to lead us. And be like, oh cool. That's the dude. And then he'll like be, is that what they're man? I mean, we can the story when there's a whole story that features when he shows up in the book of Joshua. Yeah. Yeah. Joshua

five. It's a little more intense than what he says. It's more intense. But he is human looking because Joshua approaches the commander of the Lord's host as he's named in the Injuschua. That's the Sessky. He's called the ruler of the Lord's army. And so he approaches, you know, Joshua, he's like any other guy, like, well, whose side are you on, you know? And then they have this conversation and it's really fascinating because the figure here

actually says, no, you know, I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord, and Joshua fell on his face to the earth. A little freaked out. A little freaked out. And bowed down and said to him, what is my Lord to say to his servant? And the captain of the Lord's host said to Joshua, remove your sandals from your feet. For the place you are standing is holy and Joshua obeyed. Now, where have we seen that language? Yeah, the burning bush. It's the same lines. Yes, you know,

almost verbatim. Exactly. And the other interesting key to this is when the commander is described, this is something I'd discuss a little bit in unseen realm, he's standing opposite, you know, Joshua with his sword drawn in his hand. And it's an unusual phrase in Hebrew. And if you're having trouble sleeping, this is the kind of thing you do. You know, you look up the Hebrew phrase and it only occurs to other places. And those two places are the incident with Baleum and his donkey,

where the angel of the Lord has the sword drawn in his hand. And then the other place when the angel of the Lord is judging when David takes the census. And in both of those instances, he is called explicitly the angel of the hour, the angel of the Lord. And here, he just gets a different title. And we know that, again, because of the way this passage is called a man, he's called the captain ruler of the Lord's host.

And then it's associated with what happens at the burning bush. And by the way, if you read Exodus 3, who's in the bush? An angel. Yeah, it's God and the angel. They're both there. They're both there, yeah. You know, it's the angel is and is distinct from you. Yeah, we talked about that.

Yeah. Yeah. And the burning bush is the story of the revelation of the divine name Yahweh. Yes. Yeah, so all comes together. It's all interconnected. You get the sneaking suspicion that the writer kind of knew what he was doing.

Yes. So the angel whose name God puts in him to lead them through the wilderness. Yeah. He's never featured in any stories in the wilderness stories. He shows up in that story about Baalum, which is when they're in the wilderness for 40 years. Yeah. But no, what appeared, what the people see is the fire. Is the fire in the cloud, which is over the whole day's day.

Except for Joshua. You know, he gets to see a little Joshua. And then at the end of the trail, when they fail in the book of Judges and Judges 2, the angel shows up. He basically says, hey, what's up? You know, like you didn't do what I asked you to do. Yeah. And so I'm out of here.

You're on your own now. And that's why they all the people weep. And that's why the name of the place is called both team, which means weeping. Yeah. So the angel sort of gives you the spanking at the end. That's right. It takes them all.

Judges too. An angel shows up and says, I brought you out of Egypt. end. That's right. It takes a long. Judges two, an angel shows up and says, I brought you out of Egypt. Yep. Yeah. And led you into the land. Right. What's the problem here?

And I said, I won't ever break my covenant with you. I mean, this angel is speaking. Angel talking like he's got. As he's, yeah, yeah, way. Yeah, way. And we've already been introduced to this in so many stories that this angel is and is distinct from. And so all the way back to the angel is this place of his and is distinct from and he's given the name. Angels obviously show up in the Old Testament, like Genesis 19, the whole Sodom and Gomorrah story, and they look like people.

In that particular episode, they're indistinguishable from men until they do something freaky, like strike the city blind, you know, and lots like, well, I can't really do that, so there must be something different about these guys. So you get these supernatural beings in human form, but this particular one is the only one as Tim just said, that's described in this way. My name is in this one. My name is in this one.

My name is in him. And we also talked about how the name just sometimes looks like a person, is there stories about that? No. That's the word. That's the word. The word of the Lord can appear in this way. The name there just appears visibly.

There's no stories like that. Well, here is the name is in this figure who appears visibly. Right. That's the connection is in this figure. Yeah, who appears visibly. That's the connection that we're making here. It's one of several ways where, again, God appears in human form in the Old Testament. You have the name, you have the angel, you have the word. These aren't the only ones, but they're probably the most familiar.

And there's a reason why when you get into the New Testament, the trappings of these descriptions are applied to Jesus. Jesus is the word. He is an enjude. He's actually the one who delivers the people from Egypt and takes them to the Promised Land. It's actually Jesus. Jude says that? Yeah. Jude says that. Yeah. So, do we want to go there yet or we'd before we go into New Testament?

Sure, pull that out like we would. Well, and Jesus has the name in him and he bears the name and he manifests the name. He that has seen the Father has seen, you know, he that has seen me has seen the Father. Yeah, the New Testament writers bring all of these features and these concepts over and they they, you know, align them with Jesus. And so the people, when be hearing this and thinking, well, this is new crazy stuff, like, what do I do with it? They know what is being communicated here. That now we have a man who was born of a virgin,

we have the incarnation idea. We have somebody who lived among us, the word becoming flesh, that is linked to all of these ways that God Himself showed up in scenes as a human being and so that the messaging can't really be any clearer This is where it all led it led to this person being now incarnate, you know born of a woman But they have the category, the category into which this fits.

And so then they're forced with a decision. Do we accept the idea that Jesus of Nazareth, who we know, is actually the incarnation of this being. God is man and the Old Testament. Is this where the trail so to speak ends with him as Messiah? And that was a big deal. You know, they had to make a choice. They had to make a decision. But I think it's important to realize the Old Testament backdrop to this because the big stumbling block for a Jew when it came to deciding to embrace Jesus was if I worship

Jesus, if I embrace him and believe that he's God in the flesh and he's the Messiah and he's the the rightful king because of what the Old Testament says in these passages and other passages they had to wonder am I violating the fundamental Tenet of the Old Testament faith which is the Lord our God is one right yeah, and and that was a thing that they had to realize that, well, wait a minute, I'm not really violating that because back in the Old Testament, there was God as man visible, but that didn't mean that God wasn't in heaven.

You still have God transcendent, but now you have God imminent in human form. So there's this tuness kind of thing going on. And if that wasn't a violation of God's own command, then why would it be a violation now? Yeah. 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 Yeah, man, there's like four or five layers. We could go after in the last three minutes of what you just said. So let's separate a couple out one is when we get to the New Testament, what the scandal

that Jesus represented, one layer was the claim he made about himself as being the God of Israel embodied. But it wasn't that category as such that was scandalous. It was the particular Jesus of Nazareth making that claim about himself and his backgrounds and what happened to him. That's represented the scandal. Really? The category was there that God can come among us in human form. In retrospect, but when he said before he burned him was I am. Yes. They weren't like, well, there is a category for that, but you're not him. It just seemed like they were like, no, you're a dude. You're a man. Yeah. no, but that's my point is what they're scandalized by isn't the claim that God could come among us in the form of a human. It's that Jesus was making that claim about

himself. Okay. They had the category existed. You know, again, in my own work, like with unseen realm, I spent a few chapters on this and I introduced people to a scholar who's you know, now passed away, but Alan Siegel, who was a Jew, professor of Jewish studies, specifically rabbinical material, and he wrote a very famous book back in the 70s called The Two Powers in Heaven. And what he discusses in that book is, hey, you know, our own tradition as Jews used to teach that book is, hey, you know, our own tradition as Jews used to teach that there were two Yahweh figures. There was again the invisible transcendent one. And then there was this second one who

was the same in terms of being Yahweh, but was also distinct in some ways. And, you know, one of the ways that gets expressed is the angel. So, you know, Segal is tracking on this and what he, what he wants to do in the book is that he has to really simple but profound question, where did we lose this? Because this used to be our part of our theology. Theology. In between the testaments, even before Jesus, you know, ever showed up, you know, as a man, but they had this theology, but it became offensive later, you know, especially after the crucifixion.

They're running around and saying, well this was the guy. So this is why this example from the letter of Jude in the New Testament is great. One, because it claims to be written by Jesus' brother. And then another in the Gospel of John, we're told that none of Jesus' brothers believed him until after the resurrection. Until after the resurrection. So here's someone who was close to Jesus. And the fact that they're writing a letter now

and he calls himself a servant of Messiah Jesus. Means he's had a full conversion of his men. That's tough for a brother to do. Yeah, no, I'm empathetic. My brother walked around saying he was caught in carnage. That's you. Yeah. So dude, it'll weigh your toys, you know? I watched him poop his pants. He's a creator in body. He does human. So in Jude, verse four, he just called Jesus, the Lord. And then in Jude, verse five, he says, I desire to remind you all, though you know all this,

that the Lord, after saving a people out of Egypt, brought judgment on those who didn't believe. So he's putting Jesus in the angel of the Lord, from all these texts that we just read earlier. So in case closed in the angel, Lord is Jesus? Well, my point is... I got pre-incarnate Jesus. If the angel of the Lord in Hebrew Bible is Yahweh, and distinct from Yahweh, the two powers, idea, and my brother, I believe, was the human incarnation of Yahweh. It's just the two go together.

That's two go together. That was my brother before he was embodied who delivered the people out of each other. You can still have a unique embodiment as this man who known as Jesus and Nazareth. That's right. The angel appears as a human. The claim of God actually became him.

He actually became permanent. Travel through the birth canal and all that stuff. And he is still a human. A resurrected transformed human. Jesus is still spoken of as having a body. The most resurrection. That's right. Can we, can we then it's a bit of a tangent, but then can we talk about what it meant for him to be with God in the beginning? Huh. Now we're... Now we're... Now we're really speculation. Yeah, okay.

That's all speculation. I had a friend ask me, was Jesus conscious of his pre-incarnate? I think we can answer that one, not because I know, but because Jesus says things. Yeah, he does comment on that. Yeah, and actually that takes us to, I think, where we wanted to end the training. I think we can get glimpses of your other question because there is language, like when Jesus ascends

to the right hand of God, there are passages that suggest pretty strongly that that was a position formerly held, that he's returning to that side. But now he has a body. Right. He has to become embodied and that's a whole other really episode of why the incarnation was so important. Why you can't just skip that part.

But then he returns to a former status. So there are things like that that you can get. But back to your, you want to. Oh, well, I think part of what prompted us when I'd have this conversation was the implications, especially of the name and theology in the Gospel of John. Right. And then specifically in John chapter 17, where this whole thing comes together in a really amazing way.

Yeah, go ahead if you're there. Well, there's two comments. Yeah. Oh, man, I just, who was this Peter Ellis, John 17, is this beautiful symmetry. Has seven parts, there's seven movements to the prayer, and the way each one of them relates is really amazing. But the opening and closing movements,

movements one and seven, both have a statement of Jesus' awareness of his pre-incarnation form. And in the first movement, he has this line where he says, Father, glorify me with yourself, with the glory I had with you before the world existed. So he's remembering a state of unity with the Father, of glory, luminescence. Matching that is in the last movement of the prayer, it's actually the last line. Verse 24, Father, I want those who believe in me, whom you've given me, to be with me where I am, so they may see my glory, which you've given me, because you loved me before the creation of the world. So he remembers a state of eternal unity,

and glory and love, and that's what we get. Yeah, and in a so profound, before the birth canal, before the birth canal, before creation. Behind this whole universe is a unified community of eternal love. That's the claim that's being made here. So remarkable. And Jesus reveals that. And the way he reveals that in that prayer, he'll say things like, I have manifested

your name. Yes, that's right, the name. If you can read, if you had exposure to even a single book of your Hebrew Bible, you know what God's name is. I mean, you've, good grief, you've heard the Exodus 3, you know, burning bush story, you know, since you were a kid. You know that God revealed his name, you know how it's spelled,

you know, you're not supposed to say it, you know, out loud. Yeah. So that isn't what Jesus is talking about. He's not saying, hey, I'm here and everybody gather around, you know, God's name is. I'm going to spell it correctly. No, when he says, I have manifested your name. I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. That's John 176. It's another way of saying something else, John, says in the same gospel that he that has seen me, has seen the Father. You know what God is like, who God is.

And especially just the whole love element, how Jesus represented that in his life. You know what you need to know about God because you have seen me. You've lived with me and I've lived with you. And it's not just, I did a good job living the way I should in front of you. So maybe it's back to where earlier. He carried the name faithfully. He bore the name faithfully. But more than that. But more than that. But let's start there. He carried the name faithfully like Israel was called to do,

failed to do. And the name was given to him. And again, that language again is going to take a Jewish person back to what we're here. Remember here in that in the Old Testament. Yeah, yeah, it was God as well. Because he doesn't say I carried your name, he said, I revealed. And you're like, the name was already revealed. Right. Yeah, interesting.

I revealed it. Yeah. I am the revealing of the name. Yeah. I am the revealing of the name. So Israel I was supposed to carry the name in the sense of be God's priests. The angel was given the name. The name was put in him, which is another phrase. It's not carrying the name. It's actually being put the name in him, which is much more intimate.

Yeah, you see that man out there. That's me. I'm in it. It's a way to say I am in it. Yeah. Now you can tell I'm here because I'm appearing to you in a discernible form. And then what does Jesus say? He says, what's the phrase he uses about the name?

Father, protect them by the power of your name. The name you gave me by your power. It's not a power that's distinct from God. It's his power. the name you gave me. By your power, it's not a power that's distinct from God. It's his power. The name you gave me. So the name was given to Jesus. I think for sure that's a reference back to Exodus 23. My name is in the angel.

Jesus says the name that you've given to me. Yeah, that's the similar language that's going to be floating around in their frame of reference for it. Again, how is this consistent with what God has revealed already? Oh, you'll care. Remember, we're using that language before. So many people can carry the name. Only one figure in the Hebrew Bible has the name in them, such that it defines their identity.

That's the angel who is Yahweh and St. Yahweh. And here Jesus is putting with this name language in John 17, puts himself. My name is that name. This is the name that you've given to me. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc Is another way to say this then, to carry the name is to have God with you, to have the name be given to you is to have God be you. Ah. I guess only one person can say that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's not, it takes you into the ultimate end of sanctification where we, in first John 3, there's John again, okay. You know, behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we, in 1 John 3, there's John again, okay. You know, behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we, you know, have become, we are the children of God. You know, and of course John then he has. And that's what we are, that little paranthetical comment. And then he talks about being made like Jesus. So there's this element of, yeah, we're gonna be like him.

It's not like we become him and displace him or like absorb him or something like that. We are perfectly and finally conformed to his image. This takes you in so many different directions because you have the idea of believers being transformed into the image of his son. Okay, that Paul talks about. You do have God dwelling inside believers in the form of the Spirit. So, that Paul talks about. You do have God dwelling inside believers in the form of the Spirit. So it takes you off in that direction of the relationship of Jesus to the Spirit. Why is it that Jesus says, I have to ascend so the Spirit can come? Why does Jesus say, behold, I'm with you always, even after I'm going to go back to heaven,

I'm still with you. We're two or three are gathered in my name. I'm in their midst. It's because of this again really fascinating relationship between Jesus and the Spirit. Spirit of Jesus, Spirit of Christ, Spirit of God, their interchangeable terms. Paul says the Lord who is the Spirit, you know, a couple of times. It takes you in so many different directions, and when the Spirit, when you realize that the Spirit of God dwelling in believers is the same When you realize that the Spirit of God dwelling in believers is the same deity that tabernacle with the Israelites in the desert or in Jerusalem, and also that was in this angel, it links us with this whole set of ideas. And again, it doesn't mean that God goes away or is displaced or is lesser.

It means that we are brought into the family. We're members of his body. The body of Christ, we are in Christ. All of these phrases are terms that try to get at who we are now, but who we will ultimately be in such close identification with Jesus that he has to actually use this kind of terminology. But we're still distinct. So, if people struggle with this idea of this visible Yahweh and He is Yahweh but He's distinct from Yahweh, well, you know, Christian, do you realize who you are? Because you're going to ultimately have to talk about yourself the same way. We are so closely identified with Christ, you know, that we're like in Him, but we're not him. You know, how do we even conceive that?

That's right. And why does Jesus prayer in John 17 say, may they be in us the way that I am in you? Well, this in me and you and them. Yeah, it's a real attempt to, again, try to describe this close, closeness, this close affinity, even ultimately when it comes to sanctification and glorification that we are made so much like him. Again, in our modern minds, we like,

oh, what percentage of we are, you know? Of the mind, we know. And again, the scripture never claims that we become Yahweh or we become Jesus, but it uses this language to so closely identify us with Him. Well in Peter's language, it's just to participate in the divine being. Yeah, partakers of the divine nature. Partakers of divine nature. Right. I mean that, to raise itself as an introduction to there's so many directions that all of things build on these old Testament categories.

And again, we could spend a whole episode on Son of God language, children of God language. To a lot of people, I have found that it's sort of revelatory to them that, wow, this stuff that gets talked about in the New Testament, like the vocabulary isn't made up. It's intentional. It draws on something that went before. It does. If that's your intuition, you're correct. It's coming from somewhere. Yeah. Another, this might be a way to land the plane

or open another can of wire. It is in the book of Revelation, there's actually, there's two names you can carry. There's two paths before you. You can carry the name of Yahweh by being in the one who's all that connected to Jesus, but you can also carry another name. Yeah, the name of the beast. I mean, isn't that interesting how the same language is used

of the ultimate enemy, this archetype of evil? Yeah, this is in the book of Revelation 13. Actually, and people have talked about this. I haven't tracked it all down, but there's even an anti-tryndity in Revelation of the dragon that's in the prophet. Yeah. I'm sure that's a coincidence.

Yeah. Because then, because there's Jesus, the father, and the spirit. Who's the writer? Yeah. It's true to father and who's the writer who's the writer here? Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true. That's right. But yeah, so the end of the thing is,

is, you know, the, and this has been abused in so many ways in American Christianity about taking the mark of the beast. We won't talk about that right now. But one, What's a bomber? It is synonymous with having the name of the beast. So you either bear the name of the Lord who has father's son in spirit or you bear the name of the enemy the evil one who is

Dragon beast Prophet. It is the same frame because it seems like I have the name in the biblical mindset to have the name or to bear the name, it is a sense of allegiance, but it's way more than that. It's more than that. It's both that, not an either or. Yeah, it is saying, yeah, this is the side I'm on

in the name of the king kind of language, but then it's also this weird mystical union of sorts. Yeah, and there's so many ways that the New Testament tries to express that. Yeah. The end Christ, the end Christ. Yeah. Which makes it so dangerous to take the name of the beast isn't just saying, yeah, I want to, I want to dabble in doing some bad things. It's like this union with evil. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's this willful alignment.

It can even be more sinister than that. It makes me think of some of the enslavement language or the ownership language of darkness over the over people that you get in the new testament. People who are without Christ. So there's even a little bit more, I think you're right, going on there. Mike, which of the seven letters at the beginning of the Revelation? Oh yeah, here it is in the- You're looking for Revelation 2. To the church at Pergamum, Jesus is speaking, and the reward that he gives is this stone, that's a whole other thing, but the stone has a new name written on it

that he gives to his people. They're invited into the reality of the name. Yeah. Modern readers, we kinda like, oh, you get a rock with a new name. With a name. But no, I did. What color's my pebble?

Something like I would get in. Yeah, Christmas talking. Invited into the people of the name. Well, the people of the name, that would be a great band name. People of the name. Or a movie, anyway. Sounds like a horror movie. Yeah, anyhow.

I still feel a bit confused at how I'm supposed to think about the name. It feels like, and your guys' mind is the name. It's a manifestation of God himself, but in a world of many others, of the word, the glory. And so it just kind of fits in this kind of, it's a part of the matrix of ideas, the matrix of ideas, which is typically how the Bible operates. Yeah, yeah. Some reason I'm trying to turn it into like this very clear, like

Wikipedia entry in my head where like, oh, that's the name. I get it. It does this. It doesn't do that. It is this. It isn't that. But it seems much more interconnected with this whole just biblical theology of God's complex identity. It's really interesting how the other means of expressing the same idea also include embodiment. Because we have this name and angel thing going on. But the word, again, the Old Testament, God is referred to as the word in several passages. And he's described in terms of statute. We did a half-stunned verse.

You get the word there. You get, I don't know if you guys have done the whole Son of Man, Cloud Rider thing. But again, it's very anthropomorphic language. Even the phrase, Son of Man. Yeah, that's a human one. Yeah. There it is.

So you get a number of ways of trying to express the same tune-ness idea. And you get these different aspects. The angel, of course, there's a messaging role. Son of man, you get a rulership role. You get word. Again, that's a revelatory role. I mean, so, you know, God is doing all of these things in a way that interacts with people on a level that they can process. I often say God has like two fundamental problems, you know, when He tries to relate to humans. If God showed up just as the unfiltered glory, well, you're probably going to die. And this is the conversation kind of ends right there.

Like what I said, right, was going to happen to die. And this is the conversation kind of ends right there. Like what I say, I thought was going to happen to him. So that sort of undermines the communicative process. And the other thing is, is you literally can't process like the unfiltered glory. Like what is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if you come in some form, some discernible, processable form. So smoke is good. We can see that. We know that it's present. You know, fire, but it's often as a human being in the Old Testament. So God has to sort of filter himself or come as something familiar and also safe to have this relationship. Yeah. All right. The name of God. We wrap that up. Don't take it in vain.

Don't carry it in vain. Do you remember we have this line at the beginning of the God video, which isn't released in our time yet, maybe it will be when this episode's released, but there's so much here that we're brought to the brink of the limitations of human understanding. That's how it always feels. However, the point is, I think many people reach that point too early. There actually is a whole lot that we can't understand. A territory, yeah.

About how the Bible's communicating to us, the thing that we ultimately can't understand. And so we begin the video saying, ultimately we can't understand God's being, but we can better understand what it is that we can't understand through's being, but we can better understand what it is that we can't understand through and what we're given is these images, the name, the glory, the word, the temple. And these all help us as windows into the ultimate unknown. What's really tragic is we don't teach people to read the Bible that way. Yeah.

In some Christian circles that are so devoted to, they'll use the word literalism, and of course you've got to define what does that even mean. But they're so devoted to this sort of surface, one-to-one correspondence way of reading something that words like metaphor and symbol and matrix of ideas that those are just like off the table. The effect of that is it's really hard to read scripture that way and look at it as I'm supposed to piece these things together. It's a network of ideas into some sort of proof texting mentality. That's the only thing that they can really do because of the way they've been trained as readers. And they're just cut off from so many other things. Yeah, from the way the Bible is actually communicating.

Yeah. That's right. Cool. So the name, the name, thanks Mike. That's my name. You just left that wide open. Yeah, it's just overflatting, honestly overflatting. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project podcast.

Next week we continue in this identity of God series and we look at a fascinating character highlighted in the book of Daniel called the Son of Man. This is arguably one of the most important Old Testament text, understand Jesus himself. The one term he consistently used to describe himself was the son of a human, the son of man. Today's episode was produced by Dan Gummel, and today's music was made special by Tay the producer, this podcast and all the videos we create and all the other resources we create. Are free because of thousands of generous people who have been supporting this project. And it blows our mind. We feel grateful to be working on it and we're glad that everything gets to be out there for free.

You can find it all at thebibletproject.com. Thanks for being a part of this with us. Hi, this is Rebecca from Folsom, California. I first found out about the Bible project from right now media, from our church, a base side of granite bay. The Bible project helps me in my everyday life with my daily reading of the scriptures, giving me a better understanding of how it all leads to Jesus. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We are a crowd-founded project by people like me. Find free videos, study notes, and more at thebibelproject.com. you