[Note: For other posts on Mike’s work on the divine council, click here for the archive.]

[Note to those who left comments on this post: I have fixed the bad link in the earlier post.]

Here are my two regional SBL papers (keep in mind that in both I spent part of my time talking the audience through a chart):

1. Divine Plurality in the Dead Sea Scrolls (see previous post for files related to the data for this paper).

  • My take in a nutshell: Contrary to scholarly consensus opinion, there are numerous instances of plural elohim and elim in the scrolls, many in divine council contexts; there are *no* instances of the word for “angels” in divine council scenes in the scrolls; consequently, the idea of a “downgrading” of the council gods to angels needs re-thinking and re-articulation.
  • UPDATE: I have revised this paper and it’s been published in a scholarly journal (Tyndale Bulletin)

2. Jesus’ Quotation of Psalm 82:6 in John 10:34: A Different View of John’s Theological Strategy

  • My take in a nutshell: I reject the “mortal view” of Psalm 82:6 taken by all NT scholars I know of who have commented on this quotation; it amounts to Jesus saying he gets to call himself God’s son because any other Jew could, too; that fails to account for the crowd reaction and is utterly foreign to the original context of Psalm 82, which eliminates the possibility of the elohim in 82:6 being human beings. Rather, the quotation is part of John’s strategy to assert Jesus’ own divine nature and shared authority with the Father.

The event was fun, as expected. Both papers were well received. I’ll be using both papers as the starting points for journal articles (hopefully submitting them this summer).