I’m grateful to Brian Godawa for his post today encouraging everyone in the evangelical orbit to read The Unseen Realm. I believe he’s right — it is indeed a game-changer. If people give it a read they will never be able to read their Bible the same way again. I know that’s true because I had that experience researching and writing it over the past fifteen years.
The Unseen Realm: A Game-Changer for Evangelical Christianity
Unseen Realm was amazing! It forced me to look at my faith in a whole new way and I read my Bible with renewed excitement. Unseen Realm and Earth’s Earliest Ages are two must reads for anyone with questions about scripture which are unlikely to be answered in any church.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I read the book and gave it 5 stars at Goodreads. However, there are a couple of implications of the Unseen Realm view I haven’t seen discussed. They are potentially upsetting, but it depends on how seriously one takes the Bible. I tend to take it pretty seriously.
If the gods of the other nations are inferior angels or demons, where does that put Allah, Mohammed and Islam? You didn’t touch this.
Another thing is the criticism of Bible skeptics that the Bible teaches genocide. God orders the killing of babies. If the order is to wipe out the descendants of Nephilim, then the babies aren’t fully human and are inherently evil. Does that make sense?
the terms “angels” and “demons” aren’t precise equivalents to the gods of the nations. “Angels” appears in Deut 32:17, but shedim (singular: shedu) points to a guardian entity (which fits the domain thinking associated with the gods of the nations – that’s in a footnote in Unseen Realm on p. 33). Since Allah’s origin is apparently S. Arabia, that would make him a geographical elohim, not a demon or angel.
See the footnote on page 201 about how (in several passages) the giant clan inhabitants are referred to as humans.
Just something to consider. The debate about whether YHVH and Allah are the same entity known by different names is often brought up by those who evangelize to Muslims. Whether it’s true or not, saying Allah is a different god will simply shut down a conversation with a Muslim before it begins. Listen to Abdu Murray speak about this on Apologetics 315. The topic comes up about half way into the interview. http://www.apologetics315.com/2013/09/apologist-interview-abdu-murray.html
That’s normal in a religion / worldview that doesn’t understand divine plurality (normal to overlap them).
Thanks for the definition. So according to the Divine Council idea Allah is an inferior or false god. Of course the idea that Allah is a false god isn’t anything new to Christian apologetics. The Unseen Realm idea just gives more support to it.
I have the Kindle edition so finding the right page number is a little problematic. However, I remember the comment. The Sons of God are referred to as stars also. If the Nephilim are referred to as human I don’t see how that changes anything. They still weren’t fully human. Wasn’t Gilgamesh referred to as human? I’ll try to find the footnote.
The point is that the rationale for kherem annihilation was the specific elimination of the descendants of the Nephilim. Ridding the land of these bloodlines was the motivation.
Location 3910
Despite their unusual size, the biblical text is clear that the giant clan members were human.
Footnote 1 chapter 25
You say the giants are human, and yet they are descendants of Nephilim. I’m saying that size isn’t the only thing they inherited. If bloodlines can be traced for blessings, as in Godawa’s fiction, then they can be traced for extermination as well.
I really love the book, Dr. Heiser. Thanks for writing it! I think it is right. But I have to be honest that I am struggling with it. Not because I am an anti-supernaturalist. But having emerged from paganism myself, I was getting really used to traditional Christianity. This upends everything I have been taught in the past 10 years, including everything learned in seminary.
However, I am not going to give up. Maybe I will take it a little slower.
it doesn’t overturn “everything” 🙂
Sorry about the overstatement. It wasn’t intentional. I was trying to convey my excitement. Hard to do in a format like this.
But seriously, though I haven’t finished the book, I am already using some of it in a very important cross-cultural way.
I have been following you for quite a while. Which means that I got bits and pieces here and there. I am more of a big picture type of guy, so I think that effort that you have made in connecting the dots into an overall narrative has helped me the most.
Is it correct to call this a kind of Heilgeschichte? What about if we allow a broad meaning to the word “salvation” to include all that God is doing to restore what was lost in Eden and even improve on it?
The best way I can answer this is to say finish the Unseen Realm. It’s big picture. Salvation in an individual sense is about believing loyalty to the true God (both testaments). Bigger picture, I’d agree it’s about restoring Eden (i.e., accomplishing God’s original plan – which includes a joint divine-human council and family on earth).
Dr. Heiser,
Thank you again for bringing these ideas to light and for making them cohesive and discussable. I’ve been chewing on your work for a couple of years now and it’s changed my perspective dramatically. Another theme that has come to my attention in the last couple of years and that has changed my perspective in at least the same measure as your Unseen Realm is that of the apokatastasis, most recently as presented by Dr. Ilaria Ramelli. Here’s my question. You say that you agree that it’s about restoring Eden, that is, it’s about God having a joint human-divine council and family on earth. In concluding your book you also say that “All the imagers, human and divine, who dwell in the new Eden chose correctly—they believed that Yahweh was the God of gods and that his way was best”. My problem is that with this view of the end, the gospel of grace gives all of humanity a second chance but does not actually redeem humanity. So while the work of the nachash managed to consign every individual/humanity to death, the work of Christ only consigns every individual/humanity to a second chance to choose. If that’s the case, the nachash’s action is more sweeping, more comprehensive, more powerful than God’s remedy and redemptive history just steps us back to one minute before the fall. In a way it seems like your idea eliminates Original Sin, but not death itself. Currently, I don’t see redemptive history as taking us back to Eden before the fall. I see it as getting us through death, beyond sin, and landing us on the other side of history ‘without any spot or blemish or any such thing’. And if death, the last enemy to be destroyed, has effectively been destroyed by Jesus even while we, the believing loyal, are still working out the details of carrying out His plan like the resourceful spirit in God’s throneroom who resolves Ahab’s doom, death has been destroyed for everyone as we’ll see in future ages (as per Dr. Ramelli :). And if death and sin are destroyed for everyone and all truly will ‘confess that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the Father’, and if it’s true that ‘if you believe in your heart and confess with you mouth that Jesus Christ is LORD you will be saved’, then we the elect in this age are pulling heaven down around us, the New Jerusalem is coming down, dust and death don’t climb up into the clouds like Adam’s children thought they could, but ‘unto us (humans) a child is born, to us (humans) a Son is given’ in the new Man Christ Jesus Who makes all things new at the end of the ages through our participation with Him in this age as his elect imagers (that is, those who voluntarily do His will and will have a reward beyond that of mere salvation/healing in the end, because ‘the leaves, those attached to the Vine, in other words believers in this age, are for the healing of the nations’) (Rev. 22:2).
I’m sorry this is such a long question. I’ve been trying to make it smaller for weeks but cannot. What do you think?
~kendra
What you’re saying really isn’t at odds with what I’m saying. The global Eden will have the characteristics you note.
Marvelous. Thank you!
It is about time! Thank you.
The concept of the Divine Council as it has been presented is in my opinion highly probable and very very interesting. However, if it is true raises several serious problems:
1. If the Noah`s Flood was only local then the incident of Babel was only a local event. If these assumptions are correct than what happened to the people of China? are they under other elohim or not (there are only 70/72 SoG for people of Babel – that is people of ANE??)
2. What happens to the people who were under other elohim ? Will they go to hell ? Does this worldview gives the answer to the question – what about people who have never been able to
hear the Gospel ??
The biblical writers were pre-scientific, without the knowledge of global geography. God of course knew that when he prompted them to write. The messaging behind the Deut 32 worldview, though, is that ALL nations belong to Yahweh and, therefore, conceptually (and theologically), the worldview is consistent today — especially since the kingdom idea (expansion of Yahweh’s presence and dominion) transitioned to people (indwelt by the Presence) instead of one ethnicity (Israelites/Jews). Where the CHurch/KIngdom expands, the spaces not yet under Yahweh’s dominion shrink.
The other question is related, but peripheral — and frankly too involved for this format. In a nutshell, the possibility of salvation in these cases is determined by a people’s response to the knowledge they had about the true God without having had the specific cross-gospel (for which there is precedent in the OT’s examples of pagan conversion — with little information). This is also in part related to general revelation (Rom 1 and Rom 10:18 — which has a specific context, in that Paul quotes Psa 19 there, which takes us into what scholars would call “astro-theology”). Again, this would take thousands of words to lay out.
You might be interested in reading McDermott’s book, God’s Rivals — it’s about the question, discussed at length in the early Christian fathers, about whether the worldview of Psalm 82 / Deut 32 / divine council (i.e., the biblical explanation for pantheons) was in part used by God to reveal himself to all peoples (something a bit beyond general revelation). The fathers disagreed, but their discussion relates to your question.
You still haven’t established what pre-scientific means.
The concept of a spherical Earth dates back to around the 6th century BC, when it was mentioned in ancient Greek philosophy,[1] but remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC, when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth
The OT (except a handful of books) would have been written prior to the 6th century BC. Since the NT writers still use the three-tiered universe of the OT (Phil 2:8-10; Rev 5:3), we cannot assume the NT authors saw things any differently. But the cosmological material of the OT is certainly pre-scientific according to your own note.
True you were discussing the flood, but you said “biblical”. I take that to mean the NT as well, and you seem to indicate that in your answer. Nobody knows exactly when the earth was first considered spherical, as the article points out. Certainly second temple Jews were aware of the teachings of the Pythagoreans.
In my view the idea of “pre-scientific” came out of the arrogant literalist perspective of the 17th century. Copernicus himself had built upon the views of the Pythagoreans. They in turn had learned from the teachings of Mespotamia and Egypt.
The error of fundamentalists is they presume the Bible to be a book of science. Sometimes scholars make the same mistake.
Agreed on the fundamentalist note, which is why I don’t consider the Bible to be about science.
Dr. Heiser,
Very eager to present your scholarship to our adult Bible study, but puzzled as to why the book is unavailable anywhere at present, seemingly out-of-print after less than a month. Is Lexham doing another run? I have had the book on order for two weeks. Frustrating! (I don’t “do” ebooks or kindle or the like)
The follow-up printing has been done for almost two weeks. There’s been miscommunication between Bookmasters (we’re dropping them) and Amazon. Amazon hasn’t changed the “out of stock” label yet, even though we can see inside the building they know about the printing. We can’t fire Amazon, though. It’s alive and well. Wish I could do something about the delay.
Double AMEN to that !!!! . I cannot WAIT for the sleeping giant to WAKE UP <3
Thanks!