The last two briefer chapters of the book deal with special topics, and then erroneous ideas about angels that Michael has encountered along the way. Some of this material is helpful as well. One interesting point is that Heiser pp. 147-52 urges us to realize that reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth, as indicated in Colossians 1.19-20 is not about the redemption of fallen angels. I agree. The reconciliation language doesn’t have to do with the forgiveness of sins, it has to do with the restoration of the proper order of all of creation and its creatures. Creation, for example did not sin. Redemption has as its target human beings. The Bible is about the salvation of ‘the world’ of humankind, not about the redemption of angels. For one thing, they don’t need the gift of everlasting life. They were already immortal, though God could causes them to cease to exist. For another, all of the discussion of punishing of fallen angels in 1 Pet. 3, 2 Pet. 2, and Jude is about their demise, their punishment. “The point is straightforward: the plan of salvation is focused on human beings because human beings were the original object of eternal life in God’s presence on earth. Angels were not the focus because the fall disrupted an earthly enterprise. God’s human imagers were corrupted, left estranged from God– left unfit to live in God’s presence. In the end it will be human beings who will share authority with Christ in ruling the new earth, not angels.” (p. 153). Indeed as Paul says believers will even judge angels in the Kingdom.

Heiser discussion of what Paul means by speaking in the tongues of angels in 1 Cor. 13.1 is interesting but insufficient. It’s not likely to be merely hypothetical in view of 1 Cor. 14, and clearly 13.1 distinguishes between the tongues of angels and the tongues of human beings. This is not a reference to the phenomenon at Acts 2 where disciples suddenly gained an ability to speak in foreign human languages– a miracle my Greek students regularly pray for. More relevant is Ascen. of Isaiah 6-11, since this is a Christian document, which rather clearly provides instances of non-human angelic languages. A prophet is said to gain the ability to speak like them and to read books written in their language. (see p. 161).

Michael goes on to remind that, like humans, angels are fallible. Also humans do not become angels when they die, that 2 Cor. 11.14 reminds us angels can take on human form, and Satan can even disguise himself as one of the good bright angels.

There is much to be appreciated in this brief book, and as you can see, it has certainly teased my mind into active thought in good ways, even when I disagree with some of Michael’s conclusions. We will hope he goes on to the Devil and Demons in his next book. It should be must reading.

The measure of a good book is not whether it confirms and informs what one already suspected or believed. No, the measure of a good book is one that makes you think hard about those previous ideas and beliefs, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes critiquing what one has thought. Angels is such a book.

Because the NT has less to say about angels than the OT and intertestamental Jewish literature, Heiser’s treatment of the subject is briefer (pp. 116-62), and if I were to have a general criticism of these two chapters, it would be that the NT resources, specifically commentaries, he refers to are in various cases dated. Still, there is much interesting and good discussion here as elsewhere in this book.

One of the initial points Michael makes on p. 116 is that the plural term theoi only occurs eight times in the NT, unlike the proliferation of the term elohim in the OT. But there is a text like 1 Cor. 8.1-6 where Paul talks about gods and lords many, to refer to pagan deities. Paul is following the LXX of Deut. 32.17 here in going on to call them ‘demons’ (or daimons— 1 Cor. 10.21-22). This is the sole use of the term demon by Paul in his letters. The use of the term demons in the Synoptics refers to disembodied evil spirits (see p. 118).

One of the most helpful remarks by Heiser (p. 119) is that Paul mostly uses terms for ranks of angels describing geographical rulership, drawing on Deut. 32 and Ps. 82. So the term archons (rulers), principalities, powers, authorities, dominions, thrones, refer to roles angels play in relationship to human beings and their kingdoms. This is simply more of the notion that angels are assigned governance or watching of nations, with Michael being assigned to Israel itself.

As Heiser goes on to stress ‘angellos’ is a catchall term for supernatural agents of God. Only 4 of 175 uses of this term in the NT refer to fallen angels. (p. 120). Heiser conjectures that in Rev. 1 we may have the only NT instance where ‘THE angel of the Lord’ of Ot fame is mentioned, and he further suggests that if that is correct, then we have one instance where Christ is identified as the angel of the Lord. This view is probably incorrect. In Rev. 1.1ff. the message of God is conveyed to Christ, who in turn, gives it to an angel to deliver to John on Patmos, in view of what follows, about the seven stars=seven angels in the hands of the Son of Man, where the exact same language about angels is used, it should be clear that the author is distinguishing Christ from the angels while identifying him with the Son of Man etc. So in fact, there is no reference in the NT to Christ being the angel of the Lord, and much reason to distinguish the two. The book of Hebrews is quite clear in distinguishing Christ from any and all angels, and further, doesn’t encourage seeing the ones who dined with Abraham as anything other than angels (Heb. 13.2–certainly not the Trinity).

Michael spends considerable time on 1 Cor. 11 and the headcoverings story, favoring the notion that the headcoverings have to do with protecting women from peeping Tom or lusting angels ala Gen. 6.1-4. But of this Paul says nothing. He says the headcovering is meant to cover up human glory (a woman’s hair) so only God’s glory will be evident in worship, and he says its a sign of authorization of women to speak. (pp. 126-27). In short, I’m not buying this theory based on the work of Loren Stuckenbruck.

More helpful is the list of passages from early Judaism where angels rightly refuse worship (Tob. 12.16-22; Apoc. of Zephaniah 6.11-15; Ascen. of Isaiah 7.2, 7.18-23, 8.1-10,15; 3 En. 1.7 etc.) p. 129. What this should tell us is both early Jews and early Jewish Christians quite rightly wanted to distinguish angels from God, angels not being an appropriate object of worship. This trend should make all the more clear that Dan. 7 which refers to the worship of the Son of Man is not an attempt to portray bar enosh as like Metatron ala the two powers in heaven idea.

One of the very most helpful parts of Michael Heiser’s recent book is his charts on the use of language applied to angels. See pp. 76-81. This is excellent summarizing of the Hebrew terminology. One of the things one learns along the way of course, is that the NT writers relied much more heavily on the Greek OT (LXX and Old Greek) than on the Hebrew for their discussions of angels. As Heiser rightly notes: “NT writers quote the OT in places where the Masoretic Text and the LXX are in agreement with each other about 20 percent of the time. Of the eighty percent where some disagreement between MT and LXX is evident, the NT reading agrees with the MT less than five percent of the time.” (p. 75 n. 5). Right, and this raises a variety of questions of how we should parse the language about angels in the OT, when the NT writers are largely NOT following the Hebrew text. Here is not the place to open up the can of worms as to which OT text Christians should follow— the Hebrew text or the LXX (which the Greek Orthodox insist on), but I will say this. If you are a student of the formation of the canon, you know that NONE of the early codexes combined the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT— none of them. Not Codex Sinaiticus, not Codex Alexandrinus. What they did do is combine the LXX or some Greek form of the OT with the Greek NT. One more thing. It is telling that early Jews simply abandoned the use of the LXX in general somewhere in the 2nd and 3rd centuries because the church adopted it as its own. And that in turn points to another thing that Heiser mentions— there is much less variation in the language used of angels in the NT than in the OT. For instance, notice that the phrase ‘sons of God’ is not used to refer to the persons who mated with the daughters of human beings (Gen. 6.1-4) in either 1 Pet. 3, or 2 Pet. 2 or Jude. Rather spirits in prison or angels are what they are called. Why? Because the term sons of God are applied to human beings in the NT who are followers of Christ. They are adopted sons and daughters of God. This is all the more surprising because, as Heiser demonstrates, early Jewish texts tend to go angel crazy! Heiser can even rightly say there was an obsession with angels in such texts (p. 85). Compared to the Dead Sea scrolls and other such texts, angels show up less frequently in the NT, though there are numerous references to them, especially of course in Revelation. But you are hard pressed to find Paul spending much time talking about them, and they make only cameo appearances in Acts. They are not mentioned at all in a variety of NT books.

Our next port of call is Ps. 104.4, where we hear of ‘ruah’ in the plural (‘spirits’– probably not to be translated winds here) and also ‘malakim’– messengers, plural. The later speaks more to a major function of these beings, the former to their very nature. Here these angels are also called God’s ministers. Ps. 103 is rightly compared to Ps. 104 on these scores (pp. 5-7).

While the word ‘samayim’, which occurs over 400 times in the OT regularly refers to the sky in the OT, the ‘heavens’ visible from earth, there are places where it refers to heavenly beings. For example, Ps. 89.5-7 refers to the divine council of the holy ones as well as exhorting them as the heavenly ones to praise God’s wonders. Praising God is one of the main roles of the heavenly beings (see e.g. Rev. 4). Job 15.15 is rightly pointed to by Heiser as another place where samayim means heavenly hosts, not the heavens in general. But the best example is Deut. 32.43 where the term elohim is found in parallel with samayim. Not incidentally, I agree with Heiser that we need to stop translating elohim as gods when it is not being applied to Yahweh himself, as that simply confuses the issues. Spiritual beings would be better. I agree with Heiser that various readings of the OT have muddied the waters by trying to find an evolutionary spiral from polytheism to henotheism (Yahweh is the ‘most high God’) to monotheism in the OT. I think Heiser is right to warn against this sort of reading of the OT. In fact it is more monotheistic early, middle, and late than some scholars realize, and care has to be taken in how one renders elohim. For example, in Psalm 8 we humans are said to be a little less than the elohim, and this probably means angels— spirit beings here. It probably doesn’t mean gods or the God.

Another of the more fascinating terms applied to angels in the OT is the ‘star’ language. For example in Job 38.5-7 we have another example of Hebrew poetic parallelism where we hear of the morning stars singing together followed by a line about the sons of God (the highest category of angels?) shouting for joy. Of course, this raises questions because we know at least some of the ancients thought the stars in our sky were living beings, were actually the heavenly hosts. For example, when we hear in Mt.2 about the Magi being led by a ‘star’ that simply parks itself over the manger where Jesus lies in Bethlehem, it’s reasonable to conclude this is a reference to an angel, not an actual comet, or wandering planet etc. But this raises a further question. It’s one thing to call actual angels ‘stars’ its another to believe stars are actually angels. It would be difficult for modern persons aware of the real nature of such celestial objects to agree with the notion that they are living beings, when in fact not only are they NOT living beings, they don’t appear to even have any beings living on them so far as we can tell thus far.

Angels are also called ‘holy ones’ in part due to their proximity to the Holy One, but it also refers to their character. But that character can be tainted or marred, just as is true with human beings. In his discussion of ‘elohim’ Michael is right that in a text like Ps. 82.1-6 the reference is not to human beings being the sons of God in question. He is also right to stress that elohim here must have a plural meaning. The term means divine beings, not gods here. I quote Heiser p. 11 “Many scholars use these passages to argue that biblical writers at one point in Israelite history were polytheists. This thinking is misguided and rooted in the mistaken notion of what the world ‘elohim’ means. We tend to presume that the biblical writers thought about elohim in the same way we think about capitalized G-O-D. When we see the word ‘God’ we instinctively assign a unique set of attributes (e.g. omnipresence, omnipotence, sovereighty) to the letters G-O-D. But this presumption is incorrect and leads our thinking astray when we encounter instances where elohim is intended to describe a group of beings instead of the lone God of the Bible.” As he goes on to show, while elohim is used thousands of times of Yahweh in the OT it can also be used of deceased human beings (1 Sam. 28.13) territorial spirits (‘demons’?– Deut. 32.17), gods of the surrounding nations (Judg. 11.24; 1 Kngs. 11.33), and of spiritual beings in general judged by Yahweh (Ps. 82.1-6). Elohim in texts where the grammar requires a plural meaning does not refer to what we mean by the word God. It means other spiritual beings. For example, in Qumran Heiser points to 180 cases where elohim refer to the heavenly host in the divine council (p. 13).

In his discussion of ranks and status of angels, one of the clearest signs of hierarchy is the use of the term prince (sar) or princes which refers to ‘the sons of God’ in Deut. 32.8-9, who are assigned the task of overseeing and judging the nations. The use of the term prince is one of the clues that the Hebrew writer is adopting and adapting the language of the divine council used in the ANE. We learn further that angels are worshippers, advisees in the divine council, watchers of earthly events, guardians and judges of nations as well as messengers. They are not just God’s FedEx boys. Indeed, there is even evidence of a celestial army of angels fighting for God’s causes. In our next post we need to address who and what is the ‘malak Yahweh’ the so-called angel of the Lord.

The bulk, and real strength of this book is its review of all the main passages about angels in the OT and NT. This transpires between pp. 1-162 with copious notes. Disclaimer alert! This book does not discuss the Devil or demonology, it sticks with the good angels. I suspect his next book will be dealing with the Nefarious One and his minions. For now, I recommend reading Graham Twelftree on demons as they occur in the NT.

Here we must begin to deal with the big chapter on angels in the OT. I agree with Michael that there seems to be some hierarchial ranking of angels— archangels being above regular angels for example. And I like his taxonomy explaining that there is terminology that relates to the nature of these beings, the rank or status of these beings, and also the function of these beings. This is a helpful distinction. Firstly, Michael is right that these are all spirit beings, and so, do not by nature have a body, though they can assume a visible form when they are interacting with humans (we can discuss later whether this just means they ‘appear’ to have bodies, or actually temporarily do so). So one of the terms to describe these beings is ‘ruah’– spirits, but the term of course also means wind or even breath, like the Greek word pneuma.

I’m going to focus here briefly on the surprising use of 1 Kngs. 22.19-23 to make some points about this on pp. 3ff. I say surprising because it seems to reflect a lack of understanding of the concept of progressive revelation. What I mean by this is that on face value, this text says that God is fine with and endorses angels lying to achieve the end of deceiving a wicked ruler. Here’s the problem with this— when one compares later versions of these stories in Chronicles with these earlier versions in Samuel and Kings, what is predicated of God in these earlier texts is predicated of Satan in the later ones! This is because Samuel and Kings were written at a time before the writers had a good or clear sense of secondary causes— like the Devil. In fact, this is one of the reasons we should not see these texts as exilic or post-exilic in character. I don’t really think we want to suggest that God (including his Son who said he was THE TRUTH) is just fine with sending lying spirits to deceive wicked humans. I doubt this is true, or would be true to God’s character, and in fact later texts like Chronicles make clear we need to have a better understanding of secondary causes, both angelic and human before we make God the instigator of, or complicit in lies— this would be Satan’s role. He’s the Father of lies. Remember the reminder of Jesus’ brother James— God tempts no one, and he himself cannot be tempted to do wicked things by angels or anyone else (see James 1). Again, primitive OT texts must be read in the light of later, fuller, and clearer revelation— a sense of progressive revelation is important to getting biblical theology right.

The recent re-publication of Richard Watson’s Institutes (kudos to Lexham Press) brings to light important systematic reflections on Wesleyan theology, not the least on the very real problem of Christians committing apostasy. Watson has some very choice things to say on this problem, and the following is some excerpts from Vol. II of his work pp. 366-78. In the first place, Watson stresses that if one affirms particular atonement (i.e. the notion that Christ only died for the elect, who were predetermined by God) then in fact Christ did not die for the people referred to in Hebrews 6, for on the showing of Calvinism, these people were never really Christians in the first place. Watson points out that what the author of Hebrews says in Heb. 6.4-8 must be compared to what is said in Heb. 10.26-31. Watson first points out that the Letter to the Hebrews is clearly written to those the author believes are currently followers of Christ, but are in some danger of committing apostasy. Hebrews is written to warn against this outcome. “But…if Calvinism be the doctrine of the New Testament, that they never could so fall away, and so perish, this was no warning at all to them. To suppose he held out that as a terror, which he (the author) knew to be impossible, and had taught them also to be impossible, is the first absurdity… It will not be denied that he speaks of these wretched apostates as deterring examples to the true believers among the Hebrews; but as such apostates never were believers and were not even rendered capable by the grace of God, of becoming such, they could not be admonitory examples.” (p. 366). The point is on the showing of Calvinism those who could never be Christians could hardly be warnings to those who could never be otherwise, since they couldn’t commit apostasy.

A second telling point Watson makes is that the author of Hebrews speaks of these apostates as being in a condition such they could not be ‘renewed again unto repentance. Watson rightly stresses the word ‘again’, which clearly alludes to the fact that they had once repented, had once tasted of the heavenly gift, had once had the Holy Spirit and so on…. but not any more. ‘Again’ alludes to a previous condition that could not be repeated. A third point of Watson is that the author of Hebrews says that these formerly repentant ones had then a ‘sacrifice for their sins’ namely Christ’s death. But this then means that Christ had indeed died for them, not just for those currently believers when the author wrote. “Theirs was once a hopeful case, because they had repented and because there was then a sacrifice for [their] sins” (p. 367).

Watson then goes on to demonstrate how the language of being enlightened, of having tasted of the heavenly gift (just as Christ tasted of death using the same language elsewhere in Hebrews— which hardly means he had a passing or slight experience of it) clearly refers to a Christian condition. Indeed, it would be hard to find a better description of the Christian condition than that found in Heb.6 which the author says could be rebelled against, abandoned, rejected by those once saved.

Watson also makes clear that apostasy is a conscious willful act. The author is not arguing that someone could accidentally lose one’s salvation like one might lose one’s car keys. No… apostasy is about making shipwreck of a faith one once had (to use Paul’s language), it is about a deliberate wrenching oneself free from the embrace of Christ, a crucifying of Christ afresh in effect. It is about quenching the work of the Spirit, grieving the Spirit in one’s life. Much more can be said along these lines, but I will let you read Watson for yourself. And happily, you can find his two volume work on Amazon as a Kindle item for less than $10. Hallelujah.

Something new on this visit was we stopped at the pottery workshop where they make beautiful vases, plates and other things with images from Madaba, including of course the Madaba map. For example here is an etched vase (not really mosaics pasted on a vase),

Or alternatively, you can get a mosaic representation of the Madaba map….

There is a nice demonstration of how they do this detailed work….. I’ll let you guess what that last object does in the making of these vases and mosaics.

Jerash is yet another of the cities of the Greek Decapolis. The Biblical name is Gerasa, and it appears it was in the territory of Gerasa that Jesus ran into a demoniac with a Legion of demons. There is some textual uncertainty involved as the Greek may have originally read Gadarene demoniac (as in the city of Gadara near the south end of the Sea of Galilee). In any, Jerash is a major site of the Biblical period well worth seeing, for it gives a better picture of what ancient city would have looked like, than one can find almost anywhere else in the region (Scythopolis/ Beth Shan is a possible exception). Here is first the inner gate right next to the Roman forum, and then the later ancient Hadrianic ceremonial gate at the entrance to the city near the Hippodrome…. Here’s the hippodrome on the edge of the city….. Those are the starting gates….

The forum is simply enormous, you can’t get it all in one shot, unless you are flying overhead!

The Hippodomos plan of ancient Greek cities involved two main streets which intersected at right angles in the center of the city. Jerash is an excellent illustration of this street plan, and very different from some Roman towns like Rome itself.

Just the width of the streets and the endless rows of columns and colonnades tell you how important this city was in ancient times…..

There were all sorts of shops, and of course temples in the city as well.

Here is one of the major temples in the city…. And there were statues in numerous places of people and even animals…

Nymphaeums and other sorts of water fountains can be found all over the city….

Notice the difference between the last two slides… the shell is from the Greek period, the combination of shell and winged dove comes from the Byzantine period. This city became a Christian town in the Byzantine period, and there are the remains of a church, near fountain court….

Here’s the entrance to the Byzantine basilica….

There are a few items of interest in the small museum next to the archaeological site, for instance this Nabatean statue…..
Here’s a tiny votive altar…. and an honorific column….

Bethlehem is sadly today a city surrounded by a wall erected by the Israelis. One of my favorite places to go in the city is to the Three Arches olive wood shop, run by Palestinian Christians (with another shop in San Diego, of all places). They give a nice demonstration of how the nativity scenes are made and the carvings done… The finished products are works of art. Here we have a recreation of first century Jerusalem in olive wood!

Here is the last supper…..

I especially like this recreation of the procession of the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem….

All kinds of interesting things can be found near the Church of the Nativity, besides olive wood shops, for example, the Pope mobile, which he road when he visited Bethlehem.. which not surprisingly is parked right next to a gelato shop!
And then there is the store selling King Herod’s wine….. One wonders if this was the wine that got Herod Antipas to make rash promises, and led to the beheading of John the Baptizer!