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podcast 275 – Exposing Dr. Heiser to actual biblical unitarian thought

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In episode 292 of his Naked Bible podcast, Dr. Michael Heiser was asked about how biblical unitarian Christians understand Old Testament texts involving “the angel of the LORD” and “the word of the LORD.”

He took the opportunity to dump on biblical unitarianism as rationalistic, dishonest, pitifully uninformed, self-inconsistent, not “biblical” in any meaningful sense, and simply inconsistent with the obvious meaning of several Old Testament texts, in Genesis 48, 1 Samuel 3, and Jeremiah 1.

In this episode I respond, exposing Dr. Heiser to how actual (as opposed to imagined) unitarian Christians approach scripture and theology.

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9 thoughts on “podcast 275 – Exposing Dr. Heiser to actual biblical unitarian thought”

  1. Troy M Salinger

    Why are you saying the Hosea drew from OT texts when the book claims to be the “word of YHWH” that came to him, i.e. a revelation. I don’t like this always looking for the source from which the biblical author was drawing, especially in the case of prophets. We either believe that they were receiving revelation or that they were drawing conclusion for themselves based on some source; you can’t have it both ways.

  2. Troy M Salinger

    Hi Dale, thanks for this podcast. When I saw it posted on facebook I couldn’t wait to listen. From March through July of this year I wrote four articles on my blog dealing with Heiser’s exegetical fallacies regarding the pertinent biblical passages. Needless to say, I had my head in Heiser’s world for a number of months while preparing for and writing those articles. Of course I agree with just about everything you had to say in the podcast, except for one point. Let me know if I misunderstood you. I do not see the need to postulate that in some of the appearances of the angel of the Lord, YHWH was producing or emanating out a manifestation or appearance of himself in human form which was not a literal being. This just seems to complicate things further. I do think that all of these appearances can be understood as true intermediaries representing YHWH. It seems that the main reason you conclude that people in the OT did not see an actual malak is because some of them declared that they had seen God. But what a character in the story believed is not necessarily the same as what the author of the passage was saying. Take for example Jacob wrestling with the mysterious man in Gen 32. No where in that passage does the author say that the man was either a malak or YHWH himself. In the story Jacob declares that he had seen “God face to face.” Yet in Hosea 12:3-4 we read, “… as a man he struggled with God. He struggled with the malak and overcame him …” Regardless of how Jacob understood the experience, the prophet speaking in YHWH’ name said it was a malak. Nothing in the Gen. passage itself precludes the idea of an intermediary representing YHWH. Often in scripture the actions and words of God’s malakim (human or clestial) are attributed to YHWH himself – see Is. 7:3-10 as a clear example. I just don’t think we need to add another layer of complication to these stories, when the representative malak concept explains them well. Anyway, other than that I loved the podcast and will probably listen to it again tommorrow.
    Also, many of the appearances of YHWH in the OT are simply visions, not actual realtime events. For the most part, visions are mental images seen in a trance-like state and are not actual appearances of physical or material things. See Acts 12:6-11 for how Peter understood what a vision is. God could be and was regularly seen in visions but this does not count as actually seeing God himself, just a representation of him in a mental picture.

    1. Dale

      Hi Troy – I agree with most of what you say. I don’t think, e.g. most of these Genesis examples are obvious. But I do think the idea of a projection of God is an easy and natural one. In that book by Benjamin Sommer, he shows that there was a widespread idea in ancient times that a god could have multiple “bodies” – but that just means that he can appear in several different ways at once, even in different places. Such a claim doesn’t commit one to the idea that God is essentially physical or that he’s composed of matter. If anyone saw or touched him – not in an eyes-closed vision – they would think that what was seen was a body of that god. In a few cases, like Genesis 48:15-16, I think my reading works better. Do you see why?

      1. Troy M Salinger

        Hey Dale,
        Yes I can appreciate what you are saying, and I am not trying to make a big deal out of this. I see nothing wrong with BUs having more than one alternative interpretation to these passages. I am cautious though about basing our understanding of YHWH in the Hebrew Scriptures on what other religious systems within that culture believed about their gods. Whether ANE literature, say the Baal Cycle, was meant by the authors of those texts to be taken seriously or if it was just meant as fiction, one thing for sure is they were not operating under revelation by the one true God, while the Hebrew authors of Scripture were. Heiser’s problem is that he interprets scripture in light of these ANE texts as if the Hebrew authors were understanding their God in the same way that these pagan authors understood their gods, because that was just the religious cultural context. How this squares with the scriptural claim of divine revelation I fail to see.

        Now, like I said before, characters within the biblical stories of the early days of God’s revelatory communications with the patriarchs, may have understood some of their experiences in light of how other religions of the time viewed their gods, but the biblical authors themselves would not be promoting those ideas. Again, the case of Jacob is instructive. He might have thought he saw God face to face, but revelation tells us it was a malak (Hosea 12:3-4). We can’t just assume that these people, at that time, had a complete understanding of God and how God operated in his communications with them.

        Anyway, I want you to know how much I appreciate your hard work in putting these podcasts together. I look forward to every episode and I learn so much. Thanks again!

    3. Timothy Lawson

      Troy,
      Hosea would also have drawn from other angelic appearances of Yhwh when speaking about Jacob wrestling with an angel as well as well as the appearance to him of an angel in a vision who identifies himself as the God of Bethel! That it is in a vision is more surprising than if it had been an actual visitation by an angel because there is really no compelling need for Yhwh to use a representative in a dream! The angel’s identification of himself as the God of Bethel is stunning!

    4. Timothy Lawson

      Troy,
      Hosea would also have drawn from other angelic appearances of Yhwh when speaking about Jacob wrestling with an angel as well as well as the appearance to him of an angel in a vision who identifies himself as the God of Bethel! That it is in a vision is more surprising than if it had been an actual visitation by an angel because there is really no compelling need for Yhwh to use a representative in a dream! The angel’s identification of himself as the God of Bethel is stunning!

      1. Timothy Lawson

        See Genesis 31:11-13

        11 Then the angel of the true God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob!’ to which I said, ‘Here I am.’ 12 And he continued, ‘Raise your eyes, please, and see that all the he-goats mating with the flock are striped, speckled, and spotty, for I have seen all that La?ban is doing to you. 13 I am the true God of Beth?el, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now get up, go out of this land, and return to the land of your birth.’”

        1. Troy M Salinger

          Do you think the ‘angel of the Lord’ who appeared to Joseph in a dream was also God himself? Matt. 1:20
          In other instances in the OT God appears in dreams to people without the text saying it was ‘an angel of YHWH’, so what is the difference between the two? If God speaks in a dream by use of a malak figure who are we to discount that because we cannot see some “compelling need for YHWH to use a representative in a dream?”

          1. Timothy Lawson

            Troy,
            To answer your question, I do not believe that Hebrew Bible intends the reader to understand the angel in Genesis 31:11-13 was God nor was the angel who had God’s name in him (Exodus 23:20) was God nor that the angel who appeared as a man to Abraham by the name Yhwh in Genesis 18 was God. I agree with you that the angelic appearances that the Bible penmen identified as Yhwh were representatives.

            I also think the ANE understanding of El and Baal with multiple regional Baals is countered by the Shema so that Israel wouldn’t see Yhwh in a similar manner and be drawn to worship El and Baal as just another manifestation of the transcendent and invisible Yhwh and the immanent and visible Yhwh. I think that the use of the divine name in the Shema is important to this point and replacing it with Adonai obscures that point.

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