Transcription
Hey everybody, I wanted to share a few thoughts on something I came across yesterday. And I'm talking about this review of Mike Heiser's book, The Unseen Realm. And this review was written by a professor at a Bible college in North Dakota named Rick Watam Jr. And in this review, Watom is pretty critical of Heiser, as I have been in the past, on a handful of things. But I actually want to push back against Watam's critique, at least the very first thing that is the foundation of his whole critique.
But first, I want to go back to his review and read some of what Rick says here. He starts off, "Michaeliser's The Unseen Realm represents an ambitious and learned attempt to argue that a coherent divine council worldview underlies and organizes the entire biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation. And that recovery of this worldview is the key to unlocking a host of exoggetical puzzles that have long troubled readers of scripture. The book has been warmly received in many evangelical circles, praised for its originality, its command of ancient Neareastern background material, and its willingness to engage texts that more cautious interpreters have left undisturbed. The present paper does not dispute the genuine value of Heiser's A&E scholarship. Nor does it deny that divine counsel imagery is present in the Old Testament and that this imagery has been underexplored in much popular biblical theology. What it disputes is the methodological and hermeneutical framework within which Heiser deploys this material and most fundamentally the textual foundation upon which the entire project rests. The argument will proceed across four areas of critique, concluding with a summary assessment of the project's overall viability as a work of biblical theology."
Now, I want to address the first part of his critique, which is precisely about that textual foundation of everything. And I think these few paragraphs here represent the thrust of that critique. The entire edifice of Heiser's argument rests by his own account on a single textual judgment that Deuteronomy 32:8 originally read sons of God beneath the maseretic texts sons of Israel. This reading is attested in a Dead Sea Scroll fragment 4Q Deuteronomy J and has been preferred by a number of critical scholars on the grounds of the standard text critical principles of Leio deficilior and the general antiquity of some Kuman textual traditions. Heiser treats this preference as effectively settled and proceeds to erect upon it a comprehensive theology of the divine council, the allotment of the nations and the cosmic geography of redemptive history.
The first and most fundamental problem with this procedure is one that Heiser consistently minimizes. The Kuman reading is attested in effectively one manuscript and it left no discernable trace in the broader transmission history of either the Old Testament or the Greek and Aramaic versional traditions as received by the church and synagogue. The manuscript situation deserves to be stated plainly. The Maseretic text representing the mainstream of Jewish scribal tradition across many centuries and geographic locations reads sons of Israel. The Samaritan penetuk and independent textual tradition likewise reads sons of Israel. The targums the Aramaic paraphrastic translations used in synagogue worship follow the maseretic reading. The pashida the ancient Syriak translation follows it as well. The Septuagent reads, "Angels of God, Angalone Theu, which Heiser treats as corroborating his reading, but which in fact represents a distinct interpretive tradition that domesticates the phrase into angelology rather than confirming a divine council framework and which itself seems to reflect theological interpretation of a Hebrew forlaga rather than a variant text. Against all of this, the Sons of God reading is present in one fragmentaryary manuscript from one sectarian community and a community that itself preserved manuscripts of the book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. This may thus be more indicative of this community's readings than of anything wider among Jews of the second temple period.
This manuscript isolation is not a minor footnote. It is a datim of the first importance that cuts directly against the theological weighter places on the reading. If the Ben Elohim text were the original reading and if the divine council worldview it encodes were as foundational to Israel's theological self-standing as Heiser claims, one would expect at minimum some broader manuscript tradition to have preserved it. The virtual absence of the reading from the broad channels of textual transmission, Jewish, Samaritan and Christian, demands explanation that Heiser does not provide.
So I want to say three things in particular. One, the Sons of God reading is the overwhelmingly preferred reading according to scholars. I don't know any critical scholars at all that think that Sons of Israel is original. Every last critical scholar I have ever seen comment on this agrees that we have very strong reason to believe that Sons of God is more original. The only people who object to that are conservative Christian scholars and a minority of them.
Now having said that when Watom says that the Septuagent's reading is going in the direction of angelology rather than the divine council and is indicative of the interpretive decision of the translator rather than of some variant reading. Watom is directly contradicting the absolutely overwhelming majority of Septuagent scholars who overwhelmingly agree that angels of God is the common workaround that the Septuagent translators use when they encounter sons of God in their manuscripts. And we can find it in a number of places for instance here in Job 16 and 2:1. This is a Greek translation of the Hebrew sons of God. We can also go to Job 38:7 where we have angal limu and this is sons of God in the Hebrew but it's supposed to be God talking. So instead of saying sons of God, the translation has God saying my angels. We can also look below to see Psalm 86 where in the Hebrew it says you made them a little lower than the gods. And here it has been rendered angels. This is a common technique that the Septuagent translators use to get around the idea of sons of God. However, it is preserved in some places. For instance, the dominant reading among Septuagent manuscripts of Genesis 6 1-4 is Teu uh children of God or sons of God. So while we do have some representation of sons of God in parts of the Septuagent, the majority of the time that the Septuagent translators run across the Hebrew sons of God, they alter it to angels of God. In fact, when they come across just regular old gods, they frequently change that to regular old angels. So we do have broader attestation of this practice. And this does make the case much stronger that the Septuagent of Deuteronomy 32:8 is revising the reading children of God. In fact, before we ever discovered 4Q Deuteronomy J, a lot of scholars pointed out, oh, the Septuagent translators obviously came across children of God in their foraga in their source text and they just translated it angels of God. So this has been a longstanding agreement among scholars of the Septuagent.
And that brings up the third thing I want to say. Watom is just demonstrably wrong when he says that it has left no trace in the broader transmission history of the Hebrew Bible. It is actually found in a number of different traditions. And to demonstrate this, I want to start with Chrissy Hansen's recent paper in TC, a journal of biblical textual criticism from last year. A note on the sons of God in Latin quotations of Deuteronomy 32:8D. And the abstract says, "This paper draws attention to previously undisussed transmissions of the sons of God reading from Deuteronomy 32:8D being preserved in various quotations and paraphrases throughout history. The paper shows that sons of god filiorum day was a popular reading among several medieval theologians showing five examples of Anelm, Albertus Magnus, Martin DeLeon, Gho of Rikersburg and Thomas Aquinas and that it almost certainly derived from now lost septuagent readings. These Latin authors have previously gone unnoticed in text critical analysis of Deuteronomy 32:8D and should henceforth be considered as witnesses to the LXX reading of Honu in future text critical discussions of Deuteronomy 328D."
Now I have talked with Chrissy about this and Chrissy pointed me to other traditions in addition to these Latin texts such as the Hodot. Here we have Schuler and Nuome's 2012 critical edition of the Hodi Yot. And in the red I've underlined a portion that refers to here in translation the sons of God who and then there's a a lacuna and then it talks about boundaries of the peoples which is Deuteronomy 3289 language and then below that his inheritance which again is Deuteronomy 328-9 language. So this is suggestive of this tradition in circulation beyond just the transmission of the text of Deuteronomy at Kuman in the Hodote. And we can look at John William Weaver's text history of the Greek Deuteronomy where he talks about this reading the context in Deuteronomy reads which equals Kuman or the Dead Sea Scroll manuscript. Maseretic text is probably the product of revision with its lemiss parel changing l or elim for theological reasons. Unfortunately 848 and this is a manuscript number. It's a manuscript of the septuagent is broken off after honian substantiates the entire reading honu. So the Armenian tradition preserves it as well. The popular reading is certainly not based on a revision towards the Hebrew since theu is retained. Rather, it is theologically inspired and exeetical attempt to avoid the notion of sons of God by interpreting the phrase as angels of God. So again, the overwhelming majority of Septuagent scholars agree that angels of God is the Septuagent's attempt to sidestep sons of God in their foraga.
And let's look at some of those Latin examples. Thomas Aquinus's commentaries on Corinthians and other epistles of St. Paul. Down at the bottom here, we have in Latin a quotation of Deuteronomy 32:8. And as you can see, the very end of the bottom line, film day, that is children of God. That is what Aquinas quotes. Now a more interesting one is Albertus Magnus' uh commentary where he actually says in the underlined portion in red Deuteronomy 328 according to the Septuagent translation. And so this is strong evidence that in this period there were known Septuagent manuscripts that read children of God.
Now this is a website that Chrissy has put together Latin Deuteronomy 32:8D. I will put the actual URL in the description or something like that. But this is gathering 11 different Latin authors that preserve that reading. And some of these are are specious, but you can see Anelm of Canterbury is number one. We have number two. You can read the commentary if you like. The italics immediately after the name is what the reading is that is preserved by that author. Um, we go down to the 12th century. We've got a couple from there. Alexander of Hales is the eighth author. We're going to skip over this species one. Alberta's Magnus. This is the one that says, "Hey, this is according to the Septuagent." And then number 10 is Thomas Aquinus. And then Hugo de Santocaro from the 13th century.
So contrary to Watam's claim, the sons of God reading is actually attested in a variety of traditions from the Greek to the Armenian to the Latin. In fact, almost a dozen commentaries from medieval Latin authors point out that this is one of the readings that was in circulation. So, Wadam's claim there is demonstrabably false. It is preserved in the transmission history of the Hebrew Bible and of Deuteronomy. going back to the Hebrew of Kuman, going to the tradition preserved in other Kuman texts to the Septuagent to the Latin to the Armenian and there is a case to make for a few other scattered references as well. But this should suffice to demonstrate that Wadam's claim is simply false. There is very strong evidence that the original reading of Deuteronomy 32:8, the very end, did refer to the sons of God. Again, I don't know any critical scholars who don't think that is the most likely reading.
So while I myself have some significant criticisms of the unseen realm and Heiser's work in general which mostly has to do with his presupposition that there was not change in the conceptualization of deity from one part of the Hebrew Bible to another and also his reconstruction of the conceptualization of deity and I address that in my book Adonized Divine Images a cognitive approach which you can find for free by googling the title online. Wadm's criticism here is completely groundless and betrays an avoidance of the scholarly consensus and assertions of minority positions that are not really supported by the data.
So, I think Watom has gone significantly off track with this criticism, at least the first part of this criticism from this review. And the fit for this video, it's been Marvel.