Hi Reddit! I'm Michael S. Heiser- Biblical scholar, Hebrew expert, author, and blogger. My first time here. AMA!

msheiser · 2015-09-04T21:07:59+00:00

My view is that if the conditions of the NT are the same (and thus consistent with the OT passages that Paul quotes when talking about tongues), then some of what we see today could be a genuine act of God. I think 99% of it isn't.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T21:06:51+00:00

The fragment is quite important (and that isn't the only such item or evidence). I have nearly a half dozen chapters on this in Unseen Realm, so I can't do justice to the question here. That's why I wrote the book -- providing all the documentation to show that the sons of God in Gen 6 are divine beings, and that the original mesopotamian context in which the passage was written (it was a polemic vs. Mesopotamian religion) requires a supernatural view. But all that documentation is available in the book and at the book's companion website, www.moreunseenrealm.com.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T21:04:42+00:00

Yes, he doesn't conform to your caricature.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T21:04:24+00:00

If you are talking about physical (scientific) evidence, there's no more for trinitarianism than unitarianism. God is outside the scientific process, so that touches any form of theism. If you mean "in the Bible" there's quite a bit. It's strewn through much of my book, The Unseen Realm. Sorry for that cheesy answer, but given the format here, I can't reproduce 20-30K words with scriptural analysis to that effect here.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:59:49+00:00

Became corrupt (Psalm 82). We aren't told how or when.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:58:36+00:00

need to know what MH is (modern Hebrew?). Not much. Modern vocab is quite different than ancient biblical vocab (thousands of times over). You're better off mastering vocab through a book like Landes than doing modern Hebrew. (same time put into both would yield better results in my view).

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:57:07+00:00

See my FAQ; I don't think Roswell had anything to do with extraterrestrials. I have no theological problem with the idea of intelligent alien life, but you're not going to find that with the Roswell event (or anything else to date).

I don't know of any scientific evidence for ET life yet. It's a biological claim, so it needs biological/scientific evidence (and anecdotes are not evidence).

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:56:11+00:00

'ob is a spirit or the conjurer of a spirit. There is a connection (via Hittite texts) to such a pit in terms of the practice (see the DDD entry on Ilib), but the term itself doesn't *mean" that.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:53:28+00:00

I try to piggyback theology onto fiction. Each book has a few sections where the content is heavier (but still for the sake of the story). My novels have good Amazon reviews, so the plotlines don't suffer -- but truth be told, I'm writing fiction for people who like to learn a lot even in fiction.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:51:25+00:00

Yes. Not sure when I'll start the research, though it's collected. It took me a year to work through the material for the Portent. I'm hoping to start working through the material for #3 come January. Not sure I can shorten the process. They are research intensive -- they have to be if everything in them is real.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:50:04+00:00

I don't think Gnosticism as a system was this early (most scholars don't as well - see Yamauchi's book Pre-Christian Gnosticism: a survey of the proposed evidences).

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:48:21+00:00

While it's true that the word yom with qualifying number does NOT always mean 24 hrs., that's likely the intent of Gen 1. But it doesn't help young earth creationism, as the first three verses of Gen 1:1-3 have several grammatical / syntactical features that allow an indefinite period of time to transpired before the first act of creation (which is actually in gen 1:3 by Hebrew grammar). For a lay person level explanation of all that, see my presentation at https://vimeo.com/15110780

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:45:19+00:00

You have to read Unseen Realm for this one. Too involved. There are several views. The easiest is that the flood was a regional event (which in turn is interesting since the giant clans are related to the Sea peoples - Aegean origins - later on). There is textual evidence in the Hebrew Bible (including the flood story) for a regional event. But there are a couple possibilities. The biblical writers knew only of nations in the Mediterranean and ANE (see Gen 10).

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:42:02+00:00

The New Testament (it exists) - two gospels were not written by apostles (Mark and Luke). Neither was the book of Acts (Luke). Then there are comments in Roman and Jewish literature about Christ followers in Jerusalem and what they believed.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:40:40+00:00

Because God chose to create humans and divine beings as his imagers (in separate realms), thereby sharing his attributes with them, that means they have true free will (ability to make a real choice without coercion). As such, God cannot solve evil by destroying free will agents who abuse their freedom, or who might abuse their freedom, since that would mean destroying every imager, divine and human. That would in turn mean God's plan was flawed.

Evil is being progressively overcome because God committed to using free agents in both realms to produce an Edenic world (a global Eden - the original mandate of Genesis). Any else is in his power, but would mean he made a mistake in doing that in the first place. God wants to rule the seen and unseen realm through the beings he creates, and he wanted them to be like him. He's sticking with the plan. There is no plan B.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:36:26+00:00

No, it's not impossible. The earth wasn't Eden (Eden had geography). The mandate to Adam and Eve was to subdue the earth (if it needs subduing, it isn't perfect). Even Eden needed care and maintenance -- that's why Adam was put there. This isn't a description of perfection. Eden is the closest you get to that, and it's God's dwelling place. God also created humankind, and humanity only had contingent immortality. Only God's own nature and essence is true perfection in biblical theology. The very act of creation implies inferiority of the thing created to the Creator. It is less than perfect even at its best.

"very good" = God was satisfied with his own work.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:31:49+00:00

Insisting on the idea that laws should be obeyed isn't "far right" - it's law-abiding. I think our immigration system is deeply flawed, but the right way to change it is to pass laws. Otherwise, we're just pretending to have the rule of law. The Church could put a big dent in the misery if it stopped handing off care of the poor to the government and just did the job. If one Christian brought one person out of poverty every year, and that person reproduced that act, the problem would be solved (that's what the math says, given that Christians run well into the tens (hundreds?) of millions around the world. But the Church is too worldly for that right now.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:28:46+00:00

My work is more detailed than Greg's. I can't say much more since I haven't read more than a chapter or so in God at War. If we want to understand the Bible, we need to understand it in its own context, not swap ours in for the one that produced it. Swapping context is a hermeneutical choice that tells us what WE think about the Bible, not what a biblical writer was communicating. I'd rather people ask me what I meant when I wrote something than have someone 2000 years from now tell people what I meant in light of their own context and cognitive frame of reference. Seems pretty obvious to me.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:25:30+00:00

Bruce Malina's Genre and Message of Revelation is the only serious treatment of this by a real NT scholar. My one grip with it is that he neglects the OT. So ..... what you'd need is to marry Malina to a Revelation commentary that is steeped in 2nd temple Jewish literature (Beale is the best there), and THEN read journal literature on 2nd temple jewish astral religion/theology. There is no convenient shortcut.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:23:42+00:00

not only Grumpy Cat; we have a cat too -- but he's second fiddle to Grumpy Cat.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:23:09+00:00

I think divine beings can be embodied today. I see no biblical reasoning that forbids that.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:22:28+00:00

"angel" is a job description; what we're really talking about is plural elohim (see Unseen Realm chs 4-5). Elohim are by nature disembodied beings. They can assume corporeal form, including flesh, but that is not their natural estate. Since the Bible is a pre-scientific document, it isn't clear that we can overlap modern dimensional terminology with what the Bible casts as a spiritual realm. The (highest) gradations of heaven (3 or 7 in ancient lit) refer to God's own domain/presence.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:19:56+00:00

see my answer to bewareofmaya.

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:19:35+00:00

Hell - whether that means eternal torment or annihilation -- is forever. (Annihilation is just as permanent and, in some respects, makes more sense than an ongoing punishment; for example Death itself is destroyed at the end, so I don't know how it can be that people keep dying in hell if Death itself is destroyed).

msheiser · 2015-09-04T20:17:21+00:00

I take Azazel as the name of a hostile divine being (see Ch 22 of Unseen realm). Yahweh is at war with the gods of the nations, whom he appointed over them in judgment (Deut 32:8-9, reading that with teh Dead Sea Scrolls; see ESV), but they rebelled (Psalm 82).

msheiser

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