Many readers will be aware that one of the important elements of my work on the divine council and the biblical supernatural worldview is the notion that the New Testament doctrine of a Trinitarian Godhead derives from the Old Testament. (In case you're presuming I'm...
Deuteronomy
Whittling Away at the Dead
As some of you, no doubt, I've had time to go through the PDF file of the occurrences of (Hebrew) met and metim ("the dead"). You no doubt noticed that the overwhelming majority of these instances are pretty straightforward and refer to dead human beings--victims of...
Ancient Origins Writer Inserts Asherah into the Biblical Text
I received an email today asking this question: "Mike - is this a good rendition? I read where an early rendition of Deuteronomy 33.2-3, when Asherah’s influence had not yet been fully subordinated reads: 'YHWH came from Sinai and shone forth.... at his right hand his...
The Function of the Divine Council in Heavenly Worship: Piety, not Mysticism Part 3
[This is Part 3 of Stephen Huebscher's series on the divine council and heavenly worship. See Part 1 and Part 2. -- MSH] We now move on to the second group of texts relating to our topic, the OT biblical texts. Over the next several posts, we are will look at nine...
Naked Bible 35: Acts 1:1-11
Acts 1:1-11 Most Bible students would say this passage is about the ascension of Jesus to heaven. For sure that’s described, but the passage directs our attention to several points of biblical theology that are simultaneously tied to the OT and look forward to the...
Israelite Kingship: Good or Bad in the Eyes of God?
When God tells Samuel, Israel's judge, to anoint a king for Israel according to their demands with the words "they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them" (1 Sam 8:7), many Bible readers and students assume that the institution of...
Mike’s Divine Council Book First Draft Now Completed
Many of you know that I've been working (puttering is more accurate) on a book for non-specialists (i.e., lay people and pastors, not the academy) on what I refer to as the divine council worldview of the Bible. It's entitled The Myth That Is True. I've been at it for...
Discerning the Dead, Part 2
Here is the short list of passages (from the last post) we need to consider: Deut 18:11; Deut. 26:14; Deut 28:62; Psa 88:5; Psa 88:10; Psa 106:28; Psa 115:17; Eccl 9:3; Eccl 9:5; Isaiah 8:19; Isaiah 26:14; Isaiah 26:19 Continuing on in our efforts to parse the dead...
The Law of Moses: Does It Read Like Moses Wrote It? Part 2
In my last post on the Mosaic authorship issue, my goal was to produce data from the text that explains why the idea that Moses may not have written all or even most of the Pentateuch could be coherent. I haven't laid out my thoughts on Mosaic authorship yet; I'm just...
Why Use the Septuagint?
I found this on the Logos blog today. It's something I wrote for the Logos blog in 2007, and I don't think I ever posted it here. Forgot I even wrote it (I'm doing some LXX thinking today at work so I found it via Google!). Here's the short article -- it addresses...
Thoughts on Signs and Wonders: Part 1: Deuteronomy 13:1-5
A short time ago I blogged about my ministry going forward and mentioned Deuteronomy 13. More specifically, I wrote about how, due to the nature of what I often write about (the supernatural worldview of the Bible), there was potential for my work to be cherry-picked...