Michael Heiser — Chaos & Calendar: Week 4: Thinking Like an Israelite

who has the button back here that was a random story I've got we had we had one guy get in serious trouble a teacher he went to it was a big kid you know there was a confrontation he went to push the kid here the kid ducked hit him in the jaw and broke his jaw yeah he wasn't hitting him it wasn't like a closed is he went to push the guy and he yeah and he ducked and hit him in the jaw yeah oh yeah yeah no he wasn't a lightweight either you know the faculty guy yeah it was it was pretty bad all right enough of junior high in high school [Laughter] well here's our final week and this is if you liked thinking about weird stuff in the Bible this is the and you thought the other stuff was weird it's going to get sort of amped up here a little bit but we're going to talk about sacred space a little bit again and the concept of God being in control of chaos which is another way of saying control of creation but really even more broadly than that being in control of everything and how in Israelite thinking those two things get married in the temple in certain ways and then we'll hit a certain point where because of the they thought that way about the temple that essentially the temple was the center of the cosmos there are certain things said in relation to the temple and the throne of God which of course is in the temple that impacted you know certain people between the Testaments to think certain ways about the sacred calendar the festival calendar of the Torah and prophecy so it's gonna be some weird stuff but it's really it's really kind of fascinating because there are elements of it that kind of play into the New Testament and some other things that are more familiar to us but this is sort of a free-for-all tonight but it's just some kind of interesting stuff now I had this slide up before when we talked about sacred space and about to sort of wrap your head around the way they looked at their Bible in a number of places you have to be thinking mythically and again that doesn't mean oh it's all just a fairy tale what it means is that there's there's a very real supernatural element not only two episodes in Scripture but basically everything all of life is sort of permeated by supernatural activity and meaning so thinking you know mythically is really important because when writers and their readers are thinking this way what they say will often transcend sort of a simple literal reading because they want to communicate certain ideas through metaphor and symbol they want to drop certain vocabulary not so that your mind parse is that word like you would do it if you looked up and it looked it up in a dictionary but that all the baggage that comes with that word just floods into your mind the illustration I like to use for our own time period would be something like Las Vegas okay you know you we can oh that's a city in Nevada well great yeah it is but there's all sorts of ideas the crew - the term lost that's that's again just no we're not going to get into that with that I gave that there are there are terms you know there are places there are people there are institutions even events in scripture that when you brought them into an narrative you did so not just so that somebody could sort of oh yeah I can I could it takes like two hours to get there you know like like this literalistic feel but you would be thinking about the places history and all the stuff associated with it again that that has you know some real impact again on thinking mythically so we we use that to talk about sacred space which we are short definition was where God is or has appeared and how that was set off from normal space a couple of new elements here where God is by definition is where there is peace order justice which kinda the Hebrew term for that is Shalom really all that is Shalom stated negatively it's the absence of disorder the absence of injustice the absence of anything that's that's chaotic and by chaotic I mean not just that things are messy and need arranging it's the the theological concept of chaos has to do with a state of existence that is contrary to the way God wants it okay God once order he wants peace he wants life to to run as he designed it to run when it's not that's a chaotic situation so every place that lacks the above again these the bad things it needs to be made fit for sacred space or everything everything that has the problems needs to be made fit for sacred space again a more sort of official definition chaos describes the state of disorder that would exist in the absence of divinely imposed order on the cosmos in biblical and ancient near-eastern literature the supreme gods or the God of Israel brought order to the universe and subdued the forces of chaos somebody bigger than people has to bring order to creation that's a little bit above our pay grade our job description and so people in the ancient world would assume that that's the gods that's what they do that's what they're supposed to do if you were an Egyptian you would sort of transfer that idea to Pharaoh well Pharaoh's the God around here so you know if something isn't working it's his fault you know there's just this you know if the Nile doesn't flood and our crops just you would get half the yield and then people start starving that's his fault trying to like the president everything is his fault and again you know the it was it was a it took on a not just even though they did this when that situation arose in Egypt that was time for Pharaoh's enemies to to propose ideas like well he's really not who the gods put here he needs to be run out of town and I had a dream the other night it's me you know you know somebody would become a rival they would use it you know as a political wedge but it was it was bigger than that it was scary this is why the plagues were really a big deal because they upset the natural order of things and specifically pharaoh couldn't do anything about it except make it worse you know when he brought the magicians and they did you know imitated it well that really helps now it's like it was bad now you made it worse you know why can't you do anything here it was a real assault on their whole worldview back to the quote here the chaotic unpredictability and latent threat of the sea often was a factor in this we mentioned the sea before because it's wild its untamable you can't live there you know it it's just it's not where people belong the sea often became a metaphor for unpredictable chaotic dangerous life-threatening stuff it's another reason why when you when you have a situation like the sea is parted okay that shows who's in control of that it's not just a miracle in the physical world sense it's it's it's the claim of Supremacy you know in relation to every other God if there's only one who and not only that but that the one who's claiming to be in control will their troops go in there and they aligned up dead you know it's this sort of thing and so this this it's an event that gets referenced in a number of ways and the whole idea of taming the sea we could go through and look through a couple of them here in the Old Testament but you go through five six seven eight nine and he's in the Old Testament and then when jesus walks on the water when he says peace be still it takes on a whole different flavor than everyone the only a few times I've ever seen anything like that it was it was you know Yahweh of Israel so like what's going on here can it it meant something to them in a real sort of cosmic level now you have literature in the ancient world the Bale cycle I mentioned here at the bottom is an important one because Bale is the chief rival to the God of Israel and in this Bale cycle is just a collection of tablets his main conflict is a battle against the god of the sea yom-yom and Canaanite is the same as Hebrew Yom it's the same word because their languages are related bails eventual victory symbolizes the triumph of order over chaos in addition to the sea itself chaos could be represented as a sea serpent or a great sea beast or dragon that lives in the sea why would they do that you know is that like a is that like an anatomy lesson is this like you know real reporting on some real animal well maybe some of them thought there was really a dragon that you know whose tail in his mouth you know encircled the entire world and you maybe somebody thought that but it became a symbol of the badness the dangerous Ness of this place so when you came across things like sea and the dreck these terms show up in the Bible they show up also in the Bale cycle Leviathan Rahab and we're not talking about the woman okay with with Joshua it's not a slam on her but the deep these terms wind up in the Hebrew Bible and in some places they actually quote some of these stories like the bail cycle this is Psalm 74 these lines basically line 13 down through 15 come right out of the bail cycle okay why are they doing that in the Canaanites thought that bailed that all this stuff bails the one who subdued the sea monster he brings order to the seeds of the creation crush the heads of Leviathan all this stuff and the psalmist says no no it's not bail it's the God of Israel you very you know first line in 12 yet God is my king from a vole you read a few lines up few lines later it's going to be way of Israel they would do things like this to be a theology lesson it's not bail who's in control this stuff it's Yahweh of Israel they would do it to all different kind of deities it's basically a slap in the face to competing theologies biblical writers did this a lot in this case again you have the reference if you look at the rest of the language I don't think I have a a laser here but look at the language down here you've established the heavenly lights in the Sun the day is yours than the night you fix the boundaries of there what does that sound like it sounds like creation language sounds like something right out of Genesis well what happens in Genesis you know wait till we get there in Genesis we have the waters are calm the waters the deep the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters okay that's the way that creation is described here it's violent okay God has to act to bring that into order and it's done through metaphor Genesis it's just you know still and waiting for God to get to work on it Psalm 89 you have another one you rule the raging sea oh Lord you crushed Rahab like a carcass Rahab is another one of these beasts names that you get in the ancient world the heavens are years the earth is yours also the world all that is in it you have founded them creation for an Israelite was not just the story of well you know we don't really understand this but 2,000 years later there's gonna be this guy named Darwin that this is gonna really kick in the buck okay that isn't the point that's the way we think of creation stories because we have a problem like like an evolutionary worldview or something like that we'll take the accounts and start thinking about the things that our culture forces us to think about what they were thinking about is we need someone bigger than us to make us a habitable world and to make it livable it has to be orderly or else we're gonna die we're at the mercy of nature somebody has to control that and keep it under control and that was how they thought about creation which is why they put they set the bringing about of creation in weird language like slaying a sea monster like that just sounds so odd to our ear Psalm 74 why would you associate creation with killing Leviathan I didn't read that in Genesis no you didn't it's just sort of already happened in Genesis Psalm 89 crushing Rahab like a carcass and the earth is yours the heaven is yours you have founded them well yeah no kidding but what why describe it this way the reason they described it this way as they're trying to teach the idea of where God is there is order God is the one in control of all order he's the one that keeps us from being exterminated by creation essentially all that you know we're leading up to something here you get the same language here you get the dragon Rahab was it not you who cut right having pieces who pierced the dragon was it not you who dried up to see the waters of the great deep to home that's that's Genesis language who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over again God in control of the chaotic forces that would try to exterminate Israel in all this language is deliberate here's our Genesis reference in the beginning very familiar darkness was over the face of the deep - home Spirit of God hovering over the faces of the waters face of the waters and God saw at the end everything was very good there was evening and morning and that was the sixth day okay very good Tove my ode he's not the word for perfect in Hebrew that's Tamim this is an entry from a Hebrew lexicon how hot if you care to look it up but the point is is that when you get to the Eden story Eden like I said two weeks ago Eden was a place that had specific geography it wasn't the whole world it was the place where God was it was the model for what life could be everywhere else was uncertain all that other stuff it was it was very good God had you know brought you know that the forces of chaos sort of under restraint under control but man it could just it could just erupt at any point we could have you know storms we got earth you know we could have all these natural forces kill us off and so when God go you know goes and creates Eden puts you know Adam and Eve in the garden he Commission's them to subdue the earth and fill it okay yes they're supposed to work in the garden and maintain that but they're supposed to multiply and go out and bring the rest of the world into a state like this like Eden that was their job so they you know God's presence his control his rule would spread over the earth among people and everywhere that they were at that's the vision that's the original vision for Humanity for human life in God's world a trusting that God as you obey Him that he will bless you and bring order to your world it's very simple set of ideas now the fall of course brings an end to that there's an eruption of chaos Eden is no more which is why sacred space from that point forward has to sort of get a toehold somewhere God doesn't give up on the plan he doesn't annihilate humanity he doesn't eliminate everything and just say that was a terrible idea of course God really can't do that if he's omniscient and God anticipates these things you know we know this about the plan of redemption the whole bit but from that point on it's God trying to maintain his promise his plan to work with humans to sort of start the ball rolling again and it happens in different stories God trying to do this he enters into covenants with people he first of all he creates Israel out of nothing first it's trying to work with humanity as a whole that you know it works until you get to Babel after Babel you have God saying okay I'm gonna I'm gonna call this one guy Abraham I'm going to start my own people through him that's why in the story there are direct parallels between Abraham's life and Adam's life between the history of Israel and the history of Adam you're supposed to think about both of them at the same time God's trying to do the same thing that's why you have the tabernacle looks like Eden that's why the temple all reminds me of Eden yeah we talked about this two weeks ago that all this is deliberate planning deliberate messaging and tonight you know I want to sort of focus on how they thought about sort of the it's not the final installment but for an Israelite what they thought was the final installment of God was returning to earth restoring his presence and then everything would sort of mushroom out would blossom out or in theory and the Lord would return to earth and rule the earth and that was Jerusalem that was Mount Zion this is where this was now the sacred mountain was in Sinai anymore it's not Eden even though of course it's also called a mountain Ezekiel 28 not just a garden it's none of these other places where God appeared did things said things we are finally in the land that God chose that God promised for the people that he chose and created we're finally in there we finally have a king you're the man after God's own heart you know again that this this template kind of guy and we have a temple so everything's supposed to be wonderful now and we know the rest of the story and how it turned out but the way they thought about the temple even here you have Ezekiel 38 ezekiel of course is writing when the temple is about to be destroyed and he's telling them why this is gonna happen but the way they thought about this place about Zion and the temple is where I want to camp sort of the rest of the night because it's again it's interesting it's kind of bizarre very foreign to us which i think is why it's interesting because it's we just don't think these terms but as far as jerusalem in ezekiel 38:12 jerusalem is described as the center of the earth well you know like if you did your surveying measurements and all this stuff is that really literally how it's gonna work out no well there's an error you know the biblical writer must have flunked geography or math or look the center of the earth again it has nothing to do with literal math and geography the whole point is that it's the center of God's activity it's the place from which he is now going to fulfill his original plan you know fulfill his covenants all these things it's it's the headquarters it's the beachhead it's the nerve center you know think of it that way and you'll get the point of course the center of Jerusalem was the temple that was where everything focused on its where the presence of God was now we looked at this a couple weeks ago and I mentioned that hey if you compare the pictures Tabernacle temple there are some differences and the differences are kind of strange in some respects we're not going to hit all of them but you've got two pillars here yakeen and baz which if you're familiar with like the Freemasons man they make a lot of hay out of that the two pillars there but I want to focus on number two number two and number one number two is the bronze sea and number one is the bronze altar now the altar is just a bigger version of the one in the tabernacle but you know you don't have this in the tabernacle okay that's because it's going to signify something new or not not not new like it's never been thought of before but in a new way anybody can look up first Kings seven real fast I want to want you to read whoever can do that these four verses just to get a little bit of description in our heads and this is not a devotional passage this is not one of those memorize this you know in college first King 723 through 26 circling it all around tend to a cubit all the way around the seat the ornamental books were cast in two rows when it was cast he stood on twelve oxen three looking toward the North three looking towards the west they looking toward the south looking toward the east the sea was set upon them and all of their back parts pointed inward it was a handbreadth pick its brim was shaped like the broom of the coven like a lily blossom it contain two thousand bats give us another verse or two he also made ten carts of bronze four cubits was the length of each cart four cubits it's went three cubits its height and this was the design of the cart we had panels and the panel's were between frames on the panels that were between the frames were lions ox and cherubim and on the frames was a pedestal on top below the lions and the oxen were reeds of plated work every cart and 4 bronze wheels and axles of bronze and it's four feet that supports okay just again just some added detail there what do those things mean just a little bit a little bit of a we have plant ornaments we've got you know I want to say lions and tigers and bears but we've got the animals there we've got the chair beam anything coming to mind okay it's again it's this wilderness in the wild you know garden even the chair beam and all that kind of stuff you've got twelve oxen you got three to four groups of three they're all pointing in different directions you've got these stands that the thing is on with wheels okay makes you think of Eden what else would it might make you think of it's gonna come a little bit later if I say cherubim and Wheels Ezequiel yeah okay just so just hold that thought yeah it's sort of a menagerie and what's interesting about it we want to focus on we're going to focus on a couple things it's already in you know you when you go into the temple proper you're gonna have the giant chair beam there you're gonna have you know all the decorations of the garden and again the wildlife and all the sort of stuff we talked about this sort of brings some of that outside and you've got a sea it's called the sea of bronze you know Myers in her ankle Bible dictionary article says this just a whole lot a few excerpts here it's really big in fact that the amount of water in this is a lot more than you would ever need for washing even if like you were Pigpen I mean it just it's huge she says just as spectacular as the size and to see a bronze was its ornamentation under its rim was a series of cast decorations to Rhodes of gourds the rim or the brim itself was made of lily work most amazing of all was the way it was supported on four sets of bronze oxen with three oxen in each set each face the direction of the compass keep that in mind the compass with their hinder parts facing inward supporting the basin not all bright very famous biblical scholar who was he died in 1971 or something like that his parents were missionaries I I'm a big fan of Albright even though he sort of gets poo-pooed now because he just believed too much of the stuff taught at Johns Hopkins for many years I think I think he's a wonderful guy but Albright sort of you know went off on a tangent here and he thought well you know what about the the oxen here and then you have the cherubim so he it made him think in one article he wrote which I don't I don't quote here of Ezekiel's cherubim phases you know twelve Elements 12 cardinal points twelve you know with the compass points the four compass points it made him think of the division in Ezekiel and the reason he thought that was because well if they know a little bit about the vision of okay it was not a flying saucer all right so let's just get that out of the way it's also not like an early Leonardo da Vinci plan for an actual flying object what the twelve or what the chair beam were this is stock description of a divine throne I could show you lots of pictures of divine Thrones they are on oxen the oxen will have wings they'll have the different faces okay this is just this is what a royal throne look like it had wheels you could move it around it was portable all that stuff fire again the presence of God Sinai all these things sort of accumulate in in Ezekiel it's not a coincidence that in Ezekiel the four faces of the cherubim correspond to the four cardinal points of the Babylonian zodiac Ezekiel's living in Babylon he's writing to people who are living in Babylon all of this imagery you can find in Babylon including the eyes the eyes and ancient text were references to the stars hey if you had animals with eyes in them that was the constellation and this is astronomical language the point of Ezekiel's vision is that Marv Duke of Babylon was viewed as the ruler of the cosmos Marduk controls space and time the passage of time the epochs of human history and you Jews are sitting here in Babylon by the river Kivar why because Marduk just kicked Yahweh around okay that that's Babylonian theology in Ezekiel's day you're here because your God got beat by our God and what Ezekiel is saying is he lays the whole thing out the whole world view out that a Babylonian would understand and who does he put on the throne it ain't Martin Maher Duke isn't there the whole point is that yep we're here in Babylon but the God of Israel is still on the throne that's the inaugural vision of the prophecy and that he goes through and he explains here's why you're here boy you were bad but you're not gonna stay here either now you take all that back the the astronomical imagery in the the you know the pointing to all you know four points of the compass Telegraph's who is in control of the heavens why are the heavens important because the heavens are how you measure time that's how you measure the passage of time Sun Moon and stars who created those things that would be the God of Israel who's in control of those things if you're in control of those things you're in control of history because those things are linked with time so if you were a reading Ezekiel the message is very theological God is still on the throne he has our destiny in his hand it looks really bad and it is but he is our destiny in his hand when you superimpose that to temple architecture the message is this is the center of the cosmos this is the place from which God controls time and eternity and human history there's a couple of other interesting things about it again the bronze see if you just look at the gallons it's seventeen thousand gallons no 27 feet you've got the cubit measurement they're four feet high again this wasn't in the tabernacle why because this is a this is a a picture if you control the sea if the sea is calm if the sea is in the place where God is time and eternity in history are well in hand it's fixed that's why it's not in the tabernacle is the tabernacle was mobile not only couldn't you get all that water but how would you move it okay this is a fixed object when they get in there they build it and it's not only that but even this is a slap in the face to Babylon Mesopotamian religion yeah Meyers continues in the temple of Marduk there was an artificial sea Marduk is the chief god during the you know at the time of the exile it was called the Tom - sounds suspiciously like Tiamat the deep some Babylonian temples had an OP susi a large basin again to commemorate this idea it represented the waters of life at the holy center ancient Israel shared this notion of a watery chaos being kept under control by yahweh and again the forces of chaos the things that would would destroy us the great molten sea near the temples entrance would have signified Yahweh's power and presence now in Ezekiel 40 and I want to go back I want to pick up one now let's do this there's one there's another object here so this is again a symbol of God's control of the forces of chaos and it's a counterpart to what the Mesopotamians have as well now when it comes to this object it actually gets called this is a really kind of a strange thing the altar hearth in Hebrew is hard l four cubits from the altar hearth projecting upward so on and so forth har L is the Hebrew equivalent of a Sumerian term Sumerian Mesopotamia Babylon okay there they're all using the same languages they're the are ahlu this term in the same passage is to be connected with Akkadian or ahlu a term for the netherworld about which the chicago syrian dictionary marks that it was inter alia a cosmic locality opposite of heaven although we should note as does albright that the ancient israelites may have understood this term as the mountain of god that's literally what heart help me the mountain of God cosmic mountain sacred space where else would you expect that but in the temple ok it's just a page from the Chicago Syrian dictionary making the point the cosmic locality opposite of heaven let's think about that now it's the nether world in Mesopotamia which is the realm of the dead in Israel how would you think about that think back to the whole world tree thing the thing that connects heaven and earth and under the earth it goes through the altar which is where you sacrifice ok there's a death metaphor going on there there's a substitutionary metaphor going on there you're gonna wind up in the netherworld unless you're rightly related to the God of Israel okay there's a salvation metaphor going there so you have two objects in the temple that talk about God's control over the things that want to kill you and this notion of to avoid eternal death we use this altar again to be a substitute for you there's a lot of theology packed in just those two objects and it's not just sort of operating on an earthly level it has everything to do with again you know who's in control of all of life and death who's in control of life and death and our eternal destiny who's in control of all of history and these are big big thoughts and they are tied to this place Jerusalem this temple and even within the temple some of these objects this is the cosmic center of everything for an Israelite now let's talk about how this relates to how they thought about what happened in the temple you got stuff going on every day you've got bronze see there God has all the forces of chaos under control we've got some of the architecture the four cardinal points you know with the oxen that's telling us God is in control of the heavens and the earth and the passage of time and history and all this stuff you got that going on in the temple well we use the temple it doesn't just sit there so we have daily sacrifices we've got weekly things going on we've got to do sacrifices at the temple too you know commemorate certain times of the year the festivals everything in an Israelites life really connected in some way to the temple you kept order in and through the temple so that you could live your norm your life outside the temple just as a normal Israelite and you can feel safe you could feel that life wasn't gonna just you know kill you at any moment now this is where you're protected from the elements of nature and if you're rightly related to God you're not committing again these you know these horrible acts of moral impurity that pollute the land it would cause God to leave hey have we spent the time on that last week if you're doing what God asks you to do everything is going to work in other words everything is going to be orderly you'll have a good life won't be a perfect life because you're not perfect but God's gonna stay here he's gonna be with you you're gonna have eternal life you're not gonna you know you know have you know end up spending an eternity at divorced from from your God all these big theological thoughts the temple was supposed to remind them of that and as you went through your year you would do certain festivals you know you took commemorate certain events she'd have Passover me you would have feast of tabernacles feast of booths you know all these different festivals that commemorated how God had intervened for you in the past how he had kept you from chaos how he brought you through the sea how he created you out of nothing all of these things that would operate on the calendar we're supposed to remind you of these episodes as an Israelite and they all took place at this this place the other the temple now in the temple God has a throne this throne in some passages and namely in Ezekiel 1 but there are few passages and kings and chronicles it's referred to as the Merkava gold star if anybody knows what America vani is the hebrew term means throne chariot can you think of Ezekiel you got the throne and it's on wheels it's both its dual purpose hey the thing can move you know it's it's a throne chariot and again this is when when we get to Ezekiel we see the most explicit vision of it and it's standard way you would portray a throne but it takes on importance and conceptually in different ways this is by Rachel le or she's an expert in America stuff in Judaism in the Holy of Holies the Devere of Solomon's Temple - gold-plated cherubim shield to cover the ark with their wings their appearance revealed to David as a divine pattern I mean God actually says what you're building here is according to a pattern that's in the heavens okay it's described in parallel passage in chronicles which explicitly links the chair being with the heavenly chariot throne and that passage the the the lid of the ark is called the Merkava this throne and the American one was a representation of the ritual order of cyclic ritual time in Ezekiel you got the four phases the cherubim correspond to the four points of the zodiac why because it's constellations we can watch the constellations they have an annual circuit its orderly it never changes and Jewish thought went something like this well look at the perfect order of all that that's pretty fantastic I mean that the heavens to quote Psalm 19 declare the glory of God there's like eight different verbs in there for speech and communication in Psalm 19 this is just a fantastic thing it it's it's regular it not only doesn't it ever change but like who could change it you know you know that the God made this and gods in control of it and they thought well you know how does that how does that work I wonder what would happen if we start like keeping a calendar and counting days between events and why would God tell us like hey you know you we work six days and on the seventh you rest and what's this business with seven why do we know why do we have multiple sevens you know why you know all these questions and you've asked them if you've read this stuff you know what what's up with the numbers well it turns out the merica vote was a visual representation because it mapped time of the ritual order of cyclic time measured in Sabbath's of days these are called weeks if you've ever done the seventy weeks of Daniel you know story weeks and days weeks days and years you can use that the terminology for all of them the fourfold annual seasons in turn subdivided in accordance with a fixed Sevenfold order similarly the concept of sacred time derive from the seven days of creation accordingly there are seven days in a week counted in Sabbath's of days seven days it's performed by each priestly course serving in the temple seven days of consecration seven week intervals between harvests if you took the whole ritual calendar and divided it by you can actually divide it by four it gets evenly divisible in this calendar let's see here if I add the one up here yeah let's go with this one the priests the priesthood that came out of the Old Testament exilic period again think of Ezekiel Ezekiel is wooden they start the exile and they're developing you know Ezekiel's writing about all this stuff they came up with a calendar that works with perfect mathematical symmetry and it corresponds to all these biblical numbers it's kind of a marvel that's a mathematical calendar it's not an astronomical calendar they believed it began on day four of creation why day four what's created on day four the timekeepers the Sun the moon and the stars so that that's the first day of God's calendar so they begin on the fourth day and all of the numerically significant events if you keep what's called a 364 day calendar with all these divisible by 749 all these numbers if you keep that calendar every feast day every Sabbath every Passover falls on the same day every year it never varies it is perfectly mathematically precise it requires no adjustment and all the numbers again correspond to these numbers that you see in the Bible a lot these multiples now they believed that it was so perfect that it has to reflect the mind of God God set this up it's in time in tune with the heavens it never alters it never needs adjustment if we follow it we can be sure that we are never out of sync what's going on in earth on the temple in the temple is never out of sync with what's happening at heaven as in heaven so on earth they had a whole developed theology of what we do here is not only a mirror of what God is doing it not only is what God wants us to do but he commanded us but if we don't do it then chaos erupts this is why when you have very liturgical religions okay Judaism especially in ancient Judaism some of this works you know into questions in Christianity but have you ever wondered like why they fought so much over when to have Easter this is a debate that went for centuries they like fought wars over when we date Easter this is why because we got to get it right to be in sync with God we must get it right now the reason they had the problem is because the Pharisees did not use this calendar they used a lunar calendar which requires them to add a month every now and then to make everything realign and if you were among the people who that the Qumran is where they where the Dead Sea Scrolls are associated with this is why they left the pharisee the Feres eight priesthood just before Jesus day and during Jesus day they left and went out in the desert to keep this calendar in a temple that they didn't have they didn't have access to it because the temples back in Jerusalem so they actually like have these long texts where they imagine themselves doing this stuff so that God would know hey somebody's tracking with this it just sounds incredibly crazy and azar but they thought they're the own were the only guys between you know life on earth and complete annihilation because of this calendar stuff again to our area this is like this is like Looney Tunes but again they thought why Pharisees why are you refusing to map time according to the way God told you to map it he laid it all out and they had a big fight over it it's actually why they left in tar it's just crazy stuff now I'll just give you one thing if you take their calendar and you map out Jubilee cycles again it you can do it you just need a computer nut now it is just a computer programmer gotta be really good at math they expected messiahs appearance to be sometime between three BC and 280 that's a freebie for those of you who have seen my lecture on the birth of the Messiah because they're the only ones in antiquity that actually plotted it out correctly they had the right window everybody else didn't okay it's just to me that's just really kind of interesting that they there's a big question in academia where the priests at Qumran when Jesus showed up do they all convert because it's like okay we were expecting that and and you know academics like to fight about that stuff because there are similarities between their theology and the New Testament there are thing things that carry over but they actually they actually got it right you know you can't get it if you follow the Pharisees countered here's here's you know this is the one last thing if you use the calendar followed by the Pharisees the lunar one we have to add months every now and then the birth date of Jesus wouldn't have fallen in the same period it wouldn't been a Jubilee year but but if you use the biblical chronology Jesus began his ministry in a Jubilee year and why is that significant Luke 4:14 through 19 the day Jesus begins his ministry he walks into the synagogue at nazareth and says what what does he quote he quotes the Jubilee passage he quotes Isaiah 60:1 and mixes in a little bit of the Leviticus stuff so this is the year that the captives are set free you know all the you know he quotes the passage and he says this day this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing I mean I actually think he meant that like he knew what was going on but again this is this is just sort of really it's bizarre it's a little bit crazy but the people who are living in the first century who are tracking things like calendar and chronology and Messiah and by the way they're not too crazy because doesn't any you know we have people who do that today I'm not one of them I'm not a prophecy geek okay this I find interesting but I'm not doing the Blood Moon thing and all that kind of stuff but they were doing it in the ancient world and they were using a very specific method to do it and it was based on the role of the temple in sacred space certain objects in the temple and what they symbolized that that's how they that was their system and it has these weird synchronicities with what you actually see in the New Testament now last slide if you go to Ezekiel 40 through 48 which is a passage about what the temple the idealized temple there are 60 references to Jubilee numbers and their multiples not 660 that's a lot and again people who are into calendar chronology have noticed that why are all these numbers either a jubilee or half a jubilee or a 7 or something like this why do they sync up with this view of the calendar and if you're able to think about this beyond just sort of a literal correspondent so it's bought building going to construct a building well be nice if they put put a roof instructions for a roof in there the template is Ezekiel 40-48 does not have a roof okay it lacks certain other things that you would expect in the temple based upon the Temple of Solomon they're not in there either so it's just again it just makes me wonder then this I'm interested in this subject boy that's a lot that's a lot of things that's a lot of ways to when people are reading about a temple it's a lot of ways to make people think about Jubilee release of the captives setting the captives free redeeming the land can all these concepts that go with Jubilee and if you look at how the New Testament talks about the temple who does it talk about I just gave it away Jesus Jesus is the temple he refers to himself as the temple and he refers to you as the temple because you are members of his body it is all of that a coincidence see I I don't think it is a coincidence I think it marks a really really intelligent frankly divine mind they they knew what they were trying to Telegraph and it actually worked in real time which i think is kind of remarkable so the purpose of tonight was again to do a little crazy stuff but some of the crazy stuff again what I want you to encourage you to do is when you're reading through scripture assume that none of it is throwaway material okay there there may be a reason why it has this set of instructions this set of numbers it might just mean more than especially if it has to do with with ritual and sacred objects and something God is doing okay there might be something more behind it and then always check in the New Testament to see what they do with it they do really unusual things with certain passages that wouldn't occur to you but seemed intuitive to them or they would turn around and say well you know when we were we were over here if we remembered what Jesus said to us and it didn't make any sense when he said it but now it makes like kind of sense and they'll they'll don't run with it it's sign it's hindsight we have the benefit of lots of hindsight we have 2000 years of hindsight hey they had that hindsight they could look back and things just sort of pieces you know fell into place that's what I'm trying to encourage you to do I don't expect anybody to remember this or really necessarily even you know care to go back and go through it the lesson for tonight is read carefully and don't assume anything is there by accident because it may not be it may not be they may think about it quite differently yes yes it's all it could all be more profitable than you can even imagine you know and again that that to me that that's entertaining is not the right word but it's it's what it's just kind of neat okay I mean that that's kind of a dumb word but it's just kind of neat that there could be so much packed into the description of an object well who cares about you know the bulk and the altar is bigger big deal you called it Harl whoop-dee-doo that's the mountain of God that's why it's a big deal and the Babylonians have one too but ours is better you know we're basically you know poking them in the eye they're just things like that lurking in the background of a lot of passages and it you know it takes work to ferret some of that stuff out but that's why they call it Bible study your Bible studies up Bible readings but a little time on it noodle it a little bit and you know you'll find some really interesting things just trajectories you can just run on and I like it it just makes me appreciate again it makes me appreciate Scripture as something more than a it's more than Shakespeare okay it there's there's just an intelligence behind it I'm not trying to dish it please Shakespeare for there's just an intelligence behind it that you won't find in anything else so anybody have any any questions any now that we're into crazy time crazy talk but there there are images that are common to both now there's the there are points of both the Telegraph the same ideas you know one is order holding chaos and order the other one is again time and history and the cosmos that's a really good question because we're not actually ever really told you know the the scholars assume well it's water what do you do with water you wash you know it there's no past as it ever has them washing in it they're never directed you know it it was just kind of there it's supposed to mean something yeah I think when they lose the temple by definition you know you're gonna lose most of that now you could go back you could you could observe Passover technically see that the regulations for Passover in exodus 12 are actually a little different than they are in Deuteronomy for instance in Exodus 12 you're allowed to hold Passover in your house you're not allowed to do that in Deuteronomy there are there are other differences but that's the most obvious and Deuteronomy presumes that they're in the land and then it becomes a central ceremony for the nation like collectively but before that you could do it in your house so that this is what it's it's an illustration of the kind of thing that Jews did own the temple anymore we want to keep Passover so we're basically going to do the best we can here you know we're going to keep the Passover we're going to hold it the house of a family and all that kind of stuff so you could still do things like that but as far as the sacrificial system until they build the second temple you know which is modified then by Herod second temples roughly 516 BC all the way into the second century and presuming they're allowed to do it they could they could do it but there was a period in between there that they just they didn't have any of that that's when you get the synagogue developed when they're in exile all they can do is teach they can teach scripture they can do Passover in their house they can try to keep you know some of the laws that you're still going to have priests you're not going to really have the regular courses because there's really no point to that because we're all over the temple but you can do some of those things and keep the keep the system alive in as many ways as you can you know without that it's okay yeah if if you're really Orthodox yet you do the best you can without that but but that's why they push yeah yeah so you know for the ultra-orthodox this is why the rebuilding a temple is a crucial thing you know to restore everything they do the best they can now this is pre pita [Laughter] anybody else all right thanks for coming

Channel: Houseform Apologetics

Views: 7,663

Rating: 4.9235668 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Heiser, Dr. Michael S. Heiser, Mike Heiser, dr michael s heiser, Thinking Like an Israelite 4: Chaos and Calendar, Chaos and Calendar, Hebrew Bible, Israelite, thinking like an israelite, Israelite worldview, Israelite Calendar, Jewish Calendar, Calendar, ancient calendar, calendar system, chaos in ancient hebrew text, chaos in hebrew, hebrew language, chaos in judaism, Grace Church Bellingham, gospel, christianity, heiser michael, micheal heiser, dr mike heiser

Id: WJa4xA-KZjU

Length: 62min 48sec (3768 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2018