Does Enoch Have Anything To Teach Us: With Dr. Michael Heiser

hey everyone welcome to the wonderful world of remnant radio my name is joshua lewis and today we are talking about the book of enoch with dr michael heiser who's on the other line with us before we introduce him uh and his ministry i want to let you know a little bit about who we are and what we do here on the channel we're a theology broadcast we interview pastors teachers theologians historians and the whole goal is to study theology outside of our echo chamber and learn from christian brothers and sisters that are within the orthodox christian faith but maybe from a different denominational stream than you are familiar with if you're interested in something like that make sure to subscribe to the channel as we're coming out with content just like this uh michael is on a writing sabbatical but since we've been honored to be with dr heiser uh michael decided to come off of sabbatical from today and and and i guess what skype in from the ranch michael how you doing over there yes i am skyping in from a cabin in the hill country of texas and i've been on my riding retreat writing a book about the book of revelation it has been crazy exciting and crazy hard hardest thing i've ever done probably in terms of just professional uh stuff but uh anyway man it's uh it's been really rewarding uh working through it i have five weeks off so i have uh in total so that puts me at two weeks remaining a little bit less than and when i heard that dr heiser was gonna be on the show i just thought i would skype in because i didn't want to miss this one and uh and as it turns out dr heiser uh the book of enoch informs the book of revelation uh in a number of places so it'll be quite relevant but we're really excited to have you on the show uh dr heiser i want to give you just a moment to introduce yourself for those who don't know you but before you do i also just want to invite you guys if you've benefited from our ministry in any way i'd love for you to consider donating on patreon you can give as little as five dollars a month and help support the ministry that we're doing and we also put out videos and and so we we we try to show a little love to our patreon community um also one more thing is uh tomorrow we have francis chan on the show and we're just uh we're just gonna really connect with francis because he's been doing some interesting things and meeting with the pope and eastern orthodox and talking differently about communion and then he's got his reformed community over here and he's got mega church that he left and missions work and all kinds of crazy stuff and and really the central question is what's going on francis we're just going to talk and just kind of figure that out so anyway but i don't want to waste any more time i want to talk uh to you dr heiser so uh dr heiser could you just uh introduce us to yourself and your ministry yeah um i'm currently the executive director of the awakening school of theology in jacksonville florida which is brand new it's less than two years old you know the short version of that is i left logos bible software i was there for 14 years and before that i taught at a variety of places i taught online the whole time i was at logos and and i taught it to two universities uh in you know in the area as well so you know who i am i'm a professor i wrote lots of reference content for logos i was one of the founders of mobile ed you know some people might be familiar with that wrote a lot for their magazine um you know that's sort of what i did but i came down to jacksonville because uh there was this church network down here wanted to create a school that for the first year focused on my content we spent 30 weeks going through unseen realm which is probably you know the thing that i'm most known for uh it's you know sold a ton and then the second year is kind of like anything i care about which was nice i mean that's a nice deal you know first year just just teach stuff yeah and so second year which we're into now i i refer to as post-modern apologetics so it's all the stuff you sort of find on the internet and some of what some of which has intersection with you know academic discussion academic issues about the old and new testament one semester one semester new but it can be anything from hey everything in genesis comes from babylonian texts to you know in the new testament you know the synoptic problem all the way over to the zeitgeist nonsense that jesus is just a christian version of dying and rising mediterranean gods so you know just stuff that people run into with some regularity and you know honestly don't know what to do with it because you know militant atheism peddles this you know the the people in what i affectionately call middle earth which is the internet community they they peddle this ancient aliens weird stuff on the history channel and you know it it's rare that a week goes by that i don't get some email you know basically somebody struggling with with their faith because of something stupid they heard on you know in one of these venues or read you know on facebook and you know rather than just say dude if you want to if you want a reason to leave the faith i can do better than this for you you know and just say why would this trouble you at all you know like i can think of just better reasons like personal pain or whatever but instead of doing something like that which doesn't have a whole lot of value [Laughter] you know it's like okay why don't we just go through these sorts of topics some of them bizarre some of them are kind of normal for people who do apologetics and just help people learn how to think about primary sources about framing questions about what questions to ask about evaluating things you're asked to believe you know penetrating past the heated exchange of the internet and trying to really have a conversation and how that exposes what the claim is and really it's basis or lack thereof so that you can actually do something useful in that conversation so that's what we're doing uh two years you know we have a certificate program we're not pursuing any accreditation or anything like that that was a condition of mine by the way in other words to please don't throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into the toilet and hit the flush you know that because that's that's basically what that is you know i'd rather have something geared to the local church and the lay community because there's more of them than there are people in the guild and they really matter so that's that's what i try to do i try to take scholarship and make it accessible to the normal person and give them some payoff you know the people who already know that they aren't they sense that they're not getting the content that they should there must be more of the bible than what i'm getting that's the sweet spot for me that you know i love to tell people your intuition is correct it's correct you're that thing that's just nagging you you're right and so you know we want to challenge you with content and help you again to be a good thinker when it comes to scripture that's great where do people uh follow you on that like if they wanted to learn more about your school how would they follow up with that yeah the the home page is is drmsh.com the school's uh url is just schooloftheology.com uh registration is is not yet open for let's see i get my semester calendar stuff up in my head here for what would be next fall it's not open yet it'll open during the summer but we have about a thousand students uh all overwhelmingly online i only have you know 40 or so in in the physical class so it's mostly online but it'll open in the summer and so you know yeah you can go up there now and just check out what we do and find out all the details but that's where you do that the i have a podcast nakedbiblepodcast.com so that's again something that has gotten a good deal of traffic that people find out about me through the podcast and of course all the books are on amazon but drmsth.com will pretty much get you anywhere uh great where i'm from doing something cool well let's let's uh let's dive into the subject matter for today's show can you just introduce us to the book of enoch what is the book of enoch and we're talking about first enoch introduce it to our audience uh what is it why is it important and why is it worth christians having a discussion about a book that's not listed in our canon yeah well i'm glad you you referred to it as first enoch because that's a good thing to know there are several enochs one two three enoch first enoch is the only one that really uh securely for the most part predates the christian era so this is a book that comes from what we you know what academia would call second temple judaism the period in between the old testament and new testament so it's also known as the inter-testamental period and it's important because you know your listeners might want to sit down because this is going to be really profound when i say this if you're driving pull over on the side of the road i'm allowed to rock your world here it's important because new testament read books they really did they read books the people in their community jews looked at the hebrew bible as the inspired word of god and so they wrote lots of stuff about it asking questions about how do we what do we do with all these data points how do we connect the dots what does it mean and so a lot of people are writing stuff and the book of enoch is one of these things and so this material broadly speaking second temple jewish literature leaks its way into the new testament in a number of ways enoch is probably the most prominent because it got the most discussion in the early church now i don't think firsteen knock belongs in the canon i don't look at it as inspired or canonical but again another another pro tip books don't have to be canonical to be important right we ought to read the things the material that biblical writers read because if we do we will be able to understand a little bit more of why they dip into that content what's their goal what what are they using it to do how are they using it to communicate in other words we just become more literate readers of our bible you know but enoch gets most attention because there were some in the early church that thought it should be in you know in the canon there's only really one jewish sect that ever thought that we can talk about why most didn't you know include it but you know that that's that's that's the context bro it get it you know it gets talked about so often you know uh-huh okay yeah well let's talk about that why wasn't it included in the canon why didn't the jews view it as something that was canonical why did a few christians but most christians not can you just kind of speak to that story yeah the the general reason why it was not considered canonical is that the jewish community had the this notion that for something to be sacred literature it not only has to be tied to a prophetic a historical prophetic figure from the biblical period but also it needs to be witnessed in hebrew okay as far as we know we have the book of enoch did not originate in hebrew there are no hebrew fragments of the book at all there are some aramaic fragments in that we were found among the dead sea scrolls and that's noteworthy because the one community that gave enoch an elevated status was the sect that lived at qumran you know most people think they're disney so we can you know we can just call them the scenes for the sake of the discussion but they they quote uh enoch along with something else that of their own origin the temple scroll they quote those two things in the same manner that they quote old testament books they quote scripture they have the same formulaic expressions and they also wrote commentaries on all the biblical books plus enoch and the temple scroll so that tells scholars that these two books had a special elevated status at the same level but that was unique in judaism most of the jewish community is like no we're not buying it show it show it to us in hebrew and then we'll think about it you know in the early church that that doesn't really apply because the early church is composed you know so so much of gentiles you know we have the new testament written in greek this is the hellenistic period you know under the greco-roman period and so they the early church doesn't have this sense of hey it needs to be in hebrew which of course they don't because nobody could read it i mean you can count the number of church fathers that could read hebrew literally on one hand so that just flies out the window and so they just naturally look at it differently they look at you know the content and they can see how the content mirrors you know certain things in the new testament they have respect for the you know for the jewish community that did consider it important even if it's not canonical so you know it leaks into the into the discussion of the canon with a few you know early church fathers but at the end of the day even its defenders reached the point where they would you know they they actually said stuff like this that hey you know i i'm the only one still alive here sitting around that thinks this book ought to be in but it looks like the holy spirit has moved to the mass of the church the mass of the believing community and so i'm good with that yeah it's not going to worry about it yeah i guess i was wrong you know and so they just assumed that the spirit would would show them what to recognize as canonical it's kind of a nice thought that they could just let it drop you know sort of be obedient you know to to again the you know the leadings of providence and we have you know today we have a very similar view of the canon you know it's about recognition we assume that the spirit would you know would help people get it right and they did too but you know that's why it gets more play you know it's just it hits closer to home because there are so a few early church fathers yeah so uh in in talking about the early church fathers we've got like irenaeus and tortulion and like one or two others that are like real prominent that if i said their names that that our audience would be like okay i've heard of those names before um but then like you said there's this vast majority of of scholarship that says hey this is not um of the canon of scripture and they might even hold it as a as an important book of history uh and uh and uh explaining some philosophical views of some of the jewish people at that time um but they wouldn't hold it as canon why was it rejected by them as canon um the the majority and not those minority that we mentioned before i mean after after the first few centuries you know the the enthusiasm for it dies out just because of the numbers you know that again people willing to let the the mass of the of the leadership and the believing community again assuming they're guided by the holy spirit and just letting it go but i think there's another factor here um you know you're right that you know i could i could show you you know articles there's a wonderful article by a guy named schultz whose last name is schultz on irenaeus's view of sin and it's enochian through and through you know he quotes enoch in it you know this is you know he has the the sin of the watchers in there it's not just the fall we've got more than one rebellion going on it's just you know it's classic yanaki and stuff but you know he's not going to live forever and so even though people might have thought those thoughts and they're going to read somebody like irenaeus who is tracing the idea from enoch into the new testament that that's what's going to give the idea the ideas the weight but the book you know that irenaeus is using for this you know is is not going to be so much of a factor it's rather the ideas that are important but the the opposite side of that coin is really uh augustine you know augustine part of his early story he belonged to the sect of the maniches which he eventually parted ways with and really had some significant theological disagreements and the manic keys revered the book of enoch so i think you know augustine had a little bit of an axe to grind there too you know it because of his stature you know that that carries weight you know in the believing community so just it just fell out of disuse you know and as time goes on there's less and less of a concern for hey are we reading our new testament in in light of what jews in the inter-testamental period after all this is their bible it moves like that to what do the church councils say you know it moves to medieval people you know and i don't that's not to say it's there's anything sinister there it's just the the later stuff the stuff that's divorced from the closer context becomes prominent because people have to write you know the leadership of the church has to write and address specific questions in their own day and and they become the focus points of theological discussion it's it's not this other now it's this and so it's kind of a normal process and a normal transition but you know we're more sensitive today just generally as academics to reading scripture in its original context which is not the church fathers it's not the medieval you know roman catholic writers or whatever you know it's nothing post biblical we're more sensitive to that today because we have access to so much of the material yeah and they didn't you know and so we we naturally gravitate toward primary sources and so that gets a lot of the focus of attention if you're in a grad program in biblical studies you're taught to do what you do in primary texts and you know hopefully people going through that don't develop a complete disregard for the church fathers or philosophical theology because it's all important they're they're they're just they're taking the what here's what should happen and i think you know a lot of cases does but in some cases obviously doesn't you know systematic theologians philosophical theologians historical theologians these kinds of scholars should be taking the nuggets of scripture they should they should be benefiting from the exegesis of the nuts and bolts greek and hebrew guys and then understanding text in its own con and then moving out to here here's the data pool we have this question now that isn't specifically addressed so how do we use those data points to address these things like ai okay you know obviously there's no verse that talks about ai you know in the bible but it's a significant issue so we need those kinds of of thinkers to take the data and think think creatively about it in relation to specific questions that are just going to come up in the progress of history you know life goes on you you have to have those people who can think outside the box and apply hopefully you know the work of exegesis that others do to what you know you can't you can't do everything you know you this is supposed to be a team effort here yeah uh dr heiser earlier you you used the word innakian and i'm i i would guess that probably most of our audience has not personally read the book of enoch uh from front to start to finish and so just help us understand like give us an overview what is the book of enoch about yeah enoch is an apocalypse okay and think of the book of revelation what's the book of revelation about well you know it's a series of that are about the end of the world really the day of the lord when the wicked get judged and the righteous are vindicated in the new testament context the apocalypse naturally focuses on jesus his work as the messiah but also you know his his status as judge um you know so you get both sides of that coin in in terms of enoch you know this is pre-christian most of the material anyway and so they're not they don't have jesus as a touch point but they do have messiah figures in these apocalypses the enoch tells the story of hey you know the end is coming you know get ready the wicked are going to get it the righteous are going to get vindicated but then he naturally addresses the obvious questions well why is the world coming to an end like why all the judgment and the answer isn't because you rejected jesus again this is before jesus all right the answer is because of the prolific throughout the whole world and the rejection of the righteousness of god and enoch will trace that theme back to yes there's a little bit of the fall just a little bit most of the problem with evil though for for enoch first enoch is directly traceable to the transgression of the watchers which is enoch's version retelling of the genesis six one through four really one through five episode and you know so so that he has to give a rationale for why the world is so evil and why humanity got corrupt to the degree that it is and that helps explain why god has reached the point where he's fed up [Music] with the apocalypse yeah this enakian material has all these features apocalyptic thinking there's there's an explanation for the the proliferation of depravity which in turn explains the judgment there's also lots of heavenly visions because enoch is is transported you know to the heavenly throne room of god he goes through different levels because he's going to he's going to hear what god is up to kind of like john does in revelation john is privy through certain visionary experiences as to what's going to go on so again there's a lot of similarity there and and you get angelic interpreters angelic you know guides you know lots of these different sort of supernatural characters enochian those are the features of first enoch and other tenants have those features that's the term scholars used oh it's inaugurated it's kind of like enoch because enoch's the one that most people are more familiar with and so that's where the term comes from it look looks like enoch smells like enoch you know so let me it's heavy on if it's heavy on nephilim it's enochian let me ask this question of clear he said if it's heavy on uh angels it's enochian um but i'm curious about this because you you're using the phrase enoch is the one they're familiar with enoch is concerned with this in this writing um i think it can be confusing to maybe our audience who's thinking that maybe actually enoch wrote this book um can you explain to us like well first of all let me ask it this way like is there a modern scholarship that actually believes the person enoch in the book of genesis actually wrote first enoch um and then maybe to explain to us what you know the the pseudo uh graphic uh you know literature is and what that actually means in the context of that for our audience who's who's kind of foreign to that yeah the there's there's no evidence that the person enoch wrote this book i mean you'd have you needed a text trail for that the oldest material we have for the book of enoch is third century bc you know some of the aramaic fragments would be that old and that is long after you know that the time of the flood okay which is you know enoch is preceding that so what you have here is it's very typical for writings in between the testaments to to have writers either name a book after the principal character or name the book after a biblical figure um you know i guess maybe for less charitable reasons because it's going to draw attention to their work i think most of this you see is a biblical example joshua well there isn't a verse in joshua that says joshua wrote it but lo and behold joshua's like the main figure so go figure you know we'll call it joshua i mean we don't know who wrote it but that's the name it gets because that represents the content well in enoch's ghost writing yeah it's very obvious that that enoch is the central character he's the one that gets transported to heaven and sees all this stuff so yeah what else would you call it you wouldn't call it bob you know you you bob i don't know that that would carry the same credibility right be a little less flippant you know moses is i mean moses doesn't even show up you know like why would we call it that you know so this happens a lot in the inter-testamental period and people are familiar um you know with the way books sort of get their title by people who you know have read the stuff and what's it about what's that new book box about enoch so you know it becomes you know known as the book of enoch so it's not really anything strange or weird or again sinister it's just you know it's it's sort of a a convention of the period that you know we don't really have that because we're we're taught you know to to write things and give them specific titles and whatnot it used to be if you if you've ever spent any time on archive.org you know look look 1900s and the title's like 50 words long okay you know that that was the convention for that day and we don't do that the convention just changes right okay now uh dr heiser could you talk to us about just the new testament books that enoch especially informs we've got jude we've got second peter i guess maybe even a little bit of first peter and then revelation what just kind of speak into how this informs the new testament and the in the most significant ways yeah i mean revelation of course it really deserves that you're also there there's a whole book out it's i think it's about three or four years old now edited by uh stukenbrook that that talks about enoch and the gospels and and typically when when you have connection points with new testament books it's not like the new testament writer is is quoting something word by word line by line it typically follows the formula of illusions now since you're you have your head into a revelation commentary which is my definition of a descent into madness by the way i'm going mad over here [Laughter] yes you do you you probably know all too well that john's method john uses the old testament everywhere in the book of revelation but oh my god like feels commentary and beal has a monograph on the the use of the old testament the book of revelation there isn't a single direct quote of the old testament in revelation sometimes john is generous and he gives you like three out of six words you know what he what he usually does is he will allude to things even even though they will look upon whom they have pierced you know john will will take a part of that line and do something a little different with it what john typically does is he assumes that you know your old testament so well i say oh i like these two words here i like this phrase i like that word over there i like this and he'll take four or five of these things and throw them into the blender and if you can't figure him out like where he's getting all the stuff and why he's putting it together well that that's just too bad that's your problem so this is what what new testament writers do with other books and enoch is a good example for instance the book of life okay you know believe it that is not an idea that john invented in the book of revelation it not only has a deep old testament history but it also has a long history in the inter-testamental period including books like enoch and other books there are lots of heavenly books and so this becomes part of the stream because some of the things that john will say about the book of life and other books that's why you can find that stuff and you know you know even if john doesn't give you it you know verse by verse word by word so that you can oh it's this particular verse in enoch doesn't matter the content there is something very specific you know the whole association of of the you know the lake of fire being created for the devil and his angels and the gospels it's only in one place in matthew 25. guess where else we find that enough yes that would be correct that would be so this is the kind of thing that that if you know this literature you not only know as you read the new testament okay i know where john's getting that i know where matthew's getting that but you also know the fuller set of ideas you know what those other books do with that and what the contexts are and then then it really comes down to okay is the new testament writer using that information to help him express a particular idea or is he tweaking it a little bit is he creating a difference that he wants you to see and pick up on i just got done with i'm writing uh or what i call a reader's commentary on the book of enoch so i just finished the second volume and messiah is is one of the prominent features of chapters 37 through 71 it's called the book of parables in you know enoch is actually like psalms it's it's a it's composed of a number of sub books and so there in chapters 37 through 71 there's a ton of talk about messiah he both uses old testament descriptors like anointed one or you know servant or something like that but he also has a few of his own that again you have to look elsewhere in the literature for you know for for what he's doing there and why he's choosing that terminology and it's real interesting because again in enoch you don't have jesus yet but you have things like son of man which is very prominent in the new testament and so for for people who are again aware of the material they can think okay versus christians now i'll give you one little one little tidbit here it's very common for new testament critics to say that the idea of jesus pre-existence is late okay like this is something that the early church came up with you know we have the the jesus of history and the christ of faith you know like these are two different you know portraits two different things and of course only the jesus of history is is the one that's real all this christology stuff is just made up by the early church well guess what the book of enoch's messiah is pre-existent what about that you know so so it has value again for making the point that you know a jew listening to jesus or reading one of the new testament gospels where it gets into this pre-existence idea a jew's not going to hear that or read it and think well that's crazy you're making something up now that's not part of our messianic profile here what's going on no instead they're gonna go yeah okay you know we've heard that before and you're claiming that jesus of nazareth was pre-existing you know it in other words it's a challenge to them and it becomes part of you know really the the whole evangelism effort to get people to embrace yeah this this guy really was who he claimed to be okay well so i'm going to ask you a question specifically about revelation because like i said my head is in that i'm i'm about to write my chapter on revel [Laughter] if you don't know this michael that's that's heiser's like least favorite book of the bible to talk about he avoids it he avoids it like the plague i'm gonna reference one of your works i think my answer's gonna be don't read [Laughter] that so i'm actually going to reference one of your works so you'll be familiar with this this is uh in your book demons i i read a while back and you uh you quote first enoch 10 11 to 13. about the watchers love for you to explain what those are and um and how many scholars believe that the book of revelation describes their release a precursor to the return of christ the day of the lord and their ultimate punishment with satan in revelation chapter 9 verses 1 to 10. so uh for those unfamiliar uh that that's the the release of most people believe these creatures to be demonic creatures this sort of last days release of of some sort of demonic beings and so you're tying that to the book of first enoch could you maybe just unpack that for us a little more yeah in all of the the jewish traditions about the events of genesis 6 1-4 and again it's it it's a long it's a long road to understand how we can go from genesis six one through four and again i'll loop in verse five here genesis six one through five as it is in the old testament to the second temple theology of okay the the sons of god they were supernatural beings enoch's favorite term for them is watchers at least in the first 36 chapters chapters 37 through 71 he refers to them as angels as you know supernatural beings but then you know they they do what they do you know with with human women and they fought you know father the nephilim and you get these giant clans and when you kill one of the nephilim the disembodied spirit that's what a demon is that's who you know who jesus encounters in in the gospels there's this whole full-blown theology um you know it's hard to know where they get that but in in the demons book i i show you where the data points come from in the old testament how they're putting them together for that but one of the strands of that tradition that is not specifically mentioned in genesis 6 but is part of the backstory that genesis 6 1-5 is responding to that is the mesopotamian hollow story one of the elements there is that the offending supernatural beings that violate the will of god or the gods in mesopotamia's case in regard to the flood they are sent back to the abyss and they are sent you know into the into the deep into the abyss you know into the pit okay that you get these various terms and they are imprisoned until the end of days or in the mesopotamian version something like that that kind of talk but in the jewish traditions it's always this until the end of days the end of time the end of you know whatever this eschatological endpoint they're in jail so to speak you know they're the dean is our response and spawn and so on and so forth we don't need a rabbit trail on that but the supposition is and i'm not i'm not unique here i mean this isn't just my view that this is a view that that others have have offered that what's described in revelation nine uh uh i believe that's the chapter the the opening of the abyss correct me if i'm wrong here yep what's described there is the opening of this prison okay and the release of these demonic powers and specifically the ones that are said to be imprisoned in other words they're not allowed to leave so they must be released are these guys in second temple literature if you asked us you know a jew living in the inter-testimonial period hey who do you think's getting let out there you know nine times out of ten they're gonna say well duh you know who's in jail it's it's the watchers so it's this notion that they they get out and what do they do well the reason again in inner testimonial literature that they're such a big deal is because they foment and accelerate and proliferate human self-destruction and depravity and idolatry that's what they do and so since we see these sorts of things emerge in the wake of what happens in revelation 9. there are scholars who you know have suggested that this is probably the release because it's an apocalypse it's the end of days this is a precursor to the return of the messiah you know the whole day of the lord stuff and this is what it describes there they they get out and then they're gonna you know they're gonna do what they do and god is ultimately gonna destroy them when the messiah returns but it's part of the the very end you know timetable excellent um i'd like to know um when understanding the book of enoch is it better to understand the book as prophetic literature or apocalyptic literature and and does taking it as one of those affect the way that we read it if we take the book of enoch as prophetic does that does that change the way that we read it if we were to read apocalyptic when you say prophetic do you mean as an end times system uh i mean like the prophetic i suppose the prophetic literature that i'm thinking of um would be like the the old testament prophets that are not necessarily sure yeah i i think but i mean it really does as both the uh you do get a sense if you read through enoch yes there are warnings yes this is what's coming and it's going to be bad there isn't a whole lot though that seems like they can do anything about it right yeah in other words it's not an impetus to conversion again it's pre-jesus so we don't get you know like an atonement sense attached to this but it's also very deterministic in other words by the time enoch tells you this information it's going to be almost too late you know this is going to come upon you and enoch wants you to know why why you're going to end up where you're ending up so there's there's less hope i'm losing you there you said you said there's less hope and then you said there's you said there's less hope and then you kind of froze there for a second there's less hope in enoch for the reader who who is not you know followed than there is in the prophets um enoch it has a more deterministic feel to it i i don't know if i if i'm willing to say that that that's exclusive um there might be a passage or two that you know essentially sort of i don't even know if i want to use the word encourages but it but at least leaves the door open to repentance but it has a it has a real feel of finality to it like we're letting you see this now because it's right around the corner this is what's going to happen your your fate is set you made your bed now you got to sleep in it you know just just that sort of feel to it so i think in in that sense it doesn't have a whole lot of prophetic value if we're talking about warning people and so i would side with the apocalyptic um idea but you know in the new testament you know you you get more you get more encouragement because you know you look how the book opens the book of revelation it's addressed to churches you know they you know they the hope is that you'll you know you'll endure to the end you'll you'll endure persecution you'll stay in the faith you know you it's not it's not so fatalistic it's a pastoral letter first it's it's there to encourage the people to get them through the situation it's it's there for their exhortation and their encouragement not for their hey guys buckle up it's gonna suck i just thought i would stop by and tell you praise god uh yeah so speaking of being doomed to this subject of demons i'm thinking about just the the book of enoch and how it might inform our angelology uh our both good angels bad angels uh i'm thinking of ephesians chapter six this multiplication of terms that the apostle paul uses and uh in chapter 6 verse 12 the rulers the authorities the cosmic powers this is the esv the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly and in the past when i've read commentaries on these it's uh scholars seem to just kind of be like yeah this might be this this might be that but really it's just kind of like all demons but i'm curious i know that you've really delved into this very deeply and does the book of enoch specifically inform our understanding of paul's vocabulary yeah it does in places um like for instance with rulers you know and the very noteworthy passage you had first corinthians 2 had the rulers of this world known you know what the fallout would have been of killing the messiah they never would have you know they never would have crucified the lord of glory you know paul says they otherwise would be idiots you know they had known but a lot of commentators like you know and i love fees commentary and you know he's certainly a one it's been a good scholar but he'll pooh-pooh the rulers there as supernatural agents and he'll say things that that really are not well defensible that that this term isn't used of supernatural being well it is used of enoch it's the same term you know it's also used of septuagint daniel you know in the theodosian text i mean it's used in other places too where we have sinister bad you know supernatural beings that are called you know our contests you know it's just there you know and so enoch you know again provides an example or two to you know basically resolve a question like that in first corinthians two more broadly though the language i think you know enoch is is helpful at points but i actually think there are other second temple books that are more helpful um and the reason i say that is because there are other books that are better for articulating or at least referencing is the better word referencing what i call the deuteronomy 32 world view and i discuss all this at length in in the demon's book where you've essentially three problems you've got the fall you got the the arch enemy the who becomes known as you know satan capitalized satan you got him he brings forth death and estrangement from god then you get the genesis 6 thing and it's about depravity and idolatry and all the stuff the nephilim stuff is actually peripheral um to to the way a second temple jew was thinking because they live after the elimination of the nephilim they're not worried about nephilim they're worried about what the watchers you know taught people in terms of self-destruction and depravity and idolatry that's the big deal there and then you have this third group that emerges from babel you know circuit deuteronomy 32 8 9 and a few other passages in deuteronomy and and these are the ones to whom are given geographical dominion as a judgment on the nations you know the the division of the nations at babel and god divorces himself from humanity and says i'm going to start over i'm going to pick this guy abraham you know we'll see what if this is any better than working with you people because you just don't get it you know after the flood here we are again you're still not obeying so sayonara you know but he makes a covenant with abraham and says you know i still want your one of your seed to bless the nations the nations are going to be brought back in and all that but eventually as we learn from psalm 82 this this doesn't work well these supernatural agents the sons of god in deuteronomy 32 they sow chaos among the nations that's this is where daniel gets his theology like nobody asked for daniel gets this idea of prince of persia prince of greece supernatural entities over geopolitical empire where did he get that well the only place you can get it is deuteronomy 32. you just look you look back on your old testament but by the time you get to paul paul inherits worldview because he's the apostle to the gentiles he's the apostle to the nations and this is why he uses terms like principalities powers rulers thrones dominions you know all this all this stuff they're all terms of geographical dominion every one of them and there are certain books like jubilees and bencira that specifically tap into this perspective in this worldview now enoch will do it uh the animal apocalypse the 70 you know shepherds you know all this kind of stuff there will be places in the book of enoch where enoch is is uh dipping into and doing certain things with this idea um so it's helpful there at least it shows you it was on there there's a an accusation that i hear about the book of enoch frequently in in looking at this is so the the kind of the mitigating position that i hear you saying is that this is going to inform the biblical authors when they write and it's helpful to know what they were thinking about angelic beings and what they were thinking about um the sons of god and this kind help helps gives context into the the authors of the new testament and how they are writing but some have said look but by doing that what you're what you're doing is you're saying that they are then pulling from a higher higher source they're sourcing material that is authenticated or they're sourcing material that they think is valid and thus to disagree with portions of the book of enoch you're then disagreeing with the authorial intent of some of these new testament books and there's a confusion i think for a lot of christians to go man it's how do we look at the these new testament authors saying hey if we're gonna look at authorial intent and they say hey these are accurate prophecies that we're gonna pull from for us to then disagree with other sections of enoch so it places it in this like non-canonical limbo you know but like super important because the apostles use it i think it's a manufacturer i think it's a manufacturing bow i mean you use the right word confusion you know the fact that a new testament writer would would quote a source doesn't mean that he's articulating the idea that oh that source i just quoted is now the word of god otherwise i wouldn't have quoted it again it's a very circular backwards you know way of looking at things again nobody says this about the baal psych okay psalm 74 takes stuff word for word out of the bail cycle the term leviathan is right out of the bail cycle and the wisdom of momentum open is the backdrop for some of solomon's proverbs solomon isn't thinking well you know since i'm using this material i kind of like the way this guy writes that that now you know this is going to be part of our sacred literature like there's a cosmic law that if i like this and use it then that all of a sudden you know cue the scary music you know that that now this is inspired again it's it really reflects a deeply flawed view of inspiration and that there's no there's no quick curative you know for that but new and old testament writers use stuff all the time paul quotes menander in first corinthians 15. oh i guess the reason is they do it for very very understandable reasons hey if i use this this is familiar to my audience they're going to pick up i'm laying down they're going to get i'm trying to make because i'm taking something familiar in their head and i'm going to use it over here in this way or connect it to this other idea and it's it's a teaching tool it's like a you know this is a dumb way of saying it's a word picture it's it's a teacher we do that all the time in our sermons today right like well like michael will quote a movie when he's preaching for an illustration he's not saying the movie's inspired he's like the holy spirit like inspired lord of the rings you know and like no not going to happen if aragorn is a christ figure then lord of the rings must be inspired what [Laughter] well i i guess you know the chronicles of narnia you know they're inspired too because aslan is a christ figure now uh well let's talk about i'm sure something like bill doesn't have anything in there you know it it it's just it's a ridiculous way of thinking about the whole enterprise to make it more mundane if i'm writing a book and i quote a book that you know i quote a scholar that helps me make my point i don't think in my head well that guy's book is mine now [Laughter] that would have been an interesting thought you know michael's over there thinking about royalties he's like yes [Laughter] of the thought process that that when i dip into this then this thing has the same status as the other thing it is completely illogical and it doesn't you're cutting out on us i'm sorry especially when the when the biblical writer to trash it [Music] wait a minute i just called that new inspired material garbage now what do i do you know it it just doesn't work it's it's almost incomprehensible but yet i agree with you that yeah that's a lot of people think that way about it's really unfortunate yeah uh dr heiser what uh what aspects of the book of first enoch would fall outside the realm of christian orthodoxy like what actually goes against christian doctrine is there is there some content in there like that all right yeah there is i mean in the in the in the parable section because of the nature of it with the judgment of messiah the righteous are consistently evaluated on the basis of their works and again we don't have you basically you're you're not going to get trashed into oblivion and blown to bits in the apocalypse because you've rejected the messiah that again there is no atoning messiah in in view because this is pre-jesus all right but rather the basis is you're not observing torah you're not loyal you know to yahweh and torah and you know jewish things it's jewish so this is what we would expect and so the righteous are evaluated on their loyalty to the law and the unrighteous are evaluated on their just general rick wickedness interestingly enough that enoch does really focus a lot on what we would call social justice the abuse of power by leaders politically you know turns the crank for him uh in those chapters he really goes off after that and and we know that the gospel is not you know in any of these things but that's very clearly the perspective of enoch without the revelation of jesus without his ministry and teaching well that's you know what else would we expect really you know uh yeah coming out of the egg now is the thing we have to be loyal to because they weren't put us in exile we don't want that to happen so it's very handable yeah it kind of that kind of pushes back against uh the new perspective i think maybe a little bit but that's neither here nor there we don't want a rabbit trail uh this is just this is my shameless plugs yeah while we're at it dr heiser what do you think about the new perspective yeah don't do that well i'll tell you just a little bit on the one hand i i would agree with a new perspective that that no clear thinking there's the qualification okay okay no clear thinking is going to think well i deserve salvation because look how obedient i've been you know reason's old testament is not is going to know that he's not putting god in his debt okay but a lot of jews don't think you know didn't think clearly they they it does it does become a performance oriented thing you know the law becomes about my track record you know and so you the the paradox is you know you can look at the old testament very clearly and know who god is and that the only reason he's interested in having a relationship with you as as a jew is he made the covenant with you and so on and so forth and basically your salvation is dependent on his mercy he he's never going to be in your debt it's very it's very easy to think that good thought and then sort of drift over into this well i'm really going to be ticked you know if i don't get in because i've been pretty good you know so i think they have the same kind of struggle there so i think yeah the new perspective has a has a good theoretical point to make but at the end of the day if it's ruling out the fact that lots of jews wouldn't have thought that precisely i think it's kind of missing something too yeah yeah so with the when i was researching the kind of differences that we were singing between like the new testament passages um and and what was written in the book of enoch one of the claims i came across was in enoch 71 verses 13 and 14 that the son of man that has been prophesied in prior chapters was all of a sudden enoch that it was revealed that enoch himself was this son of man that was going to come to judgment and glory which would replace enoch as the messiah as it was what this claim was is that a right interpretation of inaki and literature as far as you're concerned that enoch is the son of man in enoch chapter 71 there would there would be scholars that would sort of read chapter 71 at i don't want to i don't want to be too this is going to sound pejorative but i don't mean it to be but they would read it so literalistically that that's the conclusion they could draw most enakian scholars are not in that boat because it's so clear even as recent as chapter 70 that the son of man in enoch are different people i mean this is sprinkled all through the book and then so so 71 becomes an aberration which raises the question like well what's up with that you know and some people say oh this was added or this was you know some other hand or blog you know there's all sorts of explanations vanderkam and others would i think i don't want to call this a really really good explanation but i could see how it would work their view is that enoch's experiences in the book are sort of real-time things he sees on the way to being transferred into the heavenlies and then when you get to 71 all of a sudden they this is their a different vision or where he becomes a character in the scenes that he's been seeing and his character happens to be the son of man so it's it's not like all of a sudden well forget those the first 70 chapters we you know we made boo-boos all over the place there and that isn't how you know right track here it's it's that enoch is sort of he becomes part of the story himself and the mechanism again a lot of scholars think for that is either a dream and there's certain language you can take in enoch where it may be a dream state or something like that but whatever it is he all of a sudden becomes a character sort of experiencing firsthand as as you know one of the one of the players of the things he's seen and you know the commentaries like nickelsburg and you know vanderkam and other work that they'll come up with with certain examples of other like transcendent scenes and other literature where this sort of thing happens and say i mean probably the same thing going on in enoch here the the truth is that no no one view has won the consensus for why this happens but that's sort of a at least an operative angle you know to explain other than just saying uh somebody just threw something in there that wasn't you know original other than saying that this is this is sort of a an operative way of looking at it yeah uh dr heiser earlier you you mentioned about the watchers teaching people about idolatry what does that even mean what does it look like is that some you know celestial being is like hey here's how to make a wooden idol and they're kind of i mean wouldn't they already know that like like what exactly is happening in this scene i don't i don't think that they necessarily have to be taught the steps here's the recipe for idolatry i think the point is that they they either are influenced you want to use a word like seduced or influenced or encouraged to not worship the god they should be worshipping in other words you know spiri spiritual intelligence is lying to people about who they are who the spiritual beings are and and who to attribute the good things in life too it's not you know yahweh it's it's over here who who gives you power who gives you you know fill the blank xyz you know who's keeping you alive who's keeping your the enemies at your gates you know all this sort of stuff you know i think i think it's more or less you know this is an overused phrase but i'm going to use it it's this battle for the mind you know and if we as christians are willing to assent because the new testament will say things like you know don't fall prey to the wiles of the devil you know i mean you know the whole principalities and powers the darks of the fiery darts of the wicked i mean the new testament ascends to this idea that spiritual forces do have an influence over the way we think and what we think so if that's the case that i think is is more in line with what's going on when it comes to encouraging people you know is it less like a visitation and more like just kind of demonic spiritual influence that's working on them and they don't even recognize it right i i my view is the latter predominant and i i'm i'm willing to think that people even like founders of other religions we'll be as broad as we can here have had visitations that have led to dissent disastrous spiritual consequences oh yeah in other words they'll create a faith in an alternative faith that either is a fairly reasonable counterfeit for the truth or something totally off you know off the reservation you know but i'm willing to believe that supernatural intelligence can do that because again if i were a supernatural power of darkness i would work smart and not hard i want an influencer i want to influence the influencers the ones that have power to move herds how do i move herds i i don't want to waste my day even though i'm timeless and don't have to sleep you know okay but i don't want to waste my day having to move from person to person you know that's boring that's ridiculous let's see what we can do to find one person who can move thousands and hundreds of thousands or millions and can trap them in a false belief so that yahweh is robbed of his children sounds pretty good let's do that tactically work smart and not hard can that that's how i would do it i think there there is something to be said for intelligence being behind you know certain episodes in the history of religion just generally that has led to millions being blinded to the gospel excellent well let's let's do this we're at the the portion of our show where we try to do a closing thought uh where we just kind of uh for the audience that's out there whether it be resources materials just some some real quick thoughts where we can say we want you to walk away thinking about this if you haven't about the book of enoch i'll start with michael rountree and we'll toss it over to dr heiser and uh get your closing thoughts before we wrap up the program uh around you what are your thoughts man yeah yeah you know i'm just uh fascinated by what what you were saying dr heiser about enoch's solution uh to explaining the problem of evil and i do see this in the new testament as well but just this idea that um it's it's not just that people went mentally insane and do deranged things there really are demonic powers behind the scenes i think that christians actually have an edge on this in explaining how evil can be so evil because it's it's like people will do things like torture infants you know they'll they'll do things that are so mind-blowingly abominable and you're just like how could you how could anyone even well we actually do have an explanation for it and um and so i i just think that's a that's just like a really great just sort of thing that christianity offers that the the secular world really doesn't offer the secular world just says well it's mental illness and i'm just like ah that didn't really do it for me so that's just it's just kind of a thought but that's kind of what struck me dr heiser your thoughts sir yeah that that's actually a very good negative example of something that came up on a podcast episode of mine fairly recently i interviewed a guy named michael jachoski who is a humanities professor here in florida and he the the whole discussion was about tolkien he has a book out called the good news of the return of the king and it's it's about you know how tolkien you know communicated the gospel through his writings and his his argument is that the lord of the rings is essentially one grand parable that that that hooks into the parables of jesus to talk about the same things and he makes the comment in the book that the prophet no no sorry dr heiser you said the problem is yeah uh the problem of the book you cut out the problem with materialistic approaches to reality is that a south science chorus comes to reality but the the react you know pardon the pun but the reality is that that isn't true it doesn't answer every question and it doesn't even provide the best explanation for different things what you need is you need again the myth okay myth just being a an overarching story where supernatural characters like god are legitimately a part of the story they're they're real and they're they're they're in the fabric of of unfolding reality and he uses this line that that a a view of life that excludes the mythic and the spiritual if you will is last real and the other one is more real you know we wouldn't think of using words like more or less real it's either real or not well actually no it isn't science only takes you part of the way it leaves things out and the the other side the spiritual side puts the things in that are missing and so you must have it to have the fullest understanding of what is real you have to have it because it without it it's incomplete and so you you you've taken that idea and actually given a the negative example of it you really can't explain evil just through you know brain chemistry or you know this or that condition or this or that trauma someone's experienced okay you can explain a number of things through those you know those vehicles but it never is quite satisfying that's right there is evil that transcends if that's the right word but that transcends those things in terms of badness and you have to have something else to to fill in the gaps in an explanatory way so i think you're right i think your says material right josh we'll put it down on the scoreboard go ahead and put that up with the what the one other theologian josh has he mentioned that to you today uh yeah i'm not sure i'd have to go back and watch it um so michael i i just want you to stop yeah my michael is is only on this podcast right now because he's trying to get free commentary on his book that he's writing and he's just trying to ask dr heiser questions so he can source him in the book [Laughter] you're saying i'm i'm contributing to his dissent in demand yes yeah yeah so he's gonna put on the cover of his book dr heiser says that's right michael like dr heiser i think that's it that's gonna be that's gonna be the the cover of the book it's totally it's gonna be the endorsement so uh i was just gonna say that this has been it's really fascinating how theology like this has really impacted my apologetic in witnessing with people who are polytheists like your work on on the divine council and how there's these geographical spirits that are kind of ruling over regions and the way that we combat that was with the gospel and then i an admit i witnessed with people who are from you know uh kind of an indian background from from india and they have this very vast polytheistic system and i've met people who are like yeah i have to keep sacrificing to my demon god or it'll kill me and i go i actually have an answer for that like i i'm not actually saying because most christians that enter into that conversation saying you're delusional you're crazy but i'm entering into that conversation going no no i actually i understand how this worldview system works and my god created that angel he created that falling being who's ruling and reigning over your region and and my christ can set you free at liberty of that i had a guy recently who's over my house and and we were we were talking about psychedelics and some of the uniform experiences that he has had and he's a gnostic guy great conversations and he's like man these psychedelics we talked about dmt and some of these other kind of psychedelics where there's uniform experiences very spiritual experiences and my response to that as a christian is go oh yeah there's tons of serious spiritual experiences there's tons of powers and forces that can lead you and guide you in these kinds of existential experiences so i'm not saying that they're not real but i am saying that they're not good right and i'm able to enter into that space and not not deny these very authentic supernatural experiences people are having but then answer it with an authentic gospel presentation that is very spiritual um in the midst of that and i think it's a very it's a very helpful apologetic um anyway uh want to wrap up it's it's also part of the again if you want to call it the the watch your world view because absolutely teaching you know people to use roots and herbs and stuff like it's pharma i mean you know paul uses that term in the new testament you know in in association with with demons and idolatry what's to produce altered states i mean it's right there it is you know you know boom where else do you find that yeah yeah that would be you know but that would be enoch that's inaccurate um so guys thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of remnant radio if you're not familiar dr heiser's come on quite a few times before and done episodes with us i'd encourage you go back into the archive and find those videos we've got one on theosis we've got one on the unseen realm i think we've got one on demons we've got quite a bit of content that we have produced with dr heiser so lots of good content you can go back in the archives and watch really really interesting stuff but man if you're also new to the channel we've interviewed guys like n.t wright wayne grudem craig keener jack dear sam storms uh the list goes on and on uh theologically in those spaces we're about to interview francis chan next week and we've interviewed todd white talk about an eclectic island of mystic toys we've got them all here on the channel so make sure to subscribe uh and we're gonna have content coming out like this all the time and and i would encourage you if you're blessed by the content a couple ways you can help support the channel you can give on paypal one-time gift there it helps us produce this content or you can give on patreon you get a little bit of extra kickback from us special content our commentary on episodes like this me and michael will probably film in a week or two we'll talk about hey this is what our thoughts were on this video that we filmed uh here's our thoughts on our interview with francis chan or todd white or those kinds of things most of our interviews are neutral we don't kind of give you our opinion but in these spaces we're able to share that a little bit more also i want to remind you if you're out there and you're like hey i can't afford five bucks a month i totally get it let me know shoot me an email at media at the remnant radio and i can send you any video that you're not able to get access to we don't want to make their uh some kind of uh you know pay wall for those who can't afford it so uh anyway uh that's it for us today i want to thank everyone for tuning in once again and we'll see you tomorrow at 4pm central time uh i think on the way out we'll we'll listen to some uh some new remnant radio music that we're thinking about incorporating into our uh our setup here let's see if we got it anyway blessings guys we'll see you [Music] later [Music] you

Channel: The Remnant Radio

Views: 67,890

Rating: 4.8632145 out of 5

Keywords: Does Enoch Have Anything To Teach Us, The Book of Enoch, book of enoch explanation, book of enoch explained, book of enoch with dr. michael heiser, dr. michael heiser, dr. michael heiser and the book of enoch, michael heiser, michael s. heiser, sons of god, divine council, dt 32, dr. heiser, dr. michael s heiser, unseen realm michael heiser, unseen realm by dr michael heiser, the unseen realm michael heiser, the unseen realm

Id: KFjn11hiFyc

Length: 75min 25sec (4525 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021