In these posts I will offer brief introductions to some resources that I recommend for theology, church and public life.
A friend drew my attention to Dr. Michael Heiser about 18 months ago and I’m very glad he did. Heiser is a Biblical Studies scholar with broad interests and a very fresh, vigorous and faithful approach. His central concern is reading the Bible with the spiritual worldview of its original writers and recipients in mind – what he terms ‘recovering the supernatural worldview of the Bible’. Central to this is the concept of the ‘Divine Council’ mentioned in Psalm 82:1 (“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.”) about which Heiser writes “The term divine council is used by Hebrew and Semitics scholars to refer to the heavenly host, the pantheon of divine beings who administer the affairs of the cosmos. All ancient Mediterranean cultures had some conception of a divine council. The divine council of Israelite religion, known primarily through the psalms, was distinct in important ways.” (Dictionary of the Old Testament : 2008) If you are interested in this basis he has written an academic monograph on the subject called The Unseen Realm and a popular level reduction of the material called Supernatural.
If this describes his general approach, then his overall passion might be described as stripping back layers of accepted or assumed Biblical exegesis that doesn’t take the supernatural / divine council worldview into account. This is front and centre in the titles of Heiser’s excellent podcast The Naked Bible and his recent book The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on its own Terms. He also writes / podcasts on more (to me) peripherally interesting subjects, such as the academic analysis of the paranormal, and also writes fiction which incorporates some of his theoretical ideas.
My recommendation is glowing but not unqualified: I’m sure I’d disagree with Heiser on several things, most significantly the contemporary church and its potentialities (but that might be a UK vs US thing to some extent).
His material is so interesting and plentiful it can be hard to know where to start but I recommend just browsing the aforementioned The Naked Bible podcast and diving in where you see something interesting. No doubt it will take you down a rabbit warren of related episodes.
REFERENCES
Michael S. Heiser, “Divine Council,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings (ed. Tremper Longman III and Peter Enns; Downers Grove, IL; Nottingham, England: IVP Academic; Inter-Varsity Press, 2008), 112.