Divine council in OT and NT

I am currently revising and expanding the material presented in this paper in preparation for an upcoming Theopolis Explorations volume. The forthcoming book will explore some important areas that I was not able to cover at length in this paper, notably how the imago Dei relates to humanity's destiny as council as well as Enochic literature and other Pseudepigrapha.

This paper was first presented to Dr. Peter J. Leithart and Dr. James B. Jordan at Theopolis Institute on March 11, 2017.

My treatment of the Divine Council really is the exploration of a story.  In this story man was created by God as a child—an infant, really—and is steadily brought to maturity.  The fall of Adam immediately presents an obstacle to how this maturation is supposed to progress, but it does not frustrate God’s plan; instead it directs the story to an even more glorious conclusion.  This is the story of how God elevated mankind to his place in Council through Jesus Christ, the man.

A number of texts from the Qumran scrolls demonstrate the community's interest in heavenly ascent and in communion with angels. This article lays out a pattern observable in some of the poetic/liturgical texts (for example, the Hodayot and other noncanonical psalms) in which the leader of the community is taken up into the divine council of God to be taught the heavenly mysteries, is appointed a teacher of those mysteries, and is then commissioned to share the teachings with his followers. Upon learning the mysteries, the followers are enabled to likewise ascend to heaven to praise God with the angels. In some texts, the human worshippers appear to undergo a transfiguration so that they become like the heavenly beings. This article further illustrates how these elements can be found together in a liturgical text known as the  Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice ; their collective presence suggests that all were part of a ritual sequence. Finally, the article argues that these same el...

Evangelical scholars and theologians have debated the character and purpose of Luke’s narrative in Acts 2 for well over a hundred years. There is still not a consensus amongst scholars as to what Luke’s narrative account is attempting to communicate. Was the filling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost meant to be descriptive only? Why would Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, cause the disciples to act and speak in such a way that caused hearers to think they were “drunk on new wine?” (Acts 2:13). The meaning of this event at Pentecost was questioned by the eyewitnesses who experienced it according to Luke’s narrative (Acts 2:12). How then is a modern interpreter to make sense of such phenomena?
The goal of this paper is to address the key issues of Acts 2 and discuss the text’s broader literary and historical contexts and consider the doctrinal implications. The thesis of this paper will argue that Luke’s narrative in Acts 2 provides support for an actual historical event that also has theological implications.  While the narrative does highlight the supernatural worldview of the author, what Luke is theologically doing with the text is of equal importance. After examination, the discoveries will shed a brighter light on how the events at Pentecost should be interpreted in correspondence with an overarching, theological narrative of the Bible story. This paper will also argue for the benefit of interpreting Scripture with a supernatural worldview of the Bible and its original authors, while also viewing Luke’s characters and their experiences as actual historical events that took place in the first century. These events depicted in Luke-Acts tell a theological story that the author accounted for by sharing the testimony of eyewitnesses that were there (Lk 1:1-4; Acts 1:1-5). However, interpreting this passage does not come without its difficulties. There are many questions that need to be addressed.  Are there any common pre-conceived views that have led to possible exegetical misunderstandings? For example, was Luke’s purpose in listing out the specific geography of the Jews and proselytes present at Pentecost in Jerusalem? (Acts 2:9-11). Why was the phenomena of speaking in other languages relevant to Luke’s narrative? (Acts 2:4, 6). This paper will attempt to interpret Acts 2:1-13 by closely and critically engaging the correlating scholarship of this passage and contemplate its use for biblical theology while also considering its relevant expression in the context of modern missions, ministry, and biblical hermeneutics. Each section will propose questions to consider as they arise and will present them at the closing of each section. There will be an attempt to answer properly each question as thoroughly as possible in the following sections and revisit some of the remaining questions that are not answered in the conclusion and propose them for further study.

The traditional Christian viewpoint is that there is only one real spiritual being presented in the Old Testament (OT) who can be labeled "God" (Hebrew elohim). This viewpoint, therefore, entails that all other references to "god" or "gods" in the OT cannot refer to real spiritual beings.  This paper presents an alternative view that even though there is only one uncreated God presented in the OT, the OT also refers to some other created spiritual beings as “gods,” “sons of God,” and members of the divine council.

Humanity's Relationship to the Spirit Realm of Fallen Angels - To understand the beast and other characters of Revelation, we need to revisit Genesis 6 to see how fallen angels will affect the end times.There are 3 dominant views regarding this famous Genesis 6 passage about the Sons of God. Most Bible interpreters and commentators state that the godly children of Seth are the Sons of God marrying outside the faith, or that fallen angels mated with human women to produce giant offspring. We will expound our focus with a 3rd viewpoint while coordinating related biblical passages and mythology.

Recently confusion exist between "the courts of Heaven" and what scripture identifies as the Divine Council. In this paper we note the textual integrety of what is called the Divine Council as know by Hebrews in the intertestamental period and Christian from the 1st century, but mostly lost to the church of our day.

James Dunn's "New Perspective on Paul" has been a breath of fresh air in Pauline studies, but did not provide a sufficient understanding of what Paul meant by "the curse of the law." Paul specifically quoted Deut. 27-30 in Galatians, and that Deut. 28 specifies that there would be two exiles of two distinct characters: The first to one land (Babylon) and the second to the whole world. Paul's point was not to say that following a specific set of commandments (e.g., circumcision, the Sabbaths and feasts, or kosher) would cause one to become cursed, but rather that to be "under law"--which Paul defines as being under the Sinaic covenant in Gal. 4:21-32--meant joining Israel in its time of punishment as defined in the law itself. When we join the fact that the curse was initiated some 700 years before the Messiah was born with Michael Heiser's "Divine Council" theology, it becomes plain why Paul considered being "under the law" to equal being under the stoicheia, the elemental spirits that rule over the nations; i.e., Israel serves the nations who serve their gods, therefore, Israel serves (indirectly) the "gods of wood and stone." In conclusion, we show that Deu. 30:7 provides a mediating position between preterism, historicism, and futurism, in that it states that the same curse/punishments that fell on Israel would likewise fall on her enemies.

Much attention has been given to God in his divine essence and to the nature of the hypostatic union. Yet scholars have not sufficiently addressed the ontology of theophanies. This thesis argues that God the Father manifests Himself in a heavenly theophany that is spatially related to angels, the ascended Christ, and humans. This paper was my Master's Thesis for my degree in Biblical Languages and Literature at Bob Jones Seminary. My advisor was Dr. Brian Hand.

In Rom 4:18, Paul cites the “promise” to Abraham in LXX Gen 15:5, “so shall your seed be” (οὕτως ἔσται τὸ σπέρμα σου) in relation to what it means to “become the father of many nations” from Gen 17:5. Modern scholars have traditionally understood the relationship Paul sees between these two texts quantitatively, as promising a multitude of descendants made up of Jews and Gentiles. Conversely, some early Jewish interpreters of Gen 15:5 (and related texts such as Gen 22:17; 26:4) such as Philo, Sirach, and the author(s) of the Apocalypse of Abraham understood the promise qualitatively, as speaking not only of multiplication but of transformation into the likeness of the stars and assumption of their power. Reading Paul’s use of Gen 15:5 in light of this qualitative interpretation places him within the context of already well-established deification or angelomorphic traditions in early Judaism that see the destiny of Abraham’s seed as replacing the stars as the divine or angelic inheritors of the nations. This tradition may provide a more fitting explanation of the relationship Paul sees between Gen 17:5 and 15:5 in the wider context of the argument of Rom 4. This reading could illuminate the relationship between a complex nexus of ideas that Paul sees implicit in the one promise to Abraham in Gen 15:5. The promise of becoming as the stars of heaven would encompass the inheritance of the cosmos, becoming a father of many nations, and the resurrection from the dead.

#Introduction into this work after this brief thank message below ,  To skip go to 2nd paragraph#
All credit and all writing from the Title to the very last word is Authored by the Great Dr.. Michael Heiser! Im uploading to share the content that's it! Go check out his books Unsean Realm , Demons and Supernatural to get a 100% fuller context of a ton of topics in this paper he wrote!! Dr. Michael Heisers i owe all the credit to that has lead me to this Deuteronomy 32 , Genesis 6. Tower of Babel and Ugaritic text and Ancient near eastern Occult gods and worship which are to learn from to have a better 2nd temple period worldview not a 2021st one like most!! Thanks Michael you are anointed By God !!

THE DIVINE COUNCIL IN LATE CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL SECOND TEMPLE JEWISH LITERATURE  Michael S. Heiser  Under the supervision of Professor Michael V. Fox  At the University of Wisconsin-Madison  Biblical scholarship has reached a consensus with respect to the presence of a divine assembly of gods in Israel’s faith. Prior to the sixth century B.C.E., Israelite religion underwent an evolution from an initial polytheism to a firm monolatry, where the other gods of the divine council were tolerated but not worshipped. The religious crisis of Israel’s early sixth century B.C.E. exile prompted the scribes to obscure the council in the canonical texts and compose new material declaring that Yahweh had punished Israel for her sins, brought her out of bondage, and put the other gods to death. This historical turnabout and its literary response marked the birth of true monotheism in Israel, where no other gods existed except Yahweh.
This reconstruction is plagued by numerous difficulties. There are hundreds of references to other gods in a divine council in exilic and post-exilic canonical texts and the non-canonical writings of Judaism’s Second Temple period. The context for these references disallows the conclusion that the writers are speaking of idols or of the beliefs of pagans. Rather, they reflect the worldview of late Israelite religion and Second Temple Judaism. This worldview included the belief in a deified vice-regent who ruled the gods at the behest of the high God. So transparent was this divine vice regency that Second Temple Jewish authors wrote of a deified second power in heaven. The rhetoric of Deuteronomy and Deutero-Isaiah that there are no other gods besides Yahweh fails as proof of the consensus view, since the same language is used in monolatrous pre-exilic texts and fails to account for the plethora of references to other gods in late Jewish writings. This dissertation calls the consensus view of the development of monotheism in Israel into question by demonstrating that belief in a divine council survived the exile. As a result, this dissertation posits that the survival of Israel’s pre-exilic divine council has greater explanatory

Chapter one Introduction to Study -
The discovery of the tablets of ancient Ugarit in 1929 and their subsequent translation marked a watershed in the study of the religious worldview of the Hebrew Bible. One of the most significant revelations produced by the comparative investigation of the religion of ancient Israel and Ugarit was that the Hebrew Bible contained tantalizing hints of a pantheon. The "divine assembly" or "divine council" soon became a focus of biblical scholars, beginning in 1939 with J. Morgenstern’s lengthy article on Psalm 82, likely the clearest biblical attestation to an Israelite divine assembly.1 During the 1940s and 1950s, prominent studies emerged examining the striking and unmistakable correspondences between the god of Israel and two of Ugarit's most important deities, El and Baal.2 The seminal work on the divine council as a motif throughout the Hebrew Bible, however, was a 1944 article by H. Wheeler Robinson.3 Robinson's early study was followed in the next two decades by detailed analyses of the council and its members by a number of scholars.4 The first book-length study of the divine council was published in 1980,5 and was followed by significant works detailing various XX aspects of the divine council throughout the extant literature of Canaan.6 Most recently, an important book by Mark S. Smith has brought scholarship on the divine council up to date.7 All the scholarship to date on the divine council has focused on Israel’s religion prior to the sixth century B.C.E., since it is commonly believed that after Israel emerged from exile, the idea of a pantheon of gods headed by Yahweh had been abandoned in favor of an intolerant monotheism. This dissertation challenges this consensus view of the development of monotheism in Israelite religion and Judaism by examining late canonical texts of the Hebrew Bible and non-canonical Second Temple period literature to discern whether or not the belief in a divine council that included other gods continued after the exile.8 This task also necessarily involves interaction with several broad issues addressed in the scholarly study of Israelite religion and Second Temple period Judaism and the related academic literature. The result encompasses a new orientation with respect to the texts and the issue of monotheism in Israel and the creation of new conceptual bridges connecting the religions of pre-exilic Canaan, Israel and Second Temple Judaism. Hence, this study suggests new perspectives on certain issues involving these areas and proposes an alternative paradigm for understanding their connections. Due to the sweeping religious questions and voluminous scholarly literature dealing with ancient religions of Canaan, Israel, and first century Judaism, boundaries must be placed on such a study. Since the religions of Canaan and pre-exilic Israel are foundational to what follows, the Second Temple period more conveniently lends itself to limitations for the sake of this study. For this reason the terminus ad quem of this study is Jewish literature prior to 70 C.E. This effectively excludes the New Testament, but the study lays the foundation for future inquiry into the presence and religious role of the divine council in the New Testament. The number of areas of New Testament study related to the divine council is extensive. An examination of the New Testament in light of the divine council paradigm proposed by this study would necessitate consideration
The books of the Apocrypha are (1) Esdras (alias Greek Book of *Ezra); (2) *Tobit; (3) *Judith; (4) additions to *Esther; (5) Wisdom of *Solomon; (6) Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Ben *Sira); (7) *Baruch, with the Epistle of Jeremiah; (8) The *Song of the Three Holy Children; (9) *Susanna; (10) *Bel and the Dragon; (11) The Prayer of *Manasseh; (12) i*Maccabees; (13) ii*Maccabees. Esdras is a compilation from ii Chronicles 35, 37, Book of Ezra, and Nehemiah 8–9, in an order differing from that of the traditional Bible text and with the addition of a popular story of a competition between youths, the most prominent of whom was Zerubbabel who waited upon Darius i. Tobit tells of a member of one of the ten tribes who was exiled to Assyria, where, because of his merit in burying Sennacherib's victims, he was cured of the blindness which had afflicted him for many years, and saw his son married to one of his kin. Judith tells of a woman of Samaria who ventured into the camp of the soldiers besieging her city, and decapitated their commander, Holofernes, after making him drunk. The Wisdom of Solomon discusses the fate of the righteous and the wicked, with examples from the early history of Israel. Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah – additions to the Book of Jeremiah – attack idol worship and are in the form of letters addressed by the putative authors to the exiles in Babylonia. Susanna and the Elders, an addition to the Book of Daniel, is the popular story of a righteous woman who successfully resists the enticements of the city elders and is saved by the youthful Daniel from the death which, on the strength of their slander, had been decreed against her. Bel and the Dragon, which in the Septuagint is another addition to Daniel, is an account of Daniel's ministrations to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and Darius the Mede, and of his success in demonstrating to them by various devices the futility of idol worship. The Prayer of Manasseh, an addition to ii Chronicles 34:18, is a prayer supposedly recited by King Manasseh while in exile. From the historical point of view, the most important book of the Apocrypha is i Maccabees, the historical account of the *Hasmoneans from the uprising of Mattathias to the death of *Simeon, the first of the Hasmoneans to establish the independence of Judea. ii Maccabees confines itself to the wars of *Judah the Maccabees
The Divine Council is the view that Yahweh; The God of Israel is the Master of a pantheon

Psalm 82 is a brief text, attributed to the psalmist Asaph that is rich with mythological imagery.  Exegetical studies of pre-critical scholarship interpreted the “gods” (elohim) of this passage as human judges. Modern post-critical scholars have undermined that previous interpretation based upon coterminous textual discoveries and linguistic advances.  There are few scholars presently that would interpret the “gods” of Psalm 82 as human judges. However, many if not most traditional interpreters take the pedantic, non-supernatural view that the “sons of God” of Psalm 82 are human beings. The implications of a post-critical, alternate translation have led to more confusion and more difficulty. Trying to understand who the “sons of God” and/or “gods” are as well as what their function and relevance are within the larger biblical corpus have conceived various interpretations. There are numerous differing opinions as to how this data should be interpreted and thought of theologically in light of such technical and linguistic advancements. This paper will argue that sound biblical theology is hermeneutically relevant and essential to interpreting the data. Evangelical theologians, therefore, need to engage this material and contemplate how and if the newer, more critical data attributes to or undermines traditional and Evangelical doctrines and views of Scripture.
The goal of this paper is to address the key syntactic and grammatical issues of Psalm 82 and discuss the text’s broader literary and historical contexts to consider those doctrinal implications. The thesis of this paper will propose that paralleling Psalm 82 with the ANE worldview of Israel and other ancient Near Eastern literature provides support for this passage’s relevance in biblical theology as they highlight the supernatural worldview of the biblical authors. After examination, the discoveries will shed a brighter light on the interpretation of other biblical texts as well. This paper will argue for the benefit of interpreting Scripture with a more robust supernatural worldview of the Bible and its original authors. Also, traditional Evangelical scholarship and theologians should teach the church to adopt a more supernatural worldview of Scripture than she has previously supposed. Interpreting this passage does not come without its difficulties as there are many different doctrinal implications to contemplate as well as some views that need to be changed. There are some pre-conceived views that have led to exegetical fallacies. This paper will interpret Psalm 82 by closely and critically engaging the correlating scholarship of this passage to contemplate its use for biblical theology as well as consider its relevant expression in the context of modern missions, ministry, and biblical hermeneutics. Three important areas of concern for the church that should go hand in hand together, but unfortunately rarely do. Each section will propose questions to consider as they arise and will present them at the closing of each section. There will be an attempt to properly answer each question as thorough as possible in the following sections and revisit some of the remaining questions that are not answered at conclusion. The words printed in English below (that are in bold) are the keywords that this paper will need to examine as they hold the formula for interpreting the whole passage.

Psalm 82
GOD has taken his place in the DIVINE COUNCIL;
in the MIDST OF THE GODS he holds judgment:
  “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I said, “You are GODS, sons of the MOST HIGH, all of you;
nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.”
Arise, O GOD, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!
O GOD, Do Not Keep Silence
A Song. A Psalm of Asaph.

Daniel 3:25 and 7:13 center around a Son of Man figure, and the events surrounding both verses induce hope in the reader that God will always come through.  Daniel looked forward to Israel's eschatological and soteriological hope in the Messiah, and his work reflects narrative and apocalyptic genre common among Old Testament prophets.

A number of texts from the scrolls found at Qumran demonstrate the community’s interest in communion with angels and heavenly ascent. This article lays out a pattern observable in some of the poetic/liturgical texts (e.g., the Hodayot and other non-canonical psalms) that involves the leader of the community being taken up into the divine council of God to be taught the heavenly mysteries, being appointed as a teacher of those mysteries, and then sharing the teachings with his followers. Upon learning the mysteries, the followers are enabled to likewise ascend to heaven to praise God with the angels. In some texts, the human worshippers appear to undergo a transfiguration so that they become like the heavenly beings. This article further illustrates how these diverse elements can be found together in a liturgical text known as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, suggesting that all were to be (or could be) part of a ritual sequence. Finally, the article argues that these same elements, or traditions related to them, can be found in passages from the Old Testament.

Tässä tekstissä perehdyn  בַּעֲדַת־אֵ֑ל [jumalien-kokoontuminen] tulkintamuotoihin, ja pääasiallisena lähteenä käytän Matitiahu Tsevatin [Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinati] tekstiä ”God And Gods in Assemply – An Interpretation of Psalm 82”.

Tämän lisäksi teksti ottaa itseensä myös omasta tutkimuksestani nousevaa materiaalia.

This article is an attempt to compare and contrast biblical divine council cosmology (Heiser, 2008) with Thai Buddhist cosmology. The Ramakien and the Three Worlds According to King Ruang are the primary cultural narratives of the Thai people. These narratives give us insight into the worldview of the Thai. By comparing the Thai worldview with the biblical worldview, we can see where they intersect and where they are in conflict. The goal of this article is to spark a dialogue for producing a Thai theological and apologetic perspective that takes seriously Thai cultural worldview understandings in light of divine council cosmology and develops new tools for reaching Thai culture with the Gospel.

This paper will examine Acts 15:16-21, 29; 21:25 and observe the evidence of variant readings therein. Out of all the literature written about problems with the text in the book of Acts, none is more extensive than that of the 'Apostolic Decree' that is found here in Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25.  This passage is important in that it gives the reader insight into Luke's thought, the problems raised with the early church in how to interpret and understand the Law, as well as the primitive church's situational condition in how they treated such disputes. The main problem on text critical research of the Decree has concentrated on which form fits the context best as well as attempting to discern the origin of the variant forms. This paper will go verse by verse starting from Acts 15:16 and discuss the text critical issues ending with verse 21. The verses of Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25 will also be compared and highlighted as to their different forms from Acts 15:20 as these texts have been one of the highlights in the history of text critical issues within the book of Acts.

In the Pauline discussion regarding the nature of the resurrection body in 1 Cor 15:35-49, he employs the metaphor of the sowing of the natural (or earthly) body and the raising of the spiritual (or heavenly) body. Both kinds of bodies differ in glory and are fit for different habitats. In order to demonstrate this, in 1 Cor 15:39-42 Paul enumerates a list of the creatures who inhabit the earth followed by those who inhabit the heavens, the resurrection body being likened to the later. Scholars have generally understood the background of this list to be found in the creatures from Genesis 1, even though they do not follow the same order (as recognized by Fitzmyer, Ciampa, Rosner, etc.). Other scholars have put forth reasons for this discrepancy by suggesting that the list evokes the cosmology of popular Greek philosophy (i.e. Martin). This paper seeks to propose an alternate answer to this problem. The list of earthly and heavenly creatures here in 1 Cor 15:39-42 follows the same order of creatures as enumerated in the aniconic discourse of Deut 4:15-19. If this is in fact the text Paul is alluding to, he is more than likely participating in an exegetical tradition in the Second Temple period which reads Deut 4:15-19 as part of a wider Deuteronomic scriptural matrix employed to describe the nature of the cosmos as constructed and administered by God, appointing the celestial bodies as the gods or angels in his cosmic polis as attested in Philo, Spec. Laws 1.13-19. Reading the present text within this scriptural matrix not only supplies a strong argument for this particular enumeration of creatures, but also provides a more robust reading of the passage in its wider context, connecting the language of the abolishing of the principalities and powers in 1 Cor 15:24 with the earlier discussion in 1 Cor 6:2-3 regarding the judgment of the cosmos and the angels.

The post-Renaissance era has spawned many good, and less good, philosophical approaches and studies but wreaked havoc in more sharply critical Analysis of the Sacred Scriptures and extra-Biblical approaches to Christ, His Teachings and Ethics. Karl Barth tried to make an  180 degree adjustment to approaches to the Word. These articles attempt to more fully add to the 180 degrees.