A Biblical Theology of the Divine Council

#Introduction into this work after this brief thank message below , To skip go to 2nd paragraph# All credit and all writing from the Title to the very last word is Authored by the Great Dr.. Michael Heiser! Im uploading to share the content that's it! Go check out his books Unsean Realm , Demons and Supernatural to get a 100% fuller context of a ton of topics in this paper he wrote!! Dr. Michael Heisers i owe all the credit to that has lead me to this Deuteronomy 32 , Genesis 6. Tower of Babel and Ugaritic text and Ancient near eastern Occult gods and worship which are to learn from to have a better 2nd temple period worldview not a 2021st one like most!! Thanks Michael you are anointed By God !! THE DIVINE COUNCIL IN LATE CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL SECOND TEMPLE JEWISH LITERATURE Michael S. Heiser Under the supervision of Professor Michael V. Fox At the University of Wisconsin-Madison Biblical scholarship has reached a consensus with respect to the presence of a divine assembly of gods in Israel’s faith. Prior to the sixth century B.C.E., Israelite religion underwent an evolution from an initial polytheism to a firm monolatry, where the other gods of the divine council were tolerated but not worshipped. The religious crisis of Israel’s early sixth century B.C.E. exile prompted the scribes to obscure the council in the canonical texts and compose new material declaring that Yahweh had punished Israel for her sins, brought her out of bondage, and put the other gods to death. This historical turnabout and its literary response marked the birth of true monotheism in Israel, where no other gods existed except Yahweh. This reconstruction is plagued by numerous difficulties. There are hundreds of references to other gods in a divine council in exilic and post-exilic canonical texts and the non-canonical writings of Judaism’s Second Temple period. The context for these references disallows the conclusion that the writers are speaking of idols or of the beliefs of pagans. Rather, they reflect the worldview of late Israelite religion and Second Temple Judaism. This worldview included the belief in a deified vice-regent who ruled the gods at the behest of the high God. So transparent was this divine vice regency that Second Temple Jewish authors wrote of a deified second power in heaven. The rhetoric of Deuteronomy and Deutero-Isaiah that there are no other gods besides Yahweh fails as proof of the consensus view, since the same language is used in monolatrous pre-exilic texts and fails to account for the plethora of references to other gods in late Jewish writings. This dissertation calls the consensus view of the development of monotheism in Israel into question by demonstrating that belief in a divine council survived the exile. As a result, this dissertation posits that the survival of Israel’s pre-exilic divine council has greater explanatory Chapter one Introduction to Study - The discovery of the tablets of ancient Ugarit in 1929 and their subsequent translation marked a watershed in the study of the religious worldview of the Hebrew Bible. One of the most significant revelations produced by the comparative investigation of the religion of ancient Israel and Ugarit was that the Hebrew Bible contained tantalizing hints of a pantheon. The "divine assembly" or "divine council" soon became a focus of biblical scholars, beginning in 1939 with J. Morgenstern’s lengthy article on Psalm 82, likely the clearest biblical attestation to an Israelite divine assembly.1 During the 1940s and 1950s, prominent studies emerged examining the striking and unmistakable correspondences between the god of Israel and two of Ugarit's most important deities, El and Baal.2 The seminal work on the divine council as a motif throughout the Hebrew Bible, however, was a 1944 article by H. Wheeler Robinson.3 Robinson's early study was followed in the next two decades by detailed analyses of the council and its members by a number of scholars.4 The first book-length study of the divine council was published in 1980,5 and was followed by significant works detailing various XX aspects of the divine council throughout the extant literature of Canaan.6 Most recently, an important book by Mark S. Smith has brought scholarship on the divine council up to date.7 All the scholarship to date on the divine council has focused on Israel’s religion prior to the sixth century B.C.E., since it is commonly believed that after Israel emerged from exile, the idea of a pantheon of gods headed by Yahweh had been abandoned in favor of an intolerant monotheism. This dissertation challenges this consensus view of the development of monotheism in Israelite religion and Judaism by examining late canonical texts of the Hebrew Bible and non-canonical Second Temple period literature to discern whether or not the belief in a divine council that included other gods continued after the exile.8 This task also necessarily involves interaction with several broad issues addressed in the scholarly study of Israelite religion and Second Temple period Judaism and the related academic literature. The result encompasses a new orientation with respect to the texts and the issue of monotheism in Israel and the creation of new conceptual bridges connecting the religions of pre-exilic Canaan, Israel and Second Temple Judaism. Hence, this study suggests new perspectives on certain issues involving these areas and proposes an alternative paradigm for understanding their connections. Due to the sweeping religious questions and voluminous scholarly literature dealing with ancient religions of Canaan, Israel, and first century Judaism, boundaries must be placed on such a study. Since the religions of Canaan and pre-exilic Israel are foundational to what follows, the Second Temple period more conveniently lends itself to limitations for the sake of this study. For this reason the terminus ad quem of this study is Jewish literature prior to 70 C.E. This effectively excludes the New Testament, but the study lays the foundation for future inquiry into the presence and religious role of the divine council in the New Testament. The number of areas of New Testament study related to the divine council is extensive. An examination of the New Testament in light of the divine council paradigm proposed by this study would necessitate consideration The books of the Apocrypha are (1) Esdras (alias Greek Book of *Ezra); (2) *Tobit; (3) *Judith; (4) additions to *Esther; (5) Wisdom of *Solomon; (6) Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben *Sira); (7) *Baruch, with the Epistle of Jeremiah; (8) The *Song of the Three Holy Children; (9) *Susanna; (10) *Bel and the Dragon; (11) The Prayer of *Manasseh; (12) i*Maccabees; (13) ii*Maccabees. Esdras is a compilation from ii Chronicles 35, 37, Book of Ezra, and Nehemiah 8–9, in an order differing from that of the traditional Bible text and with the addition of a popular story of a competition between youths, the most prominent of whom was Zerubbabel who waited upon Darius i. Tobit tells of a member of one of the ten tribes who was exiled to Assyria, where, because of his merit in burying Sennacherib's victims, he was cured of the blindness which had afflicted him for many years, and saw his son married to one of his kin. Judith tells of a woman of Samaria who ventured into the camp of the soldiers besieging her city, and decapitated their commander, Holofernes, after making him drunk. The Wisdom of Solomon discusses the fate of the righteous and the wicked, with examples from the early history of Israel. Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah – additions to the Book of Jeremiah – attack idol worship and are in the form of letters addressed by the putative authors to the exiles in Babylonia. Susanna and the Elders, an addition to the Book of Daniel, is the popular story of a righteous woman who successfully resists the enticements of the city elders and is saved by the youthful Daniel from the death which, on the strength of their slander, had been decreed against her. Bel and the Dragon, which in the Septuagint is another addition to Daniel, is an account of Daniel's ministrations to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and Darius the Mede, and of his success in demonstrating to them by various devices the futility of idol worship. The Prayer of Manasseh, an addition to ii Chronicles 34:18, is a prayer supposedly recited by King Manasseh while in exile. From the historical point of view, the most important book of the Apocrypha is i Maccabees, the historical account of the *Hasmoneans from the uprising of Mattathias to the death of *Simeon, the first of the Hasmoneans to establish the independence of Judea. ii Maccabees confines itself to the wars of *Judah the Maccabees The Divine Council is the view that Yahweh; The God of Israel is the Master of a pantheon

If the concept and imagery of YHVH's heavenly council were so important to biblical Jews and if throne visions were so powerful a method of conveying theological truth, were they also vital to later generations in Israel? This paper suggests an affirmative answer to the question.

Reading Acts, 2020

In the introduction to this first volume of the Essential Studies in Biblical Theology, series editor Benjamin Gladd explains the need for a new series of books on Biblical Theology. The ESBT series is dedicated to the essential broad themes of the grand storyline of the Bible. The goal of the series is to explore the central biblical-theological themes of the Bible. The series is intentionally limited to ten volumes supporting and interlocking with one another to form a cohesive unit. In this inaugural volume of the series, Gladd presents a biblical theology of the people of God within the theological framework of covenant theology. Throughout the book he emphasizes a single covenant community from Genesis to Revelation. This is in contrast to dispensationalism, which makes a distinction between the church and ethnic Israel. For Gladd, there is one people of God throughout Scripture, beginning with Adam and Eve and continuing through the new creation.

The godlikeness of human beings remains a theologoumenon of primary importance from the first page of the Bible, especially now in our post-human age with its strong tendency to embrace promising technologies (artificial intelligence and robotics) even at the expense of our own humanity. This state of affairs calls for a clearer understanding of human identity and a sound ethical response through the retelling of the normative biblical concept of the 'image of God'. The thesis of this article consists in a consideration of the entire phrase 'God created man in his image' in Genesis 1:26-28 as a metaphorical and theocentric phrase with demonstratively meaningful content. It employs the relational concept of an extended human reality. In light of recent exegesis, the 'image of God' in Gen 1:26-27 should be seen as a signifier of human life under God, rather than a single determining characteristic or essential attribute. After exegetical and contextual readings of Gen 1:27 I will evaluate three major interpretative approaches to the 'image of God in human-ity'. In this evaluation we will see that theologians have preferred substantialist (e.g., image as soul or mind) or relational interpretations (e.g., image as relational personhood) and Old Testament scholars have preferred functional interpretations (e.g., image as kingly dominion). I outline their respective (in)consistencies in light of the meaning of the ancient text and its extended biblical context. At the end, I offer some suggestions for applying a more complete conceptualization of the 'image of God' to ethical practice.

A number of shared features unite two of the most profound texts in the New Testament, Romans 8 and Hebrews 2. In them we find the early church’s two greatest theologians offering panoramic presentations of the Christ event and its significance for humanity. In both texts bleak assessments of the human condition are contrasted with effusive portrayals of Christian eschatological experience, and both bridge these disparate states by means of the Christ event, as Jesus’ full immersion in the human condition is accorded an instrumental role in rescuing humanity from sin, death, and despair, and conveying them into heavenly glory. More specifically, it appears that both texts were motivated by situations of suffering and an inability to understand the significance of divine action undertaken in the face of that suffering. In response, both authors offer theodicies which appeal to God’s most powerful act of love, the giving of his Son, and which locate the essential proof of this divine action in transformative experiences of God’s fatherly love. Only such experiences can adequately substantiate Paul’s remarkable claim, that “the present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is about to be revealed in us” (Rom 8:18).

This paper illustrates the value of applied Biblical Theology. Imagery conveys theology. The Hebrew Bible depiction of the divine council of God and his court becomes a key image of the Ancient of Days and David, his attendant King–Messiah–Lord. The imagery then fills the pages of the New Testament. (13 pages)

Recently I prepared my first college-level course on Paul. In so doing, I returned to a letter I had not read in quite some time: 1 Thessalonians. Upon rereading it, I perceived with existential clarity a question that I had heretofore only known abstractly. In possibly his earliest extant writing, the apostle speaks not of the Galilean prophet who figures so prominently in the Gospels. Instead, he proclaims a savior from heaven, descending earthward with angelic trumpets to raise the dead, deliver the righteous, and execute the Day of the Lord. With furrowed brow I wondered, What accounts for this arresting presentation so soon after Jesus' life? James Waddell has an answer: Enochic Judaism. In The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline Kyrios, originally a dissertation written under Gabriele Boccaccini at the University of Michigan, Waddell attempts to establish whether, and if so, to what extent the heavenly figure known from 1 En. 37-71 influenced Paul's understanding of Jesus as the cosmic lord. His conclusions are yes and a lot. These results, he hopes, will not only specify the relation between Paul and an important antecedent portrayal of the Messiah but also further the project of situating early Christianity within the Second Temple period, viewing it as one variation among many diverse types of Judaism (or, Judaisms).

The Human condition theological reflections , 2020

Should a theological approach to understanding the divine image be more structural, functional, relational, covenantal, or even more multifaceted? The approach that is proposed in this essay is a Christological one. I find the construal of the application of Imago Dei in the Christological context most convincing and very key to theological anthropology. I am persuaded that Christian anthropology needs to be (well) grounded in Christology and that the Old Testament texts are to be read in the light of the New Testament if we are to fully comprehend human personhood.

Grace Alone, 2022

The first chapter of Genesis is one of the most sublime theological portrayals in all of Scripture. This essay explores some of the theological depth of Genesis 1, contending that it serves as an introduction to the overarching covenant drama in Scripture. The analysis centers on Adam's prelapsarian state and underscores the Sabbath as the ultimate goal of God's covenant with man.

"The Enochic Son of Man and Pauline Christology" A comparative analysis of the Messiah in the Book of the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul, this study locates one aspect of Paul’s thought, his christology, in the context of Jewish intellectual traditions of the first century BCE and the first century CE. Conceptual elements of messianic traditions are identified in these documents by examining the nature and functions of the divine figure and the nature and functions of the messiah figure. This has implications for understanding divine and human agency and the relationships between mediatorial figures and the one God in Jewish literature from the Second Temple period. Comparative analysis demonstrates that the Book of the Parables and the Letters of Paul share specific conceptual elements of messianic traditions. The combination of shared elements is so striking as to preclude the possibility that the Book of the Parables and the Letters of Paul constituted independent, parallel developments. The evidence indicates that Paul was familiar with the conceptual elements of the Enochic messiah, and that Paul developed his concept of Jesus as the Kyrios out of the Son of Man traditions in the Book of the Parables of Enoch. This study argues that at least one facet of Paul’s thought, his christology, was heavily influenced by Enochic Son of Man traditions.