The Jewish Trinity - Dr Michael Heiser

well that was fair warning because on the one hand what we're gonna do tonight is look at the Old Testament as the title says specifically with the idea of can we look at only the Old Testament and get the idea of the Christian Godhead in it okay without any appeal to the New Testament so on the one hand if you're a believer if you're Christian this is like wow this this should be interesting this is a good news I'm sort of already on board but on the other hand in the process of doing this I do have certain aims as far as why we would bother jumping into the subject and I'm gonna explain those as we go on but in the process of sort of trying to hit those targets and show you how to look at certain Old Testament passages with those targets in mind you're going to see some things that are going to be very new and might even be a little little edgier a little scary like I sort of doubt it tonight but in other weeks that might be more of the case but what you'll see tonight is very useful in a number of ways in terms of apologetics in terms of our theology our doctrine the continuity between the Testaments Jewish evangelism all different sorts of ways that this is going to apply but it's going to be different in some places so with that in mind when I asked about the Old Testament Jewish Godhead the first question that might pop in your head is what's the payoff why do we need to think about this we already have the New Testament the payoff again is going to be Jewish evangelism if you have a friend who's a Jew one of the things that they stumble over the easiest is the idea that if how can you worship Jesus it'd be a monotheist how can I accept the idea that Jesus is God that God is God and not be a heretic okay just you know not be going off the deep end and just giving up something that is essential to the Bible that you claim to believe you got this thing the Old Testament you got the Shema or Israel the Lord our God is one I mean right away that you just have a barrier so we're gonna be looking at that and in success succeeding weeks we're gonna see how once you're sort of over the hurdle of divine plurality okay this is this plural idea which we're gonna get tonight you start to get into an Old Testament doctrine believe it or not this was Jewish theology up until the end of the second century right after the Christian era it used to be pardon the pun kosher and Judaism to believe in what what they call then two powers in heaven - like to Yahweh's not one good and evil both good guys that was normative Judaism until after the Christian era so we'll be hitting that the second week but Mike and little taste of it tonight but we got to get over this divine plurality hurdle before we get to what you could really show a Jewish friend in terms of hey your old testament is not really different than the New Testament it just got to look at it a little bit you know from different angles and you're gonna come out the same place the other is apologetic discussion now in terms of your experience you may have run into certain groups Jehovah's Witnesses would be one Mormonism would be another you might have seen specials on television where academics are talking about Christianity and it's not you know you don't recognize it for the Christianity here familiar with and also sort of weird ideas about Jesus that you might see on TV or here in the radio all of these groups are saying things about Jesus that in the course of the four weeks we're gonna cover here I'm gonna show you from you know the Old Testament or just how to understand the Testaments in tandem how to deal with that now for Jehovah's Witnesses they're they're more famous for denying that Jesus was a deity okay was God in the flesh he's a creative being though Jehovah's Witness Mormons sort of see lots of God's in their Bible and Jesus and Lucifer like brothers so they have many God figures and they're all sort of equal and interchangeable the academics are fond of saying things like you know the New Testament authors the New Testament guys they just sort of made this up about a Trinity or Godhead you won't find this in the Old Testament so they were literally sucking it out of their thumb so why should we pay any attention to them they were aberrant they were they were not consistent or they'll say the New Testament writers use the Old Testament in such a way where they're just using it badly or incorrectly they're reading things into it and again Jesus provision is this whole notion of you know Jesus being either non-existent or some you know odd sort of figure that was saying things about himself and he was just making up there's also biblical continuity an interpretive clarity you're taught the two Testaments are very consistent with each other even if something is fundamentally Christian as a Godhead you will see in the Old Testament you just sort of have to know what you're looking at and what for what we'll cover as well will in some ways clear up a lot of weird passages there are a lot of these between the Testaments and I think we'll get some help there but the big one is contextualized theology and by that I mean this whole thing of interpreting in context everybody talks about this but my question is how serious are you about it because again this is this is sort of a little bit of warning here the local theology did not begin with any of these theologians have all the big names up here and of course the bottom has any theologian you can sort of fill the blank with there are certain things that you need to think like an ancient Israelite to get and we're going to cover some of those tonight and we'll show you how it's valuable no political theology is framed by the world the people who created it and they're not from the Middle Ages they're not from the Reformation era they're not modern there's a lot of odd things going on so to get to these points this is what we're going to cover in succeeding weeks monotheism of course tonight then the two powers and we're going to talk about how Jews interpreted the two powers idea that they see in the Old Testament is they didn't all flock to Jesus okay they had different ideas and then lastly Psalm 82 which will come up tonight as well so understanding Israel's monotheism is the subject for tonight and you might think well what's to understand there's only one God well some things just aren't as simple as they have here specifically many Jews again see a belief in Jesus as God is a problem we need to be able to fit we catch this we need to need to be able to fit the idea of Jesus is God and then God is still there into monotheism somehow that needs to be monotheistic if you're talking to a Jewish friend you got it you got to be able to do that and then we talked about some of the beliefs of scholars other religions and again sort of is your theology invented so these are the problems again just by way of review that we're going to try to address and on the way to doing that we want to start with a monotheism test on the left-hand column here these are common caber terms for God and most of you I would think probably know all of these the numbers next to them are in round numbers how many times you'll see that occur in the Bible in the Old Testament so Elohim a lot 1000l is sort of a shorter form couple hundred times Yahweh the divine name is the most frequently used and then lor is most often in the book of Job but I threw it in here to be consistent so we have four terms for God I want to look at Elohim tonight the top one here now look at this carefully the term Elohim is used to describe this list take a look at the list the God of Israel is naturally Elohim the gods of the nations are called Elohim in fact in this verse first kings 11:33 you get three of them and one of them is a god s which oddly enough Biblical Hebrew does not have a word for God s it still uses the gods of Yahweh's council Psalm 82 one will hit Psalm 82 tonight that will get there now this one you're probably going to be familiar with believe it or not in deuteronomy 32:17 demons the Hebrew word is shady are called Elohim in that verse first samuel 28 remember the story when saul visits the medium at Endor and says hey can you bring up Samuel I want to talk to him because I'm just didn't he big trouble and she doesn't know who he is right away and she goes through whatever imagination she goes through and it works because she says oh no I see an Elohim coming up out of the ground and then Saul asks what does he look like and then she describes you got it that's Samuel and then they have this conversation and Samuel is not too happy with Saul and says you know that comes to pass well it's really curious that you have the deceased human dead called Elohim the last one here angels I have a question mark because it depends on how you take a couple passages and sort of some nitty-gritty things in the text but I would argue that at the very least the angel of the Lord is called Elohim and possibly you get a plural use in Genesis 32 we're not going to worry too much about that tonight next week we'll hit some of that now here's your monotheism test take a look at the list lots of things called Elohim here's the first question up here is there more than one Elohim that is real what exists anybody yes anybody else say us you've got three now four do I hear four you're all looking at me like like my classes look at me like I know there's some trick here what is he okay I would say yes it's kind of obvious because I just gave you the list now here's the problem are you a monotheistic how many say yes are you a monotheistic believe that more than one Elohim and you know these can't be the Trinity demons are two the Trinity last time I checked they weren't deceased human dead I don't think any of our aunts and uncles or departed loved ones are up there the Trinity so we have plural Elohim yep they're right there I see them but I'm a monotheist you see this sort of there's some tension here because we're used to thinking of the term monotheists in a certain way and by the way the way we think of it does not conform to the list that's the problem that's the tension we feel so on the one hand the use of the Hebrew term is really clear all you got to do is look up Elohim in a concordance you're gonna find those verses okay it might take you a while because you've got a few thousand hits to go through but our English translations often obscure what I just showed you here's an example this is First Samuel 28:13 now I have the red line here for a reason because the ESV to the left of the red line that does a really good job of telling you what word the Hebrew you know actually has it uses g.od small G no D I see a god I see Elohim coming up out of the earth these other ones look at what they do with it I see a spirit you know it's just a neutral term you can't divine being' that's not bad spirit ghostly figure oh I mean come on and this last one here I can't quite read spirit now if you were looking at these translations you'd never guess that what you have is Allah here you might think spirit oh maybe it's rule lock does that's the word for spirit what's actually there here's another one deuteronomy 32:17 red lines over here so I think these four translations do a pretty good job with this look at the nasbe over here they sacrifice to demons who were not God good gene the word there is aloha by the way to gods to Elohim whom they have not known so on and so forth so this translation carefully distinguishes that the beings that the Israelites wound up sacrificing to were not God we're not they're the true God but they were other gods you know they should not have been worshiping so these translations do a good job over here now if that isn't a contradictory translation we're contradictory fought I don't know what is they sacrifice to demons which were no gods to gods they had never known like are they aren't they doesn't make any sense and demons that were no gods to gods they had again what's going on there I'm not gonna guess at what's going on the translators mine translators have a tough job but that just really is a very good choice Psalm 82 one again here's our red line psalm of Asaf God has taken his place in the divine council by the way this is Elohim in the midst of the gods this is also a AHIMA except this one is plural he holds judgment so New King James ESV do a pretty good job here we have heavenly beings rulers like Mike with 12 inches that was an attempt at a joke yeah hey rulers and then I this is my favorite right here gods and scare quotes come on it's just your Bible you'll need to put scare quotes away around things so again you see that that you have a problem if you're dependent on English translations and you're not using things like concordance is to sort of get down under the surface a little bit you'd never know yeah it's it's sort of just a hit-or-miss proposition now I think at least part of the reason why these are other verses have this sort of translational difficulty or a problem with the translators like I don't know what I should put here is because we are used to looking at the letters geo and V in that order and thinking of that word in light of a specific and unique set of attributes that's what we're used to doing but that isn't what the biblical writers did with the word because they apply it to you know six different things so that alone should tell you the fact that an inspired biblical writer would use the term Elohim of some you know flunky demon over here or again the spirit of the deceased human dead that alone should tell you that the biblical writer did not attach a specific set of attributes to the word to him it meant something different now again here's our list and these figures these entities are not equal in attributes again obviously an angel is not at the level of the God of Israel none of these are at the level of the God of Israel so it can't be about attributes what a biblical writer would say if you if you if you walk up to a biblical writer and said hey I want to know if you're a monotheistic I want to know if you if you believe that only one he exists he looked at you ago of course not I mean you know haven't you read the stuff we've been producing here you know you go to these passages and this is how we use all of human all sorts of things and then he you know you'd hear him say that and it would be like man I can't fellowship with you you know you're just off limits here you're a heretic if you change the question a little bit that would allow him to say what he really thought he would say something like this Yahweh is if you asked him do you believe in a single unique Elohim in the entire spiritual world do you believe that or not you believe there's one of those and only one or not Issei sure absolutely he's the one we should worship he's the one that's the Creator you know fill in the blank then you start talking about attributes once you get past that point again we're just not used to thinking in these terms what Elohim really needs you need a succinct definition is it's a term that you would use to denote what I call place of residence that is if I called something in Elohim it meant that thing lives over there in the spiritual world if I call you an Elohim that means I believe you are a inhabitant your proper domain is not my world it's the spiritual world if you look at that again all of these are Elohim I just took the list and put them in this sort of little diagram that represents the spiritual world and you have where the Elohim live that's where they're from that's how you identify an inhabitant of that realm a summary to this point here's what I want you to get from where we've gone so far the biblical use of the word Elohim shows us that it's not tied to a specific set of attributes that explains why more than one thing gets described with the term English translations at time obscure that and important point since Elohim is not about attributes the biblical writers were not denying monotheism by using that word to describe other figures they believed were real that were also elevated now if you were thinking this if you understood that this term really refers to the spiritual world something in the spiritual world it undercuts the threat and the problem of a Christian going to a Jew and talking about Jesus as God let's just say Jesus as element along with God the Father is a lie they can handle that that's now they're gonna want to know about attributes for sure you drawing an equation you know R is it like a pecking order or what but they're there over the first hurdle they're over the first hump again for Jews divine plurality language should not be a threat again I've been usually accidentally I've been in rooms that were filled with Jewish people going through this I've told you the story before in grad school I started going through a lot of this stuff especially what I'll cover next week are the two powers of heaven and I could just see that we were having a communication problem and so I said do I need to repeat anything do I need to go over this again and a little old lady in the front row said my rabbi never told me this and I saw you're Jewish there's some some guy in the back yells out we're all Jewish you know there's like 50 people there like well I didn't know that would have been handy you start looking for the exits but they were they were really nice about it but I had no idea but this was a big deal because if you start leading them by the hand and getting them over this sort of threat of do you know plural language for God they can sort of go with you to the next step now let's move on from this point what about Yahweh the God of Israel and these other beings will say a little bit about that before I do that you have any questions to this point and we could stop for questions yes yes he's quoting Psalm 82 he is quoting the psalm directly and exactly he's caught its verse 6 to be more precise in the 4th week we're gonna spend almost the whole session on Psalm 82 because I'll just Telegraph it this way the common view of Jesus quotation of psalm 82:6 it's in John 10 34 if we wanted to look at it is that Jesus and the rest of the Jews in the audience thought that the Elohim the gods of psalm 82:6 were just people I don't believe that at all okay I think Jesus understood his Old Testament and he understood Mennella he meant the issue is if you just say its people what it amounts to is that Jesus is saying hey look guys I know you're upset with me I know I've been walking around here you know doing amazing things and and when people are saying you know it's the Messiah the son of God God's come to earth all this stuff I haven't told him to shut up so I know you're upset with me and I just said I and my father are one a few verses back but you know what you need to let me do that because I get to call myself God just like anybody else how does that make any sense if Jesus thinks the gods of Psalm 82 are people that's what that's what the end that's what commentators have him saying I can do it because you guys can do it makes no sense at all but if he's thinking of them as divine beings it's a different story especially because four verses earlier he said I and my father are one and right after he quotes it what else is he going to say God is in me and I'm in him okay he's going to say look your own Bible has divine plurality language in it take a look you're supposed to know that now you should learn from that that other non human beings are called Elohim so you shouldn't be throwing anything at me for that but you know what I'm more than just one of these Elohim in the second Yahweh's Council of Psalm 82 I'm him I'm the lord of the council so you better watch what you're saying okay two entirely different ways of looking at it and I'm gonna walk you through it on the fourth week but that's a that was that's a significant verse you know so Drive you know home the point that he's trying to make to reinforce what he said in two other occasions in the same chapter so any other questions okay well let's jump in here we'll hit Psalm 82 a little bit for the rest of tonight I want to sort of focus on two points or have these two points in your mind one is again that Yahweh while Yahweh is an Elohim and no other Elohim Yahweh that means Yahweh is inherently superior he is in command he is ontologically fancy theological word there ontology means what a thing is he by definition is superior to anything else in the spiritual world and of course our world too so that's one thought to keep in the back of our minds the other one is this sonship language that you will see associated with certain Elohim in the spiritual world gets rightly applied to divine beings because God created all those other divine beings not only humans without threatening monotheism so the first hurdle you have to sort of cross is this idea of again especially if you're if you have someone who's like like a Jewish person really devoted to the Old Testament and the Shema it's like I shouldn't even be using phrases like plural gods or plural Elohim because I God is gonna strike me down because the Lord our God is one we that's a hurdle we can get over now let's talk about since divine plurality doesn't interfere with monotheism let's talk about this divine Sun idea because to a Jew who is the son of God to a Jew there are two candidates in the Old Testament this is like Old Testament final jeopardy here okay who is the son of God in the Old Testament who gets called my son Israel you know Hosea 11:1 out of Egypt I have called my son okay referring back to the Exodus who else the other passage for that is when when Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh and they request to you know be have permission to leave Egypt you know thus says the Lord what my people go so that my son can go out in the desert and worship me again it's a corporate reference but what's the other candidate who does God call my son the King Israelite King there's some Psalms to that effect so if you're a Jew and you know your Old Testament you're thinking okay you know all this divine sons stuff you know I don't know about that because I get the divine plurality thing but Jesus is saying he's the son of God he's not Israel and he's not the king I mean he's just this like carpenter guy so I don't know if I can buy that that seems to contradict this whole you know divine plurality thing that Jesus could be divine well no it doesn't because we have passages like Psalm 82 where the same language is applied to these beings again these are just baby steps you know to get a Jewish person to think about divine plurality from their own Bible without use of the New Testament God has taken his place in the divine council you know you have UCC you have God in blue here the column here in blue we have Elohim is the term this is singular this is a good translation so the ESV we know it's singular because the verb it goes with taken his place is a singular and it saw is a singular participle I mentioned that because Elohim as a word is what grammarians call morphologically plural that is the shape the spelling of the word is plural if you know a little bit of Hebrew and other words nouns that end in em or plural Elohim Fleur okay so the shape of the word is plural but in most cases throughout the whole Old Testament the meaning of the term is actually singular you say why do you know Mike you're just saying that because you want to say that you know a bla bla bla bla bla no actually there's this thing we call grammar I know it's boring but it's really useful on occasion Elohim is actually a word like in English dear de ER or sheep if I walked up to you and said sheep more than one or just one you're like other than thinking who is this crazy man you're thinking oh I don't know it's just a word put it in a sentence if I say the Sheep is lost how many grammar tells you that if I say the sheep are lost more than one Hebrews the same way you have to look at what the noun is partnered with to tell you if it's singular or plural okay just like English now if you go to the second half of the verse so here Elohim has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the here we have another blue column in the midst of the Elohim he holds judgment now this one has to be plural because this nasty thing called a preposition tells us that it's plural you can't be in the midst of one and of course our first reaction as Christians is oh this must be the Trinity trust me in Psalm 82 you do not want the Trinity because if you read the rest of the psalm what happens to the Elohim God says you guys are jerks I mean they they get blasted for being corrupt and evil you don't want the Trinity in Psalm 82 it just it's real just really bad theology to do that so here we have in one verse Elohim two times one singular one plural but again depending on the translation you're using you just yeah you may not notice that at all let me go back here the other just just again we'll spend more time and Psalm 82 on in week four but I do get a lot of pushback for this Psalm 82 business this is sort of where I live I'm gonna really impress you now I'd say this was the focus of my dissertation and it was this is like my favorite subject but I get a lot of pushback on it and I understand why one of the things you'll hear is well this counsel this again they must just be people you know then somebody will quote you know Jesus in John chapter 10 not realizing that that undermines his deity in the passage well really it's not because if you go over to Psalm 89 here we have the is amazing just look at this you go back to Psalm 82 absolutely literal felony here we have the heavenly beings it's been a a lien a lien is the plural L singular God plural God's sons of the gods or sons of God but here we get heavenly beings same translation you know a couple Psalms over a why I don't know but here we have again a reference to the assembly council council the Holy Ones heavenly beings and guess where the council is it's in the skies so the last time I checked human beings don't like rule the cosmos of the nations in the skies okay it's a reference again to the spiritual world it's this idea that God is a heavenly host and they work for him and they better do what they're told because if they don't they're going to get punished and it's not terribly difficult back to Psalm 82 here's the verse that is quoted in John 10 God says to the elohim of his counsel i said you are gods elohim sons of the most high all of you nevertheless like men you shall die and you don't want the trinity here okay it's just not a good idea nevertheless like men you shall die and fall like any prince again this is a this is a declaration that because of your corrupt administration of what i gave you to do ruling the nation's as will find out because you did not do a good job and part of their failure was having men allowing humans to worship them instead of the true god we find out from deuteronomy because of that i'm going to strip you of your immortality you see I'm bigger than you are I need you not the other way around I gave you life and I can take it now here's the passage that's sort of the springboard for what in the world Psalm 82 is talking about Deuteronomy 32 8 and 9 and verse 43 you'll notice I have two translations here an IV ESV 1 says sons of Israel in fact most of your English translations will have sons of Israel the other one says sons of God now let's look at the verse when the most high gave the nations their inheritance when he divided of all humankind all mankind when did that happen when did the nations get divided Tower of Babel Genesis 11:1 through 9 when God did that he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel and here we have according to the number of the sons of God ESV is one of the few translations that will have this that is the reading in the Dead Sea Scrolls it's also the reading in the Septuagint so the oldest manuscripts of the of the Hebrew Bible we have read sons of God in this passage now I don't want to get into this too far we'll do it in the fourth week what the story is here is that God if you remember back to the Tower of Babel episode we get a little more detail here God looks down humanity is not dispersing as he had commanded them to do he goes down confuses their languages and splits everybody up and then they disperse the chapter prior to that Genesis 10 we have the table of Nations it gives a list of the nations that are you know are associated with Genesis 11 what happens here is God says okay you don't want to listen to me that we thought that the flood would sort of take care of this but it didn't you don't want to listen to me I'm not going to be your God anymore I'm going to split you up I'm going to put you under the authority of lesser divine beings sons of God who work for me and I'm going to create a people of my own from scratch that people was Israel Israel does not exist at the time of the Tower of Babel because God hasn't called Abraham yet and Israel's not listed in the table of Nations for that reason this is why it says he divides that peoples up according the number of the sons of God but the lords portion is his people Jacob also known as Israel is his allotted heritage so this is the story of the rest of the Old Testament in a nutshell this is the beginning of the antagonism between Israel and everybody else and between God and other deities other Pantheon this is the Old Testament explanation for why the other nations have their own Pantheon it's why they're messed up because God punished them by abandoning them disinheriting them now we know from the very next chapter when God calls Abram what does God say about the nation's does he forget them are they just debt made for the rest of human history no he says when he calls Abram he says through you all nations of the earth will be blessed ok so he hasn't forgotten them but they are under punishment so again I don't want to get too far into that here are just a list of references where you get this son language right here the B'nai sons of God bene Elohim Bonet aleem in the Old Testament and coming back to the Shema is all of this a violation of the Shema because again we're trying to get people again specifically I've been highlighting that the Jewish person here over the hump of looking at their own Bible their own Old Testament you know saying it's ok to the recognized divine plurality because Elohim just talks about where up being it lives and where he's from has nothing to do with attributes and some of those Elohim are our sons that we have this sonship language going on it's not a violation of the Shema I have 5 translations here of the Shema because the Shema is like the most difficult verse in the Bible to translate you think well look at that it's just a few words what's the hard about that in Hebrew there are no verbs there isn't a single verb in Deuteronomy 6:5 you have to supply it so any one of these can work dramatically but they all have something in common the Lord is our God our God Yahweh is our God now that makes sense in view of divine plurality because the Israelites believed in a whole spiritual world populated with other Elohim and in fact God had punished the nations and some of those Elohim had become corrupt and they were demanding and receiving worship from other peoples instead of the true God and God said look I'm gonna bring you out of Egypt but you stay away from the other gods you stay out of their territory you don't intermarry with them you stay away from them because he knows the threat is real again it's the whole Old Testament just in a nutshell this is why in the Old Testament you get this sense of certain areas were owned or under the domain of different deities this comes through in the biblical so I've shared some of this before in other sessions we've done but one of my favorite stories of this is we actually just hit one in Samuel we're going through 1st Samuel you know when they the Ark of the Covenant goes out and the Ark is captured by the Philistines and they take it back to Dagon temple remember the story and then date you know they go in the next day and day guns flat in his face his arms are hacked off with all this stuff yeah I love the description but but what's even better about it is when they when they prop him back up you get this line in the narrative that says and this is why to this day the priests of Dagon don't walk across the threshold what does that mean it's because it was Yahweh's turf so when they go into the temple of Dagon good morning Dagon oh I need something on the other side of the room I'm just gonna like step over here and I'm gonna walk around because in their thinking yahweh owns that ground because he defeated Dagon that is holy ground to the God of Israel Nahum in the leper he gets healed miraculously by Elijah can't pay the prophet and he finally gives up and says okay I got to go back home now can I have your permission maybe some of you remember this what does Naaman ask Elisha to take back home with him he wants to he wants to load two mules with dirt why would he ask for dirt this is why he'd asked for dirt because he knows he even says now I know that the Lord he is God and he says now look I'd like to take some dirt back with me because it's part of my job you know I got this King and he's old so that like I have to take him into the temple of Ramon his God to worship and so he's old I got to take him by the arm and we couldn't be sort of shuffle I always think at in conwy I know I'm dating myself here but the old Taylor guy we're gonna shuffle along here and when he like boughs to Dagon you know I probably I might have to like go down with him because I'm hanging on to the guy he's just all but I'd like some dirt to take with me it's protection okay it's I don't know if we're not told does he kind of like sprinkle song like okay I'm I'm safe now I mean the temple of Ramon but I got I got this real is really dirt with me I got Yahweh dirt with me or is he just gonna hold some or put it around his neck but a little bag but in his PACU knows but to him it's cosmic geography this is Yahweh's territory and I'm taking it with me I can't live here got a job got kids back home with all that stuff I'm an important man but I'm taking dirt with me so what does he lie she say yeah it'll work sure good idea go ahead take all you can Gary yeah we got more of that you know you know so you get this again the sense that Yahweh is our God this is what the Shema means the Shema is not a denial of all this other stuff we've looked at there's a context for it yeah it's just not one we're used to you might be thinking what about statements like there's none beside me unlike me they're not denials of the existence of other Elohim there are statements of Yahweh's in comparability I I'll just point out some of these denials are in Deuteronomy 32 verse 39 they're in Deuteronomy 4 which is the parallel you drownded me for 19 and 20 is the parallel to Deuteronomy 32 8 and 9 you get two denials statements in Deuteronomy 4 verses 35 and 39 well what's going on there I've you know Deuteronomy 32 said the demons are gods and they must be real because we can't deny the demons are real and I know you got this none beside me stuff what's going on I'm so confused well if you think of them as statements of incomparability there actually is no problem now I here's a list of places and I want to focus in on these two these are all denial statements and their formula if you can read a little he broom right down here the city of Babylon says there is none beside me there is none like me and over here in Zephaniah it's nineveh that says that exactly the same phrases a couple of these phrases over here that are in the denial statements now here's the question is is Babylon really saying hey I just want everybody to know that there are no other cities in the world just me no that's absurd what I'm gonna do is travel a couple miles and you run into one the whole point is that Babylon is saying I'm the best none can compare to me and that's what the denial statements are about so by way of ending summary a couple of thoughts to take away we have this list here again the Shema not being a contradiction to divine plurality firming the uniqueness of Yahweh divine plurality is not inconsistent with monotheism and it paves the way for the next step which is next week of explaining how Christianity grew out of Judaism now we're gonna see next week that the Old Testament identifies one particular Elohim as Yahweh along with Yahweh I'm going to show you passages where you have God and this other figure in the same passage and they're indistinguishable and and some of there are some things that you sort of miss in the English translation that are pretty dramatic to sort of Telegraph that what you have in the Old Testament is you have Yahweh invisible and Yahweh visible and sometimes they're in the same scene and sometimes the visible one is the Yahweh you think of other times the visible one's the other Yahweh and you say well that's confusing there's like to Yahweh's and what is but isn't Yahweh yeah that's exactly the way we talk about Jesus if you think about it Jesus is God but he isn't he's he he's God he's not the father and the Old Testament has those categories already in it okay they they were tracking mentally with the idea of to you know we'll get to three as well but they're tracking on to on the one hand it's an easy shift to accept the eye for a Jew intellectually to accept the idea okay we got Yahweh and we got this other yeah okay I know I know what you're talking about the other time it was a life altering life-threatening decision to turn your back on Judaism and become one of these Christian people because you had to believe that Jesus was the second one the co-equal second person that was a huge step but they had the categories already in their head now I wanted to make a few comments about scholars the next time you see a TLC special or a PBS special or I know this but you know whatever fill in the blank BBC and they talk about how you know this New Testament stuff you know I just think they were making that up or the early Christians wouldn't even have known what they were talking about this Jesus is God business and Paul made that up and then Paul in the early church they were actually disagreed on their theology next time you hear about that just kind of smile to yourself and say you're just not too bright okay you don't know your old testament context for the New Testament very well dr. so-and-so do you because you don't you don't you either have to be ignorant of it or you just have to deceive your audience and not give it to them and that's usually what's going on I think we've hit this before the last point again this is but isn't Yahweh thinking again that's what I want you to sort of be tracking on for next time so a teaser last slide I'm not you know some of you will know this because you've heard me bring this up before others this will be new to you there's something odd about these two verses don't guess that up is I'm not going to tell you if you're right the first one is a little easier than the second one there's something odd that's going on in these two verses and I'll be referencing those next week when we hit the two powers idea I don't have any problem telling you that tonight and don't take this like the next two weeks will be less interesting but what we're gonna what we're going to cover tonight is my favorite thing to do in lectures this is my favorite topic because I think this is probably the most easily transferable component of the four weeks at least in terms of importance to someone who just hasn't had their head and all this stuff like I have and that is something as centrally fundamentally Christian Christological has an idea like the deity of Christ actually has very strong roots in the old test and I know you've had Inklings of that before you've probably read something or heard something about Jesus in the Old Testament and those sorts of things but I'm going to show you tonight a number of places where if you just have your your sense is sort of tuned to what you're looking at I think you're going to be struck by the the Godhead of the Old Testament there's a there's a Tunis that's very easy to see we're gonna go through how you know for lack of a better term by NAT Arianism okay - how that's evident in the Old Testament and I'm going to use that to trickle over into three and then next week we're going to talk about how Jews before Jesus looked at what I'm going to show you tonight and then also how Christians parsed things so you can get an idea of what the discussion was in the first century before the New Testament was even written about the Old Testament and a Godhead because that's what they were talking about they were getting it somewhere prior to Jesus coming to earth beginning his ministry and prior to a New Testament ever even existing and so the people that God used to write the New Testament they're not just getting this out of the ether it's not all new revelation okay they're being taught either you know directly or directed or they've had in Paul's case a lot of schooling they're looking back at their Old Testament and they're seeing Jesus in all sorts of ways and this one is particularly important because of again the Christian idea that Jesus is God incarnate so with that in mind let's jumped in here and hope my my thing works if it doesn't we'll just use the button let's use the button last week just to review a little bit by way of summary that the thoughts I wanted you to take away from the session was the divine plurality did not conflict with monotheism and again to a Jew that was a big deal for obvious reasons so that thought from last week heading into this week when we get this Godhead idea I'm hoping that you'll see that the Jewish mind let me a Jew who was really concerned about his faith that he or she could hear the claims of the Apostles and hear this idea that Jesus was born of a virgin he was God incarnate that they had some place mentally to put that where it made sense and they didn't feel that they were violating monotheism we also said Yahweh was unique among Elohim we talked about Elohim last week how the term was not attached to a set of attributes that's why the biblical writers could use it of a whole assortment of things one of those Elohim was Yahweh and he was again my phrase I like he was species unique there was none like him in terms of what he is and what he could do yeah no that's just standard Trinitarian theology but what's different about it is I'm getting you to think about it in in very more ancient terms than your New Testament and the third thing that we mentioned was that one of the Elohim besides Yahweh I mentioned this at the very end is going to get identified with Yahweh let me just say that again one of the other Elohim because one of the figures that elohim could get applied to was an angel one of the elohim is going to get identified with Yahweh himself now if you're following that trajectory right away you have this feeling of well there's two but they're sort of the same because they're identified with each other and and one of them's Yahweh's so the other one must in some sense be our way as well that's where we're gonna camp tonight so I showed you this slide about a practical sense you know why this is important and we covered the first options so tonight second week Judaism's two powers in heaven doctor now I say Judaism because Judaism Jewish theology before there ever was Christianity Jewish theology had the notion that there were two powers of heaven that's not my term that's a term you will find in rabbinic writings the second power the lesser Yahweh the second God the second Yahweh you you actually find this in Jewish rabbinic writings and it has a context we're gonna go into what that context is so the Israelite God had the Old Testament precursor to Christianity's belief in Jesus is God this Shema of course we looked at last week here o Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one so we have a Jew that would affirm that and then we get to John 1:18 and we read this no one has ever seen God the only God can catch the wording here the only God only kind of suggests one who is at the father's side now wait a minute how can you have the only God at the father's side isn't that - because one of them is the father the other one isn't but they're both God and this one over here's the only just look at the terminology that's being used right in the text the only God who is at the father's side has made him known so it's this one over here has made the father known but there's somehow they're both at the same level and the the peripheral one is actually called the only God here so how in the world kind of Jew how could a first century Jew and that's what John was how can he affirm the faith of his his ancestors the Shema God of Israel the Lord our God this one how can he affirm that and then believe that Jesus was also God because Jesus was worshipped I mean think of thing about what a conflict that is for a Jew did you okay you say Jesus died on the cross for my sins and I accept that he's the Messiah and we're gonna sing about him we're gonna worship Him we're gonna do all the things to him that we were doing to the God of Israel but that's okay because it's not a violation of monotheism can you can you sort of feel what they're up against you know intellectually huh how do we do this how do we parse this I gave you a little homework last weekend here's what we'll start answering the question how in the world could they do they digest this one of those passages was Genesis 1924 now did anybody from last week figure out what's odd about this verse and you read it you read like a Jewish translation right well that's fascinating because both of them are the divine name but you're what you're telling me is your translation actually translates them differently correct okay that tells you right there that there's a tension because if you look at the verse you have Yahweh twice Yahweh rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfurous fire from Yahweh out of heaven and so Ryan's translation actually reflects well we got to do something we got to distinguish them because it's just kind of freaky that we have Yahweh two times Yahweh doing something you know sending something that came from Yahweh the wording is just odd and rabbinical writers writers in the intertestamental period noticed this and this became part I'm going to show you a lot of other passages tonight this became part of their compulsion to somehow come up with this two powers and have an idea so that they could deal with their Bible they do their Bible really well okay they didn't miss this they didn't miss the next one either what's odd about this one nobody pick it out take a guess it revolves around that fascinating subject of the use of person and number in grammar isn't that fascinating okay now watch when you begin with the first person I have wrought destruction among you and we know from the end of it that the speaker is Yahweh so he says you know Yahweh says I have wrought destruction among you as when God God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah you'll actually see this a number of times Yahweh using both of the first person and the third person it just sounds odd it sounds like there's some two thing going on but it's just kind of weird like what do we do look at this one I didn't give you this one last week this is Abraham and Isaac story God tested Abraham and said to him verse two take your son offer him as a burnt offering we get down to verse 11 but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said Abraham Abraham and he said Here I am and he said don't you know don't hurt the child for now I know that you fear God seeing it you have not withheld your only son from me okay here's the highlighting if you want to look at coloring look at the inner change God speaking about himself and then he speaks about himself as though he's somebody else first person third person interchange again this is not that rare in the Old Testament I've just shown you a few examples but again rabbis know their text really well and they see this going on and so we got to do something what is going on this is a book if you are interested in the subject from a purely Jewish perspective and I put this in here because if you do have Jewish friends I told you last week and especially tonight if you're trying to do it you know evangelism you're trying to get your Jewish friend to at least consider okay Christian theology Christianity with the claims of Jesus the gospel they're big problems are this whole monotheism thing and then the status of Jesus is God well if you want to just give them something they don't believe you I don't believe that this used to be part of Jewish theology this is the book right here now it's an academic book two powers in heaven Alan Segal is a Jew he just passed away last year he was a Jew when he wrote it he thinks the two powers idea is heretical but he's a scholar and he says I know we used to believe this and so he made it part of his life's work to chronicle the presence of Godhead thinking in Judaism okay prior to the second century AD other things now we're gonna go through through matically and I'm gonna I'm gonna introduce you to some biblical theological concepts that dovetail with this sort of tunas going on so we looked at this weird interchange of person and number but we're gonna get more specific here I think the easiest way to start is with the angel of the Lord the angel of Yahweh and then something referred to as the name now if you're a Jew today or if you know a Jew today you do not when you read your Hebrew Bible when you come across the tetragrammaton the four consonants special name of God why HWH you do not say if you're really sort of conscious or strict about it you do not say Yahweh you use a substitute often it is what was in Ryan's translation I don't I that's very common the other option is Hashem which is the name a shout the name is it kind of interesting I went through Hebrew Bible program at Wisconsin and all of our professors except one that the time was Jewish and and one of them insisted that we say how shall the other one didn't care so it just depends on here you're out but this is still going on today let's look at some passages Exodus 3 this is the burning bush who's in the bush is the question well believe it or not the angel is in the bush the angel of Yahweh an angel of Hashem appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush this is Moses and Moses says wow this is pretty spectacular I gotta go see what's going on in verse 4 when Yahweh saw that he had turned the side now here's the question are there two looks like there's two there and an even more subtle question is if the writer cared about there being two in the same sacred presence bush he could have distinguished them in some way to make sure the reader knew that one was up here and one was you know he could have done something but he doesn't just lets it go Exodus 23 this is a crucial passage I am sending an angel this is God speaking to Moses I'm sending an angel before you to guard you on the way they've just gone through the Red Sea this is Exodus 23 we've got the law now we got to get on the road get on the way we got to make preparations to go to the land I'm gonna send an angel to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I have made ready pay heed to him and obey Him do not defy him for he will not pardon your offenses right away that's kind of unusual because I thought only God partner why won't he pardon your offenses since my name is in him that's that's just an odd thing to say it's an odd thing to say to us to them a Jew reading this would know instantly that what this is saying is my presence my essence me I'm gonna do the angel thing so that you can see them all right so I don't just like popping it out and audible sounds you're gonna be able to see my presence leading you to the promised land Deuteronomy 12 we get a lot of this language about the name this is very common I'm only going to show you one example basically when they get into the land God told Moses to tell Israel look don't worship the Lord your God in the manner like you know the pagans do look only to the sight that the Lord your God will choose amidst all your tribes as his habitation to establish his name there now when they get into the land ultimately what is going to be the place where God chooses to establish his name his presence Jerusalem and specifically the temple now it takes a while to get the temple and we have the presence of God dwelling at other places but even before even before you have Jerusalem the point was you don't start making altars everywhere okay I'm gonna be one place you know with the tabernacle the Ark of the Covenant the whole bit but ultimately I'm gonna choose a place to put my name that's where I'm going to dwell now the point is not again just just to stress the point God isn't telling Moses now when you when you decide on this spot or when I tell you what spot it is I want you to you know go there and I want you to take out a real you know indelible marker make it a sharpie and scratch yhw H on it and we're cool no it has nothing to do with the consonants themselves it's about the presence of God he's not talking about spelling and about you know the inscription itself was talking about his presence now elsewhere you get again this idea of the name just being another way to refer to Yahweh himself may the Lord answer you in the day of trouble may the name of the God of Jacob protect you it's very transparent there in Psalm 20 some trust in chariots summon horses we trust in the name of the Lord our God and again I don't want to be silly but I think I have to make the point it's not like the Israelites are out there in battle and they see the army coming toward I mean are ready to you know slaughter them and they're gonna say oh yeah well I'm gonna run out there and I'm gonna write yhw H cross over that well you're gonna get trampled okay again the point is not the consonance it's not the name itself it's the presence of God Hashem the name is another way to refer to God himself so if that's the case when God says to Moses you better listen to this angel because my name okay that's me in human form second Samuel six I like this one too because translations just do a number on this one David gathered again all the chosen men of Israel 30,000 this is when they're gonna move the ark David arose and went with all the people who were with him from Lu da to bring up from there the Ark of God which is called the name the name of the Lord now in Hebrew you'll notice Shem occurs twice and so the translation I have here is a good translation if you look at what the ESV does it does with it called by the name of the Lord of hosts it really obscures the whole point the point is that the ark itself was referred to as Hashem why would that be why would you look at the box you know with the cherubim on top and look at it and say a sham today why would they do that because that's where God lived okay I mean you know to put it that way that's why they called the cherubim his throne he who dwells between the cherubim that's that where he is that's where his house is that's where he lives where God lives he is you know again this idea that this object the Ark of the Covenant localized the presence of God so it's very natural that they would look at it and say Hashem that's the spot right there and it was associated with the presence of God sometimes the name gets described as a person behold the name of the Lord comes from afar in blazing wrath with a heavy burden his lips full of fury his tongue like devouring fire again anthropomorphic language applied to Yahweh in this case but the name who is Yahweh Exodus 23 again we come back here again to make the point this idea that the name is in the angel is the Old Testament way of saying that this angel you're looking at is Yahweh his essence his presence in visible human form now we're gonna look at some other in a moment you know we're we're gonna really sort of twist your mind about this but I want to hit this first and Deuteronomy for this this passage here might not seem relevant to what we just said but you have this one Deuteronomy 4 and then Exodus 33 and judges 2 so we're going to take these in tandem Exodus 23 we had a name in an angel what was the angels job God says to Moses I'm going to send an angel before you to what to lead you to the promised land okay but here it's his own presence that takes them out of Egypt to the land here it's my presence here it's the angel well which is it Mike you know who led you know the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land was it Yahweh was it the angel was it his presence the answer is yes hey it's all of them and they're all different but they're the same Genesis 30:1 a little bit more about the angel because even before Exodus 23 you get this figure this angel the Molokai deny the Molokai way the angel of the Lord this is Genesis 31 this is the part of the Jacobs story when he's going through the little kind of weird experiment about the his flock with Laban then the angel of God said to me in the dream Jacob and I said Here I am and he said lift up your eyes and see all the goats the mate with a flogger stripes bottle the model for I've seen all that Laban is doing you to you you know lately was cheating him and look at what the angel says in verse 13 oh the angel says this I am the God of Bethel now Bethel was where Jacob had met Yahweh earlier his journey and so when he has the angel you know there in front of him he says I'm the God of Bethel to the reader that should do something in your head that should help you associate God with this particular angel I am the god of the fell this is probably my I love Psalm 82 but next to Psalm 82 this this might be my favorite verse in the Old Testament it's just really cool this is where Jacob is blessing the sons of Joseph but Israel Jacob stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim said remember Joseph had not ephraim and manasseh he puts his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head though he was the younger and his left hand on manassas head thus crossing his hands although Manasseh was the firstborn and he blessed Joseph again through his two sons saying I want to look at with Jacob says the God in whose ways my father's Abraham and Isaac walked God there is hot elohim v god the god who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day got an idea of who he's talking about now he's gonna throw you a curveball the angel who has redeemed here's the kicker may he bless these lads the verb in Hebrew is singular it is not plural which one did he have in mind was it God or was it the angel the answer is yes okay the writer fuses the two characters because it's six of one and a half a dozen of another okay is the angel is but isn't Yahweh he is Yahweh he's because yot the essence is in this angel but yet they're they're two different characters because they were both in the bush again you get the feeling of this too and yet one two and yet one two and yet one sounds suspiciously like Christology doesn't it the way the New Testament writers are talking about Jesus and the father judges six now here you're gonna see you're gonna see both characters in the same scene again this is the Gideon narrative an angel of Yahweh came and sat under the terebinth at Oprah so remember who's under the tree the terrible tree that's the angel which belonged to joash the obvious right his son Gideon was then beating out wheat inside a winepress in order to keep it safe from Midianites the aims of the Lord appeared to him and said to him Yahweh is with you so right away you have the angel referring to Yahweh the third person there's a distinction Yahweh is with you valiant warrior Gideon said him please my lord if you always with us why are you why are we in this mess Yahweh turned to him which is really interesting language and said go in this might of yours now wait a minute wait a minute Yahweh Turk wait a minute let's go back a slide I thought the angel appeared to him what wasn't it wasn't he talking to the angel or now Yahweh turns doing well which is it Mike is it the angel of Yahweh well just take it back you know cuz they're basically the same they're the same but they're different so Yahweh turns to him and says going this might have yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian you know I'm sending you go down to verse 16 Yahweh said to him I'll be with you so on and so forth then he Gideon said to him we can't really tell there if he's talking to the angel or Yahweh if I found favor in your eyes and show me a sign that it's you who speaks with me please do not depart from here until I come and bring you out my presence said it before you and he said again we don't really know which one it is he said okay I'll stay put until you get back so Gideon goes and he makes his little present and he brings it to him under the terebinth tree okay who was at the tree that was the angel so that helps orient this a little bit the angel of God said to him take the meat unleavened cakes put them on the rock and the angel of Yahweh reaches out the tip of the staff that was in his hand touches the meat and the unleavened cakes and you know fire consumes it and then the angel of Yahweh vanished from his sight okay I got something else to do thanks for the that little little gift there and isn't it interesting that it's the angel who accepts it thank you I'm out of here I've got another task to do and then eight you know Gideon's kind of wakes up and says whoa boy that was the angel of Yahweh Gideon said alas O Lord God for now I have seen the angel the Lord face to face you know I'm scared but Yahweh said to him I always still there peace be to you do not fear you they're both there one leaves one trunks you get these other parts where they're blurred so there again there's this Co identification but then there's this distinction this is two and two and yet one two and yet one two and yet one idea so to summarize to this point the Hebrew Bible contains clear suggestions of a god that is Yahweh sort of as being - but yet one figure two figures but yet wanted and again as a Jewish reader as a Jewish writer and thinker you're looking at your text going okay how do we like articulate this theological be careful here but yet this is in our Bible can't like just pretend it's not there the name is another way of referring to Yahweh as Jews do today the name is within the angel and the angel is therefore Yahweh in human form at least visually in some sense so again we've got this - but yet other items besides the angel the word this is not an exclusively New Testament concept because when I put the word up I know what you're thinking John 1:1 in the beginning was the word the Word was God the Word was with God the word became flesh right John got that somewhere okay that just didn't pop into his head he didn't get it from Greek philosophers and all this other stuff that you read in the academic literature he gets it from his Old Testament and you know next week will he had there was some other Jesus thinking the same thing that John could have looked at too let's stick with the Old Testament now Genesis 15 after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision and I would suggest to you that visions are things that you see isn't that profound visions are things you see a I'm pointing it out because a lot of people a lot of commentators will go right by this in their commentary and start talking about Abraham hearing something in his head or just a voice no it was a vision visions are things you see word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision don't be afraid Abraham I'm your shield your reward will be very great first Samuel 3 again we all know the story of Samuel but do we do we really notice what's going on now the young man samuel was ministering to the Lord to Yahweh under Eli the word of the Lord was rare in those days it's not just that not everybody had a Bible you know hey that was basically like everybody didn't have a Bible there was like one copy of this and it was with the Ark of the Covenant so you know that would be the understatement of the year it's not what it's talking about it's not it's also not talking about hey it was really unusual for people to hear voices around them or in their heads just like the last time this is gonna be something visual just watch the word of the Lord was rare in those days there was no frequent vision the text is very clear here now Samuel had not yet experienced the Lord why what does that mean because the word there is again the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him same word back in this you know eight God revealed himself to Abram the division the Lord called Samuel again the third time that we know the story you know this is how it starts out and Samuel hears this voice and he doesn't know what to do you know he thinks it's Eli so he gets up and he runs over to you I know it's not me and they Eli finally figures it out and says okay if it happens again you say speak Lord for you under servant your servant is here right here so the Lord calls him again the third time the Lord came and stood again this is the language of at least visibility or perhaps embodiment the Lord stood he didn't like float around in his head okay he stood calling it as at other times Samuel Samuel Samuel said speak for your servant hears and then he gets the bad news about Eli you go down to the rest to the end of the chapter look at what you read Samuel grew and the Lord Yahweh was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground and all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord and the Lord appeared again at Shiloh which is where they were the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by or as what this passage and the other one shows you is that the idea the Old Testament has the idea of the Word of God being visible a visible person who was God that's an Old Testament idea Jeremih one didn't even Jeremiah one even ups the ante a little bit he says this is Jeremiah's call the word of the Lord came to me saying before I formed you in the womb I knew you then I said ah Lord God he addresses the word as Yahweh Elohim no ambiguity here the word is Yahweh truly I do not know how to speak from only a boy but the Lord Yahweh said to me don't say I'm only a boy for you shall go to all to whom I send you then the Lord Yahweh put out his hand it's the language of embodiment puts out his hand and touched my mouth and the Lord said to me now I put my words the Word of God who is Yahweh puts forth his hand and touches the Prophet sounds suspiciously like divine embodiment okay when the New Testament writers are thinking about what Jesus said and did they parse it by stuff like this okay they know the word became flesh well yeah le vine flashback here - apparently I mean you can touch them you know people and there are all sorts of passages that just sort of zoom into their minds that the spirit uses for them to articulate the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth they're getting it from somewhere another one this one's a little obscure but it has a real impact especially if Jesus trial which I'll just I'll summarize it now but I'll show it to you next week he who rides the clouds some some such language like that the one who rides the clouds or rides through the heavens or something like that this was a known title in the Old Testament world the ancient Near Eastern world for bail bail the enemy God I bring that up because nobody thought bail was sort of a sub level divine being bail was a big deal bail was everywhere they couldn't Israel couldn't go anywhere without running into bail the bail call lasted into the Roman period she just was ubiquitous everybody knew who was this is a passage from Riddick literature where it has Bale called the charioteer of the clouds now why do I bring this up because what the Old Testament writers did on occasion is they would say okay we got this Bale problem we need to make a theological statement we need to make a put a theological land a line in the sand and say look Yahweh is God Yahweh is the one to worship or not Bale one of the ways they would do that was they would take wines out of things like the Bale cycle muga Riddick literature kay and I literally oh they would lift it put it into their what they're doing in the Old Testament and then they would change the name put y'all with to make the point they'll was the the god of Agriculture the God of rain the God that gave fresh crops the God that kept you alive because you got to eat and it has to rain and so the famous confrontation of Elijah with the prophets of bale there's all sorts of punches in the nose against bale it has to do with who fire from heaven and all this kind of stuff who's gonna bring rain and who's not okay because there was a drought there well one of the things they do is this title everybody knew that this was a known title of bale so on four or five occasions the Old Testament writer takes it and says no Bale is not the one who rules the heavens who rides to the heavens as though it's his turf it's Yahweh who is the God so here you have Deuteronomy 33 26 there is none like God Oh gesture on who rides to the heavens to your health through the skies in his majesty Psalm 68 Oh kingdoms of the kingdoms of the earth sing to God sing praises to the Lord to Yahweh to him who rides in the heavens Psalm 104 bless the Lord O my soul O Lord Yahweh my god you were very great so on and so forth he makes the clouds his chariot Isaiah 19 behold the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt to judge now here's why I bring this up I'm going to show you one of the fundamental two powers passages in Judaism because everybody in the ancient world knew that he who rides in the clouds as a title of bail and they understood but it was applied to Yahweh what the message was its theological messaging and Yahweh is the God of heaven not this divine flunky okay not this underling okay we worship Yahweh not this guy every time they use it but the God of Israel wakes up at one time on one occasion it's used of a second person and that's Daniel 7 so Daniel writes as I looked on Thrones were set in place there's the plural can wine council idea from last week Thrones were set in place and the Ancient of Days took his seat know who that is it's God and throne His garment was like white snow and the hair of his head was like lamb's wool his throne was tongues of flame its wheels were blazing fire what does that sound like Ezekiel chapter one is there any doubt who's on that throne flame the wheels the whole bit Ezekiel chapter one when Ezekiel sees the vision of God the throne decided a river of fire streamed forth before him thousands upon thousands served him very heads upon Myriad's attended him the courts at and the council set and the books were open and one like a human being came with the clouds of heaven it's the only time you get that phrase of anyone else other than the God of Israel who is the son of man who is the human one who receives Dominion and glory the kingdom anybody know where this passage shows up in the New Testament and it's Eagles of juice saying hey you can easily look at this passage and see two Ancient of Days the one who rides in the clouds the human anybody know where this passage is quoted in the New Testament okay well in case you can't come next week I'll tell you it's when Jesus it's Matthew 26 when Jesus is standing in front of Caiaphas the high priest and Caiaphas has just had enough it says look quit beating around the bush tell us who you are so what does Jesus answer to us it looks like Jesus is just you know like has attention deficit disorder or something like he's not paying attention or just wants to be cryptic Jesus quotes Daniel 7:13 he says hereafter we know who I am are you listening hereafter you will see the Son of man coming upon the clouds with great now we know Caiaphas instantly understood that he was claiming to be the second Yahweh figure because what this Caiaphas do he tears his clothes and says this is blasphemy we have no more need of witnesses Jesus just signs his own death death certificate is that clear enough for you Caiaphas he quotes this passage and again if you're a Jew again even before you get to the New Testament era Daniel 7 became a pivotal pivotal passage because again everybody knows who the Ancient of Days is and everybody in the ancient world knew that the cloud Rider was a title you applied only to a god a legitimate deity figure and when the biblical writers take it and apply it to Yahweh everybody knows what's going on but the one time they don't is Daniel Sabbath and the rabbi's understood that there was a tunas going on so the new comes around the New Testament Jesus essentially just gives it to both barrels right in the face again is that clear enough for you Caiaphas you really want to know I'll tell you you know if he realized this is blasphemy now if you have all that in your head which I know is a tall order I want to show you a few hints of three oK we've gone through that pretty rapidly we've got the name we've got the word we've got this whole first third-person thing going on all that stuff let me show you a couple passages in the Old Testament now this is Isaiah 63 and we have the Lord in all caps it's the divine name it's Yahweh in verse 7 I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord the praise of the Lord so on and so forth and he begins to narrate the the wilderness wanderings that whole episode from Israel's history he says in verse 9 let's go to verse 8 surely they are my people children who will not deal falsely and he became their Savior who the Lord the Lord became as their Savior in all their affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them oh no wait a minute I thought in verse eight I thought the Lord was the savior but now the angel of his presence is the one who saved in his love and in his pity he redeemed them he lifted them up carried them all the days of all but they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit they say well I'm not quite sure there's a three distinction there if you go to Psalm 78 here's the key to this the two the key are the two terms rebelled and grieved exactly the same Abe returns occur in this these two verses in Psalm 78 if you know Psalm 78 it's about the wilderness journey exactly the same context how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert they tested God again and again and provoked the Holy One of Israel so if you pardon the pun if you triangulate between Isaiah 63 in Psalm 78 you have God and the Holy One interchanged with the Holy Spirit but God was already present in the narrative back up in verses 7 and 8 and oh by the way the angels they're too again that's difficult to see but if you compare the two passages describing the same event you either get a writer that's really confused or you get now you get sort of a three-in-one feeling there's another one from Ezekiel then I looked and behold a form that had the appearance of a man below would appear to be his waist was fire and above his waist was something like the appearance of brightness like gleaming metal where have we heard that before in Ezekiel chapter one Ezekiel sees the throne come down with the wheels within wheels and all that stuff and there's a round throne platform underneath we have you know the the chair beam and on top of the platform is the throne it's seated on the throne was one that looked like a man and this is the description ezekiel 1 so we have the same divine yahweh man thing going on here he put out the form of a hand and took me by a lock of my head so god grabs him by the lock of the head but who lifts him up the spirit what are they taking turns or they taking turns yank in the ponytail I mean no it's deliberately designed to get you to interchange the idea is to interchange the person's he put out the form of a hand took neither locker the head the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem to the entrance of the Gateway the inner court that face is normally so he has this vision of the temple if you look at verse five then he both things he said to me son of man lift up your eyes now toward the north we start showing him things and in verse six the one speaking to him describes the temple as my sanctuary whose sanctuary was it and he in those other passages we just went through it was the name who was Yahweh who is somehow linked to the spirit you look at it and you go I wish they'd sort that out for me I wish they'd tell me whose plan what role and what I'm suggesting to you is in passages like this they don't care if they wanted to distinguish all these things or not distinguish they would do but they leave the ambiguity there and you get passages like this where the spirit is thrown into this divine language that elsewhere is used of too now you have the spirit thrown into the mix and there are hints of this in the Old Testament now next week I'm gonna spend some time showing you how the interlocking ideas that produce the two and then bring the third along how the New Testament writers use that to articulate okay there again they're getting it from somewhere so to wrap up I would say take away try to take away these points the Hebrew Bible identifies another figure besides Yahweh with Yahweh's presence that's an important idea the second Yahweh figure is also distinguished from Yahweh so again - but yet 1:1 but yet - the second Yahweh figure was frequently described in human form and at times even embodied the second Yahweh figure was but wasn't Yahweh just like Christians have to speak about Jesus listen to somebody prays sometime and how they interchange cheese isn't God let's just so you just do it reflexively because it really doesn't matter I don't have to be precise do I know we kind of get it they kind of got it they get they got first century Jewish writers speculated a lot about the identity of who number two was we're gonna talk about that next week because again prior to a New Testament prior to Jesus showing up the Jews were not running around wondering what was in their Bible they knew everything that I just showed you and they were talking about it how do we articulate this out of the parse this who's number two who is this guy you know did God like take some some human he like them and sort of glorify them to this level or is it some some really important angel or who is it they had a lot of speculation of course when Jesus comes around the answer to the disciples is pretty easy well we'll tell you who the second one is that's an easy question the harder question is are you going to believe Jews were therefore used to the idea of two and one before Christianity and could embrace the theology without again violating monotheism and so one can't argue a Godhead idea was late or foreign like Christianity violates Judaism it just doesn't the second Yahweh was distinct from and superior to other Elohim this is really important if you single one out and identify that one with Yahweh by definition Yahweh and the second one are on an equal level they are the same essence think of think of your Nicene Creed okay they're of the same essence but different figures different persons by definition that means that any other Elohim that we talked about last week are not okay that is a direct contradiction to things that like Mormonism would teach Mormonism loves the idea of divine plurality they don't like trinitarianism you know this is this Mars what's going on in their theology and and frankly overturns it frankly confronts it the term angel another one does not of necessity rule out the Godhead or the Jose witnesses loved Jesus wasn't God he was he's a sane Joel guy and bla bla bla bla bla big deal let me show you Genesis 48 were the angel and the God of Israel are fused together I'm not moved by the word angel to think that you're correct it has nothing to do with the issue in fact it's the foundation 2 2 & 1 & 3 & 1 okay but we're not unless you're sort of on that wavelength you're missing a good argument I'm not saying go find a jehovah's witness to go argue it but you're missing a good trajectory to have that discussion and just just lay it you know right where it belongs put it put her in the line and say look go through all these passages now you tell me that this other one isn't Yahweh as well that's your test prove to me he's not if you can't do that maybe you should be listening to me instead of the other way around teaser for next time if you were a Jew I've already given you a little hint Jews sort of thought in two categories angels and special people if you read you try to erase the New Testament from your mind who would you imagine how would you imagine what was going on at least the two third ones the spirit that's that's sort of easy but how do you how would you imagine the other two persons of the Trinity without Jesus just try to try to noodle that a little bit I'll take you through a lot of Jewish text and show you what they were thinking anyway any question if you were here last week while you watched video from last week I introduced the Old Testament idea of the two powers specifically getting a little ahead of the Old Testament period two powers in heaven was a Jewish idea it was part of Jewish theology and that's significant because it's Judaism Judaism is known for its insistence on one God one Yahweh and not having a Godhead if you would talk to a Jewish person today they would not have any inkling of this thing that Christians refer to as a Godhead but we looked at the fact that early in Judaism's history they did have this idea and it comes from the Old Testament so we spent last week looking over that and this week I want to take us through how not in the Rabbinical period after the New Testament what rabbis and Jewish thinkers from the time the Old Testament period ended at the time of the first century how they thought about what we looked at last week this odd passages that have a second Yahweh figure in them along with Yahweh the God of Israel what they do with that so we look at what Jews did with it and then we'll look at what how Christians parsed it as well that'll give you a feeling for when it comes time to the first century and some of this will overlap with the first century with Jesus actually being here what the discussion was like and I'm hoping that as we go through Jewish material and Christian material you can see hopefully I saw this a little bit last week which you can see that for a Jew they had this category in their head already this idea of God had the real question was who is that Christians of course are gonna link all that we did last week to Jesus and say look you need to accept Jesus as Messiah as God incarnate as the second power me you've been thinking these spots for a few centuries at least your own writers have been writing about this stuff he probably heard it in synagogue and our claim is Jesus of Nazareth is this person who came to earth died on the cross what else oh so you get a little feel for that let me jump in but by way of review week one we asked or we sort of focused on one question how do we present Jesus to Jewish people when they think trinitarianism it's polytheism and we really looked at three answers to that the Old Testament has its own concept of divine plurality and in that plurality Yahweh was unique in his essence his attributes exactly what we think about in normal Christian theology in principle and divine plurality is not a reason to reject Jesus as divine that's a non argument third but you could come back and say but Christians make Jesus equal to God surely that is Jewish and the answer is well yeah it really is because that's what we looked at last week so by way of review from last week we talked about the name Hashem in Hebrew which is another way that the Old Testament and modern Jews still you'd still be this way to the Old Testament refers to Yahweh without using the yhw H Hashem the name it's just another way of saying so we looked at that we saw that there was one particular angel that in Exodus 23 the text says God tells Moses my name with my essence my presence is in that angel and you're supposed to obey Him so we saw that if you actually look at the narratives about leaving Egypt and going to the promised land you'll see credited with deliverance from Egypt and bringing the Israelites into the Promised Land you'll see verses that say God did it yeah you'll see verses and say the angel did it and you'll see verses that say my presence did it and I said who did it the answer is yes okay they're all it's always sin chily the same essence the same God nasty world but the fact that the angel in other passages was clearly distinct from Yahweh and then other passages he is Yahweh the passages you get this feeling of penis - but yet 1 1 billion - and again this is the conceptual backdrop for how the New Testament treats Jesus how the New Testament writers talk about Jesus we also looked at the word since the angel had a human form and had Yahweh in him was essentially Yahweh embodiment or at least made visual as we saw that in some cases the phrase the word of the Lord described the very same thing went to Genesis 15 talk about first samuel 3 Jeremiah 1 is a really sort of palpable example where Jeremiah says the word of the Lord came to me and he calls the word of the Lord Yahweh he uses Yahweh several times of that figure that being and around verse 9 it says the word of the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth so we even have a tactile thing going on in that passage and lastly we looked at the cloud writer the one who comes with the clouds the one who comes upon the clouds the clouds we made the comment that this was an important passage to Jews in regard to the to Yahweh's idea because they knew that this idea of riding the clouds was a known title of being agent specifically most familiar to them will be Vale but it was often used five or six times in the Old Testament to describe Yahweh again it was a theological statement Bale isn't the Lord of the heavens who writes clouds Yahweh is except for one burst that was Daniel 7:13 there was a second person that gets described with that phrase very important phrase so and Jewish thinkers looked at that and they thought well that's just kind of odd why why would it be so consistent until you get to this Daniel 7 and lo and behold the cloud rider in Daniel 7 is in the same scene as the Ancient of Days God on his throne but to boot he's human he's the son of man who's the human so we went through all that and we ended up with thought that you know if you were a Jew you're used to thinking of this - but one one but two and number two is like human and for human in appearance again this sets up what the New Testament writers are going to be saying about Jesus jump into that tonight first I want to show you what Jews did prior to Jesus coming during the first century when they were arguing you know with the Apostles and so on and so forth up to the second century AD there was a big discussion going on within Judaism after the 2nd century again not coincidentally in the wake of lies of Christianity after that point they had to declare it a heresy because they could not they were losing Congress to the early church Jews they were the first Congress to follow Jesus Jews were telling their friends and neighbors and family look you know we've been talking about this for four centuries our teachers have been showing us this and now you know we heard the Apostles preach about Jesus of Nazareth and he performed miracles for miracles you know you fulfilled all these prophecies I mean to them the pieces were just falling together in their head and so the Jewish community declared it a heresy at that time prior to that there were a number of ideas I'm gonna run through these quickly because they're kind of interesting some of our party some of them were just like you gotta be kidding but no they really thought there was one category of exalted humans so some Jews their camp was okay the second power is probably some human person that after they died or even in some cases that's not really weird even before they died they pre-existed gods help Adam you'll actually find texts this is the book of second Enoch where Adam becomes a candidate we have here and on earth I assigned him as God speaking could be a second angel honored in great and glorious and I assigned him to be a king you know that's kind of makes sense Adam was ruling the earth so we'll call it the king I assign him to be a king - ran the earth and have to have my wisdom there was nothing comparable to him on the earth even among my creatures that exist so in other texts Adam becomes the greatest thing in creation and rules all the other stuff and so to some Jews he became a logical candidate to be God's helper okay this the second guy the second person of this relationship and when he died they he was thought to be an angel huh if I know this sounds weird but think about it how many times have you seen on TV or commercials or cartoons or movies when somebody dies they become a manger I mean we have this idea and you have you ever asked yourself where does that come I mean do you like really read that in the New Testament somewhere you know we just sort of have this idea that we go to the divine realm and we get wings and we play harps we do what God asks us to do they're thinking the same sort of things here but with Adam Adam was the crowning point of creation so there must be something so some people had you know we're fans of the atom as far as the second one you'll notice he's seated on a golden throne as a terrifying appearance so some some Jews we're actually like making it dramatic writing about you know this atom must have this position the first floor and first format so Adam had his fans Jacob had his fans because Jacob was Israel he was important the Old Testament something called the prayer of Joseph we have sort of the deification of Jacob into an angel called Israel now in the first week I went by this with lightning speed but the Old Testament has this idea that the nations of the earth were divided and they were put under the authority of the sons of God a divine that was very much part of Jewish theology and it leaks out here because they're saying well who would be who is the logical patron the angel of Israel there isn't one in the Old Testament it must be Jacob when he died he was Israel on earth and when he goes to heaven he's Israel up there and he must be the most important one because those are God's people you see they're just doing logical extrapolation whether it makes sense or not this is what they're thinking a lot of cases to me it doesn't make a whole lot of sense sometimes it does in a weird sort of way so this again is your Jewish text you look up what they're they're saying I'm speaking to you I'm also Israel an angel of God ruling spirit here down here he's an archangel of the power of the Lord the chief captained among the sons of God so he must be number two so Jacob had his fans Enoch and why would Enoch have his fans because Enoch never died that's different okay so Enoch must be doing something in the spiritual world he's not like retired so what would it what would his job well again some people follow the lean ox job is proud this number to Yahweh God he's God's biggest help okay so you had Enoch being part of this this is from the book of first Enoch which is a book composed between the Testaments and here again you get this idea where Enoch is transformed my whole body mollified my spirit transformed Enoch is called the Son of man just like the n7 some Jews stuck that title to it because they thought he was the best candidate continuing in second Enoch you know let me not join in and stand in front of my face my presence forever put him into clothes of my glory I looked at myself Enoch says and I had become like more than glorious one so he's like transformed with this divine some Jews are saying Enoch must be the guy Moses gets his votes this is kind of a shocking tax born-again we're used to thinking of Moses in association with the wrong it's a little association to the Jew the law was like if this is the central focus of faith so Moses of course has a special place in the hearts and minds of many Jews we read here that on Sinai speak I Moses saw what seemed to throne I'll be read that in Exodus 24 were Moses and Aaron Nadab and avi hew and seventy other elders get to see but we're getting another account here upon its added a man of noble mean the crown with the scepter in one hand I made approached and stood before the throne so Moses gets a little brave here it says I'm gonna see how close I can get so he starts moving up he handed over the scepter and bade me mount the throne and gave me the crown have a seat for a while roses that's just that's just kind of shocking for a Jew to write some especially at Moses just a little idea what all was dealing with there were some people who were really devoted now others said no you guys have it all wrong has nothing to do with an exalted glorified human must be number two must be someone who is already an angel but just sort of kind of like wins the job Michael is sort of the obvious candidate Michael was considered by some writers to be always co-regent in heaven we sort of get a little feel for that in Daniel 12 because Michael is this sort of the patron angel in Daniel chapter 12 of Israel so how come they picked other people don't try to make it logical in your head they're just trying to they're trying to root for their guy so you have this sort of feel here and so because of Daniel 12 a lot of Jews felt well it just has to be like Michael is is just it this is the one that's sort of closest to what we see in the Old Testament it must be him Michael was identified as the angel of Yahweh not in the Old Testament but in something called the targets anybody know what the target was taught a targum a target is the translation of the Bible in this case the Old Testament but you get him with the new as well translation of the Bible into Aramaic the Old Testament was written in Hebrew so Aramaic is a related with different language so when it was translated into Aramaic the name for that was a target so tar guns are plural there's lots of translations in the Aramaic of the Old Testament there are a New Testament time that was Muhammad so in the TARDIS the translator whoever did that work felt justified or you know maybe he just was a Michael fan but in some passages he actually inserts the name Michael to identify the angel he just doesn't that was this opinion so that's it works its way into the translation Testament of Daniel or dan excuse me we have here draw near to God to the angel who intercedes for you so Michael is viewed as a personal intercessor kind of a this isn't a really good example but I'll use it it might be familiar sort of the way Mary is sort of has a mediatorial role and Roman Catholicism well so many Jews Michael had a role like that or you could he would intercede for you on your behalf to God there's a book called joseph and aseneth that was his wife going to the old testament egyptian where we read a little bit about michael chief of the house of the lord commander of the host of the Most High not the Book of Daniel doesn't actually the book of daniel says that daniel's a little it's a little hard to figure out who they are the Prince of the host the highest of the princes are the same guy or they different but in this text they're identified with Michael others had this angel you won't read this angels name in the Old Testament or anywhere in the Bible look at the name what strikes you about the name this is the name of an angel L is God and so is yah yah is the short-form of Yahweh yah shows up in the Old Testament a few dozen times so a Jew whoever wrote this we don't know who wrote the apocalypse maybe whoever did took two names of God and gave them to an angel and didn't feel like he was blasting I don't like any of these kids for the second power so I'm just gonna make pick an angel and name him yah the same be a fide figure appears in the life of that of a name again this is another book they're Jewish book written between the Testaments they get to the Old Testament in this case God Himself is called yeah so we have text God is Yael that makes sense because those are his names there's an age that gets those names so right away you're confronted again these are Jews these are the super duper monotheistic Jews militant monotheistic Jews taking a name of God and giving it to a second person and it shows you that that was acceptable to them they're trying to sort of articulate how they think this works here we have yah yah who L again go yeah all the same name for the mediation of my an ethical name here we have clearly again a second character distinct from Michael because Michael he says with me Michael blesses you forever so this Jew again whoever wrote this text did not think the second power was Michael it was this other angel created and gave this name this one you may have heard of Philo was probably the most important Jewish writer of his era if you're familiar with two non biblical Jewish writers they're probably Philo and Josephus you know see if this is a little later he was a historian Philo is a philosopher and theologian he writes religious theological stuff and Philo used this term Philo wrote in Greek he used the term Lagos to apply to number two isn't that interesting because who else that we know does that John so you have this again this overlap because Philo knows that back in his Old Testament there's this word of the Lord character in Greek words logon so he picks up on that and tries to write a full-blown theology of a godhead how what's the relationship between God and this other figure now Philo his theology is not the same as John's because for Philo the law Gauss was a created being he's created in some passes and other passed us it's not but Philo really tries to say he's he's God but he's not like he's God he struggles it's God but he isn't he is just calling the law gosh now the problem is he gets a little tongue-tied here he actually refers to the Lagos is the mighty Lagos who is my advice for the Lagos is that power of God by which he made all things that is New Testament because it's Jesus word five of all things we have here God is indeed one he's Joey's got to affirm that his highest in chief powers are to even goodness and sovereignty in the midst between the two there's a third which unites the Braga oscillators to the log onto God is both will were and good so the long house is sort of the conduit through which God does things yeah it's difficult Philo gets this dramatic he refers to the lagos as the second go the deuteros he actually uses second god his commentary on Genesis so for a Jew and this was not considered heretical for a Jew to use a phrase like second god was pretty dramatic what they're trying to figure out how to talk about memra word of the Lord the word for word in Greek is long us the word for word in Aramaic is memmer there are lots of Jewish writers who wrote about the membra because they were writing in so memra is the Aramaic word for word it occurs widely in the TARDIS remember the targum or Aramaic translations of the Old Testament and when they're doing translation they let their theologies lie they are putting the memra into all sorts of interesting schemes some passages that we looked at last week we get this feeling that there's two persons I'll show you in a moment here so we have memra to memorize the log hasta los is the Greek word Greek words are made so memorize again God's Word as though he were a person and I clip some of these from an article on this just look at some of these examples these are our made translations in the Old Testament here's the kicker that would have been used it would have been current when Jesus was here on earth if you couldn't read Greek and you couldn't read Hebrew this is what you read you're reading Aramaic because it was your native language and they're getting to powers you know they're getting both barrels of it it's here we have Genesis 3 9 the Lord God called unto man to Adam well in the target Jerusalem tired of it says the memory of the Lord God called to the man it's not God it's the memory if you think back to Genesis 3 what in Genesis 3 might give you the feel that God has a body there remember back to the passage walk through the garden and Adam Adam heard the sound of God walking through the garden so whoever did this translation when you get to that passage their visual I want that look like must have been God you know body or something walking around and so the best way to convey that is to use remember second carry Genesis 20 with a bimolecular luck in a dream it's the member ah no it's another interesting one here though see the Lord said to Moses the memra of the Lord said to Moses they're getting this from these word of the Lord passages so when God starts talking in certain passages since the catch list since in passages like Genesis 15 and verse 10 is 3 in Jeremiah 1 since the nose passage the word passages the word of the Lord turns out to be like a person it seems reasonable to the Jewish translator if that's what's going on so we're going to put it in to convey that it's highly interpretive but you see without getting this is the way it was in Genesis probably going on here to Genesis the eighth they heard the voice right there is the passage and so on and so forth you get the idea this is again the Aramaic Bible with the disciples we don't know what they read when they read it but I'm pointing this out to say look this idea of truly at one one yet to this is not rules to them this is not news what's new is is the fact that number two in Christian theology is incarnated it's travel through the woman's birth canal okay that's new that's a little that's a little freaky right there another one with memra Genesis 1:27 the memorable that makes sense because we have like physical bodies so you know you know if you if you've ever read anything about the image of God one of the views and one of the questions that's asked well this image possibly mean like we looked like God you know what we chant because God doesn't have a body well that's right for the second power had a body so that's where he's born right there can you see what they're thinking another one and we're doing this rapidly there's a lot to cover the Shechinah were checking ha it was both Arabic ones Hebrew ones Arabic Shekinah was probably the way you've heard that pronounced if you heard the word at all this is another sort of figure another term that refers to this embodied deity person comes from chacón which means to dwell and the verb is used in the Old Testament phrase when God starts talking about the tabernacle in the temple he says he refers to it as the place where I will cause my name to dwell replace where I will put my name so Chacon is to dwell and so the whatever filled the temple whatever showed up or whatever was imagined to be in the cloud that was speaking to Moses to some Jews they used the term Shekinah Shekinah glory it's a reference to God's glory dwelling in that place so it was it was God's glory sort of putting two four and their word for that was the Shekinah in aramaic the Shema chucking table by the way was used not only the second Yahweh but there are Jewish writings that use that term to refer to the spirit as well so I want you to catch the importance of that I know a lot of the material is fine but think about this you have Jews running around the first century who are using words like Nimrod and checking Oh shucks you know to refer to this to God in form human form or something physical and they're using the term not just of number two but of number three there were Jews thinking of a tripartite Godhead before Jesus ever showed up okay can they have these categories they have the conceptual categories at least things like this are being discussed things like this show up in their translations so that when the Apostles come along when Shaw comes along starts talking about the theity of Christ and in him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily and all this stuff and we the New Testament they're not like getting whiplash thinking this guy's crazy you know what what's he talking about they're at they actually have something to think about that confronts them with something do I believe that Jesus Jesus of Nazareth filled this room do I believe that had to make a decision to make a choice it was a theological question so just a few examples we have here I will cause my Shekinah my Shack King Kong to dwell in the midst of the children of Israel again it was it was the glory cloud of glory present some before again the target was translations God walking among his people sometimes they'll use Shechem kah instead of memorable sometimes narrator changing this is the scene where God hides Moses in the cleft of the rock past the targets that this the person that passes in front of him is the shacking it's the glory of God and some sort of discernible for now when Christians come along if you're a theologian if you're like me Paul knows all this stuff you know it's it's hard to know how much somebody like John or some of the other disciples would have known Paul certainly you could have written the books on it because he was highly educated and you know for his time he had the best of training but the other disciples you know would have picked up bits and pieces of it from their teachers their rabbis things they read translations like the Cardinals so when Jesus comes along in the New Testament you get the first thing they're confronted with is the Messiah issue and once they get over the Messiah issue humbler once they realize that I've been called by the Messiah we've been walking around here for a few months we're watching him do these things surely you know this is the Anointed Peter you were the Christ the Anointed One later on when they start writing and preaching after the resurrection we have to start putting things down on paper as it were they're gonna be drawing on a lot of this stuff a lot of these pieces are going to be falling into place for them and especially Paul because Paul is so thoroughly conversant with a lot of it so in basic terms just the New Testament is where we're going to Park tonight what did New Testament writers do some of the Old Testament ideas well the most obvious one for us is the word we'll talk about this already in the beginning was the log-house word the Word was with God the Word was God if you were a Jew who couldn't make Greek and someone was kind enough to put this into Aramaic it would read in the beginning and the member I was with God that makes got my Old Testament here in Aramaic and it says that - that's easy and I think they could understand clearly word became flesh and no one has ever seen God the only God who is at the father's side began just look at the verse only God oh and by the way beside that only God there's this one you just look at the wording and it's just telling that after the angel this is a curious passage Jude 5 Jude writes now I want to remind you although you once fully knew it that Jesus we saved the people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed where do we read about Jesus saving anybody in the old custom where do we leave them what stood thank you who did save the people out of the land in the presence to existence actually to him this is like of course it was Jesus because Jesus is now the incarnation of Yahweh whereas before there was embodiment but it was an incarnation but that's six of one half a dozen of another same thing just different times Exodus 23 very specifically here god sends the angel my name is in him judges to the name this is kind of interesting we've read John 17 a lot because it's the high priestly prayer of Jesus think about what Jesus is saying he says to God I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world yours they were and you gave them to me and they have kept you is there a Jew alive was there a Jew alive the first century that did not know of gods how could you be a Jew anytime in history and not know that you're God's name was Yahweh I am the Shema if you knew one verse the Creed of Israel Jesus isn't saying hey I thank you Father I came to inform everyone what your name was it was a tough job like nobody knew that he's telling he's doing this he's manifesting he that has seen me has seen the father while I was with him I kept them in or by your name which you have given so like when they were in trouble Jesus said hold on guys why HWH it's absurd kept them by your name means I was able to keep them by your power why because I made known to them your name Jesus didn't come and say hey fellows before I leave town I just want you to know how ridiculous is that but it's easy because of this word nama name we sort of either sort of gloss over it or Jesus as being cryptic here because it just sounds odd you know then that's normal but if you think in the Old Testament the name is another way to refer to Yahweh himself and that the name sometimes is embodied then he got something else going right around the clouds I actually alluded to this one last week hidden again this is Daniel 7:13 where Daniel says I saw in the night visions and behold upon the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man a human bar and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him so we talked again last week about how this titles always used to be our waiting so for this verse if you weren't here last time here is where it's used this is when Jesus standing before Caiaphas the high priest was on trial this is high stakes life or death and the high priest stood up and said have you no answer to make Jesus is getting accused what is it that these men testify against you but Jesus remained silent high priest said to him I adjure you by the Living God tell us if you are the Christ the Son of God so jesus said listen let me give you more and he says I tell you from now on we will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven he quotes Daniel 7:13 that's my answer and Caiaphas knows instantly what he's saying he knows he's just made himself to be the second Yahweh guy the cloud rider 7 because high priest tears his robes that's a symbol in the Old Testament everywhere for I am really important or this is just awful awful circumstance it says he is uttered blasphemy I just Jesus knows there you go mr. high priest is it clear that's pretty much the end of the trial now hit a few points here because I'm going to tack on something that is probably worth going into at this point but to this point New Testament writers again repurpose Old Testament theology they repurpose old testament phrases and words that described yahweh in human form and they're going to use these things of Jesus here's the question why would they do that if they didn't believe that Jesus was God in flash that's precisely why they did do it so by identifying Jesus with the second Yahweh they make this point therefore and here's something that you can take to witness friend or your Mormon friend since they're doing this this tells you automatically that they're linking Jesus not with just an angel or any angel or any of the other Elohim or any of this stuff they're linking him specifically with the angel who is not any other ones that and they're doing that because they're drawing an equation he is not jesus is not a lesser divine being than Yahweh he is now they get human flesh Hebrews 2 makes that point to which of the Angels does God say this or do this or that the whole chapter is contrast Jesus and angels Jesus batteries now quick excursus before we wrap up tonight there's one other figure in the Old Testament that relates to the question a Jewish Godhead and that is the figure you're not familiar with wisdom specifically this character is the backdrop to Jesus as the co-creator because Paul and John a little bit with the word especially this one Paul and John have Jesus as being present at creation being God's instrument to create everything else in the Old Testament that is never said of the angel it's never said of the word it is set of rules so we need to cover it miss Terry proverbs 8 is where you get it now in verse one does not wisdom calm does not understanding raise her voice when Heights beside the way at the crossroads she takes her stand if you read through the whole chapter proverbs chapter 1 a couple of their chapters wisdom his cast as a person but specifically a woman why is that some of you have heard many a lecture on this before we'll try to be mercifully brief the reason that wisdom is a woman is because the Hebrew word for wisdom is Hulk ma which is grammatically feminine if you've studied fine language Spanish German French whatever you know that nouns are classified by gender it's completely arbitrary for instance in German das mädchen little girl is neuter okay-y I don't know hey gender is a means that language uses to classify nouns so that they can match them up English doesn't use endings to identify these things so if you don't have a foreign language you probably never heard this but Hebrew is like lots of other languages it uses gender to classify nouns hokhmah is feminine that's why the pronouns her and she show up in the text because it's proper it's literary proper has nothing to do with dialogue we got here the Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work but first of his accent we'll come back to this verse ages ago I was set up wisdoms talking about herself before the beginning of the earth when there were no depths I was brought forth well there were no Springs abounding with water before the mountains had been shaped before the hills before this before that so you get the idea that wisdom is around let's just go back wisdom is around at the beginning so God has somebody there helper whatever created in the Old Testament who is wisdom well there are a lot of books wisdom of Solomon is one again Jewish writers are writing between the Testaments and they're commenting on problem Z so they see a lot of interesting things about this character I tell you what wisdom is and how she came to be and I will hide no secrets and I will trace her course from the beginning of creation getting that from Proverbs II for wisdom the fashioner of all things taught me she is a breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of glory of the almighty teapots and she shall come back to this she is a reflection the Greek word is opera gospel of eternal life a spotless we're of the word and he likes by your wisdom you you have formed humankind give me wisdom that sits by your throne get this throne these are Jews two jews writing this stuff with you as wisdom she knows your works and was present when you made the world he's getting that from proverbs 8 send her forth from the holy heavens and from the throne of your glory center she must have a nice seat up in heaven so it's kind of warnings another book see rack in the Assembly of the Most High there's the divine council week 1 she opens her mouth I dwelt in the highest heavens my throne was in a pillar of cloud and wait a minute was in the pillar of cloud in the Old Testament that would be God and here we have and you get this sort of God and flavor okay the New Testament writers do interesting things this is one it's hard font maybe but it's a little dramatic in Luke 11 Jesus he's railing against the scribes and Pharisees gently low to you lawyers also preload people with burdens hard to bear and be yourself so he starts going off on them you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed your witnesses and consent with needs of your fathers for they killed with other tools making clothes therefore also the wisdom of God said I will send them prophets and apostle's some of whom they will kill and persecuted so Jesus is saying that the wisdom of God said Russell's this puts the wisdom of God in the role of God because we read in Ephesians four at other places that God said so that's odd Jesus is sort of linking wisdom God but Matthew 1ups that same passage same scene Jesus is speaking and looking look at what changes therefore I send you prophets and wise men it's from Matthew puts Jesus in the role of wisdom who was in the role of God they're mixing and matching it's a Godhead these are Jews quoting Jewish texts one of the children identifying Jesus with this other figure we looked at this verse this is my favorite one my favorite wisdom because this is for a text geek like me this is dramatic we read wisdom is a reflection Papa Kozma or maternal line spotless guess where this gets quoted just let me let me just prep it by saying this this word is really where it occurs one time in the Septuagint which is the translation the old custom this is the verse it only occurs two or three times in the entire Greek literary world it's really rare so when the New Testament writer quotes it he's getting it from here because this is going to be reflected around it so it's a reference to us does anybody know anybody have an inkling where this is quote you can sort of pick it out out of the ether radiance reflection long ago at many times in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets Jews long ago like many times in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us plants whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he did the world and wisdom is that has been that character in her testimony let's know it's Jesus through whom also he created the world he is the radiance yep ASIMO what the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power he quotes that past it's extremely rare to you know if I guess when I'm in a I don't want I don't want to come off as a monster there are some times I've done in this in the past and I'm not saying this is the right usually when I get it the Jehovah's Witness it my past it's like please don't come again you're not gonna get me blah blah but I have done things like this where I'll say well you're gonna talk to me about degree and about angels like technomage okay do the math because there is no other thing that this could possibly work hurt but the second person God in Judaism you learned out what the Jehovah's wouldn't you know how much they love will invest that's really where they want to go I don't know what the writer of Hebrews could have done they could make it any more power so that when you get to Colossians 1 by him we're all things created first Corinthians II there's one God the Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist in one Lord Jesus Christ through whom we through whom are all things in hey you get this this is where they get the theology of Jesus as co-creators the idea that Jesus is God in the flesh and the co-creator of humanity and everything that is is Jewish this is not a New Testament invention it's a Jewish concept that God had a co-creator an agent of creation and the New Testament writers take Jewish stuff Old Testament and even books in between but aren't in our Bibles they even go that far to make the point now this is the prickly part if you like church history you probably have come across this passage because you say well you know if Jesus is this character what do we do with verse 22 the Lord possessed at the beginning of his word the first of his accent the verb here is to not in Hebrew it is used elsewhere before create I told you Jesus was three that's picking and choosing the lexicon because the verb is not always used that way it's used for creating Genesis 14 so used to acquire possession as is 33 it's used to produce or bring forth in Genesis 4 I like Genesis floor I think it's instructed Genesis 4:1 is when Eve gives birth to chronology she she gives birth to think it's King yeah she says I have gotten a man I have ha ha here's the question did an Old Testament person he and anybody else in the world festival any woman did they believe that that when she gave birth that was the moment with that thing that she just birth came into existence no because it's moving around I mean even though they don't have the moderns the conveniences of modern science they know that there is new life inside and when they bring it forth its giving birth it's not when the thing begins to be alive it's been alive before that so it pre-existed the bringing forth this is the way the Church Fathers propagated proverbs eight when they wrote the Nicene Creed the whole thing about Jesus being we've got and will not create whoever read the nice thing this was really important because they're trying to argue that Jesus is not created we're trying to be consistent they're saying one just because this verb is there it does not mean that that's when he had the beginning of his existence he existed prior to this and God brought him forth okay that was we don't use words like we got but that's what it meant it meant to bring forth as opposed to this is what it starts living if you look at the Creed we believe in one God the Father Almighty maker of all things visible and invisible one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God begotten of the Father the only begotten that isn't the essence of the Father god of God light of light very god of very God begotten not made that languages it was important because of this this issue of him this is our last slide Jesus has only begot thought I'd say something about this because you will get people like shadow as witnesses or other people sort of if he's begun that means he had a beginning because the word begotten that's what it means not really begotten words like an wears like firstborn begotten can just mean to be brought forth we've already existed but now you're here on the scene since we first born it's actually a term of status how do we know this is it just because is it true because Mike says it Monogue an ace is the Greek term for only begun until the late 19th early 20th century in the spot incorrectly that it came from two Greek words Manas and get out only and get out was the Bourbon means to beget later discoveries showed this was wrong it actually comes from Manas only and get a kind Monogue anis means one-of-a-kind unique it has nothing to do with when you start to exist it's about neatness we know that from this first Hebrews 11:17 were Isaac is called Abraham's Monogue innate question was Isaac Abraham's first son Ishmael was that tells you right away the term does not have anything to do with Isaac is the mono Ganesh because he's special he's unique why is he any he's won mr. sair he is the one through whom all the promises flow that's why his name was nothing so when you see this the New Testament a lot of your more recent translations will have something like unique one and only something something that tries to get away from you got that's mine so we'll stop there that's the last slide any questions no we're going pretty quickly it's a lot of unfamiliar stock but if you take anything away tonight I want you to take away repeat it again is that deeply Christian ideas like the Godhead the co-creator Jesus is coming Jesus is God and flesh that somehow their God had a number two person who was also him these were Jewish ideas their Jewish concept they get from their old paestum that are reinforced between the Testaments by writers that live before Jesus always showed up so that when Jesus does show up when you get the New Testament writers writing they are writing to an audience that understands those ideas then they have to make a choice do I believe that Jesus the fellow we just crucified do we believe that he is through their saving words do we believe that he rose from the dead we believe he was gone do we believe that he was the second we believe this that's where they got to go they're not sitting there thinking when you guys are just a bunch of polytheists you're not thinking that at all and I want to start the final week here we're gonna get back into Psalm 82 we want to get ahead of me you can go to John 10 put one finger in John 10 another finger in Psalm 82 I want to sort of prep what we're gonna spend most of our time on by reviewing this and I have a reason for doing this that I hope will be clear so early earlier I think it was the second week when we went through Old Testament passages that showed a sort of two ism or two-person Godhead in the Old Testament that was the easy one to see that Yahweh was - but yet 1:1 but yet - we finished that night by taking a look at three Ness okay a Trinitarian sort of concept from the Old Testament I made the comment that if you if you have your your mind wrapped around the two and how the two is conveyed then you will find yourself in certain passages seeing the same descriptions like the name or the word or the angel or something like that you'll you'll see those descriptions applied to the spirit or the spirit part of the conversation and so you get you go from a - to a sort of feeling like there's three different things going on and they're connected because the same description is applied to two of the three or three or the three or something like that so just to refresh your memory on that point we looked at this passage real quickly this is Isaiah 63 and here we have the Lord in the passage we have the angel and then we had this statement they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit this was the recounting of the wilderness wandering and so you have the rebellion and the grieving of the holy spirit but if you go to Psalm 78 which is a recounting of the same itinerary the same events the very identical verbs rebelled and grieved in Psalm 78 are directed at in verse 41 here God the Holy One of Israel so again we knew from evening to that the angel and Yahweh were sort of the same but yet different and then here we get the spirit that's brought into the conversation when you look at both passages in tandem so you get this three and then we looked at Ezekiel eight we have the same thing going on here we have the these this description of Yahweh as you know the God of Israel as a as a man sort of a glorified man and we have the spirit lifting up the Prophet the Yahweh puts out the form of a hand and we saw in other passages again that was the the visible Yahweh as opposed to the invisible Yahweh and the visible Yahweh was usually the angel and again you could you start going through the same set of thought processes and you get to and then here we have the spirit referred to in here so who lifts him up is it the embodied Yahweh that the second visible Yahweh or is the spirit and the answer is yes the writer doesn't really care because it's sort of six of one half dozen of another and lower you know down in the passage the either the spirit or this person refers to the temple as my sanctuary so we know this is God but it might be God in more than one you know manifestation or the physical manifestation if that's the case you might actually have the spirit spoken of in the same way as your normal number two guy the angel so we talked about these things again and I'm not trying to be clever with a pun here but like I said last time you have to sort of triangulate some things to get three in the Old Testament to is pretty easy but three sort of enters the discussion a little bit now this sort of thing is actually used I believe in the New Testament often times you'll see critics of trinitarianism or again this traditional Christian view of a God had say give me the verse where it shows God is three and one you all I want to see that verse you know and there are things you know you can sort of go to like the Great Commission baptize them in the name of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit well if they weren't all equal why would you say that you know that sort of thing and you can go to Acts where the Spirit is referred to with personal pronouns you've not lied to God you know Peter says dad that's Ananias and Sapphira you've lied to the spirit again sort of equating God in the spirit and those are legitimate okay those are legitimate strategies for showing that the spirit was conceived of as God okay well the New Testament writers adapt and use what we've been talking about now in the Old Testament again you get the to the Tunis thing going on you have Yahweh and then this sort of second Yahweh who's often visible Yahweh can be simultaneously God in heaven and God on earth even at the same time God and the angel can show up at the same time in the same scene but then you have other passages like Genesis 48 with Jacobs blessing where Jacob says may the God who did this may the God who did that may the angel singular verb bless the boys I mean they're just sort of fused together you can't tell them apart and that's that's deliberate you know we talked about that so you get this two going on and then the spirit again sometimes is brought into the discussion well that's the old in the cream color here the New Testament I just want to suggest to you we spent again part of week two and part of week three talking about how the New Testament uses the idea of the invisible in the visible Yahweh and the second person that's embodied taking a lot of that language and applying it to Jesus so again we saw the Tunis there and the strategy for first showing father-son same same but yet different the New Testament does something interesting as God and Jesus are but aren't the same okay Jesus is but isn't God He is God in in person in essence but yet he's not the father as that goes on in the New Testament there are New Testament writers who do the same thing between Jesus spirit that is the spirit is but isn't Jesus and there are some there are certain passages like this I don't know if you've ever noticed these there aren't too many of them but in acts 16 the Holy Spirit is referred to as the spirit of Jesus now that links the spirit in terms of identity to Jesus who by identity is God therefore you must have three that are the same in identity okay Romans 8:9 Spirit of God is referred to as the Spirit of Christ and Galatians 4 God sent the spirit of his son okay into the hearts of believers again we were used to thinking of the Holy Spirit you know the way he's predominantly described in the Old Testament the Spirit of God there are actually passages that identify the spear of God as the spirit of Jesus it says know when Jesus ascends and he's he's been saying things like hey I'm gonna go to go to my father and when I go I'm going to send the spirit and then he'll say things like where two or three of you are gathered I am in your midst then we get this idea being in dwell by the spirit all these things sort of coordinate together and and you get sort of a little bit extra glue here when the Spirit Himself is referred to and identified with Jesus the Spirit of Christ the spirit of Jesus not just God but of Jesus so you have this same sort of three nasir and it builds off this to model so we've got these two identified and these two identified and the central figure is Jesus he is the glue that unites the the threesome together I mean you you come out even if you don't have a verse that lists the three persons you come out with three different figures Co identified with each other it's trinitarianism but from it just a little bit of a different tack now if that's New Testament theology okay if we have a Trinity then you have Jesus as part of a Trinity what about John 10:30 fors use of Psalm 82 now I've set up the question this way because I'm just going to tell you I have a different view of Psalm 82 then practically anybody you're going to read because I think that Psalm 82 John's use of it in the Gospel of John he uses that and Jesus quotes from it however you want to look at what's going on there and John the strategy behind it is to reinforce Jesus status as God incarnate okay well what could be controversial about that Mike it's sounds suspiciously like trinitarianism yeah it is what's controversial about it is how you have to look at Psalm 82 to get there now Psalm 82 we looked at in week 1 we have God again Elohim has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods also Elohim he holds judgment so we talked about this passage where you have Elohim used twice once it's a singular individual and we know that as a grammar and the other time it's plural we know that because of the preposition in the midst of okay so we have divine beings plural in Psalm 82 and we talked about why that's not a problem for monotheism because Elohim is actually a place of residence term it's not attached to one set of attributes because the biblical writers use Elohim of you know angels and demons and you know the deceased human dead they can't be on an ontological par with God with the God of Israel but they're all called Elohim so the term has to means something other than a set of attributes again this is history for those of you who have been here the four weeks you get down to verse six this is the verse that John G Jesus is going to quote in John chapter 10 excuse me this is Psalm 89 just bring this in because the this council is in heavens the heavens you get down here to verse six in Psalm 82 now I have the right Psalm the speaker who is God Yahweh says to the Elohim members of his council I said you could also translate it I thought some of your English translations will have that that's perfectly legitimate I said you are God's looking sons of the Most High all of you nevertheless like men you will die you will fall like any Prince we talked a little bit about what's going on in the psalm the biblical Israelites had let's just go back here had a view based on Deuteronomy 32 8 and 9 that Yahweh punished humanity after the Babel event by dispersing the nations but not only just dispersing the nations Deuteronomy 32 8 9 says when the most high divided up the nation's he divided them up according to the number of the sons of God but Israel was Yahweh's portion Jacob was his allotted inheritance Deuteronomy 4 describes the same thing and it says that Yahweh took Israel as his own my Israel didn't exist at the time of Babel but it's going to exist in the very next chapter when God calls Abraham okay so God forsakes all the nations of the earth says basically you're not gonna obey me you know then our relationship is sort of put on ice right now and I'm going to put you under the authority of other divine beings in my administration I'm not going to be your personal God anymore I'm going to start over and create for myself a people that I'm going to be in covenant with and that people was Israel so Genesis 12 we get the call of Abraham and the rest as they say is history and we talked about the sense in the Old Testament that this leads to the idea of cosmic geography that Israel it belongs to Yahweh Yahweh is Israel's God again the Covenant but outside of Israel that ground isn't holy it's you know it it's under the domain of other of other entities or their divine beings Psalm 82 picks up on that and basically at the beginning of the psalm God says you know we need to have a meeting because you guys are not running things as well you become corrupt you know he starts really railing on them and it leads to this verse as a punishment you know I said your gods I mean you we all know who we're talking to here we all know who's in the room but you're gonna die like men I'm going to strip you of your immortality now this gets picked up on later in the Old Testament and the new as sort of part of the end times the eschaton when God essentially carries this sentence out and gets rid of you know any you know the the heavens and the earth are recreated and those who human and divine who are not obedient to Yahweh lose their status they lose their position they're done away with so we don't want to rabbit trail too far but it's a theme that gets picked up in the in the New Testament also through passages like Pentecost and some things Paul says in the epistles there's this sense that once the church is created there's a progressive recapturing of the nation's that were abandoned dead Babel that's the point of the gospel to reclaim that which was lost to reclaim that which was cast aside this is why when the kingdom of God begins the disciples are given the ability and Jesus himself starts things off this way by casting out demons the point was you have dominion over the powers that govern these places go out and get them when Jesus sends out disciples for the first time does he send out twelve now he actually doesn't he sends out seventy where's that number come from count the nation's back at Babel guess what same number it's 70 there's all sorts of little intertextual clues as to what's going on and I want to grab a trail too far ahead but there's this idea again that there are other entities under Yahweh's authority who are less than him who are called Elohim they're called sons now what does that have to do with with John okay well more or less just summarize that well this is worth pointing out the middle one here Yahweh in this whole worldview is its superior to all other Elohim so that means if Yahweh is superior and Jesus is identified with him therefore Jesus must be superior to Jay he's not just sort of an underling he is God so if the New Testament writers have Jesus but as part of a Trinity what's going on because we can't have Jesus be less than God which brings us to Psalm 82 now I have here a web address if you're interested if you're having trouble sleeping okay at some point I gave an academic paper on this last year at a scholarly Society meeting I put it here again if you wanted it's free but it's not under copyright or anything like that but I also put it in here for another reason for people who are going to be viewing the video and in the future this is peer-reviewed okay when you go to an academic society and you say hey I've I got this view of this passage what do you think if they think it's crazy they're gonna tell you it's a good place to sort of just go and put a bull's eye your chest and see what happens and you know we did fine because you know it's it's just it's just the text it's just the Bible but here's the key question does John's use of Psalm 82 weaken or strengthen just claim to deity so here's John 1034 here's the quotation what's what's been going on Jesus has said what four verses earlier look at John 10:30 here's why he's in trouble what it was he said what are they annoyed added this time well they annoyed that I yeah I am the father or one well I mean that just sets him off and you know you would expect that okay so he's just claimed to be one with the father and they're a little bit put out by that so they get into an arc and Jesus for some odd reason decides okay word you know I I have a good handle on the Old Testament where do I want to go to sort of you know kind of demonstrate for these guys that that I can say this oh I know Psalm 82 verse 6 it just seems like wow what an odd choice but this is what he does jesus answered them is it not written in your law I said you are gods if he called them gods to whom the Word of God came in scripture cannot be broken do you say of him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world you're blaspheming because I said I am a son of God what what's the argument most people take what's called the mortal view of this they believe that the Elohim of Psalm 82 are just people so what that means is if you go back here the quotation I said Ye are gods God the speaker would be talking to people so the argument is that Jesus knows that he knows that there are no other Elohim out there they're just people so probably Jesus has in mind other Jewish leaders or maybe just the Jews in general therefore John has Jesus using psalm 82:6 to say in effect that he can call himself the son of god when every other jew can - now I ask it does that make any sense does that make any sense how does that defend I and my father are one is everybody else one with a father - it just doesn't make any sense it frankly it's a lame argument if that's what you think so don't be upset because you know other humans can do this too you know like like this I guess I showed you guys now go off and call yourself you know equal with God - leave me alone it just doesn't make any sense but this is the dominant view of this passage now the reason that it is is kind of understandable because people get nervous about having Elohim of Psalm 82 the plural ones be divine beings okay we talked about that in verse 1 no what about monotheism and all this stuff and again my answer that is you haven't really thought well about what Elohim means that's the first problem let's take it apart a little bit now here's how the argument is made if the Elohim of Psalm 82 our Jewish elders Exodus 20 to 6 through 8 usually gets thrown into the mix so you turn everyone to you have a description again these are just some references - this one's actually public this this is a pre published version so feel free to to take it if you wanted this passage is a description of a dispute where the people who are in the dispute bring their argument before Elohim and so people say aha here's an example where you have Jewish leaders called Elohim go to the passage and look what you have is you have Elohim really referring to God the singular God you do not you never have in the entirety of the Old Testament you never have Jews or Jewish elders called Elohim Exodus 18 is another passage this is when Jethro says to Moses hey you want to appoint some helpers you know like this is just too much for you you're kind of yes you spend the whole day you know talking about should you be wearing this cloth is it mixed with that wanted let me just you know give yourself a break get some help and Moses says you know it's a great idea so he appoints elders they're never called Elohim in the passage all you gotta do is go read it they're never called that but it's assumed that these guys judging matters of the law are these guys that's how the arguments made well we know these guys existed in Israel these elders judge guys that helped Moses decide matters of the law and you know eventually that became the Sanhedrin like in the New Testament this group of people who helped with this so the assumption is these guys must be what's referred to here in Exodus 22 after all it's four chapters after Exodus 18 so you know these must be the gods that Psalm 82 is talking about now think about it you don't need to know Hebrew for this if you go back to Psalm 82 where's Psalm 82 in Psalm 89 where's the counsel it's in the heavens the last time I checked okay no Jewish leadership ever like had meetings in the heavens not only that but in Psalm 82 what is the crime that they're being accused of the Elohim they have judged the nation's badly okay at no time in the entire Old Testament are Jews ever put over in a judgeship role a leadership role on an administrative role of all the other nations in fact they're forbidden from contact with the other nations it's exactly the opposite situation so it just doesn't make sense on a number of levels and people have realized this so they've gone to argument number two you're right argument number one is kind of dumb this one's better maybe it's just Jews in general that are Elohim and we're gonna latch on to this phrase those to whom the Word of God came I'll bet that refers to the Jewish nation receiving the law at Sinai because you know Psalm 82 does says doesn't it say in your law that those to whom the Word of God came whoa wait a minute what's actually quoted is there anything in a sign I seen quoted no it's Psalm 82 so it's not about the law not only that but if you go to Psalm 82 there's no mention of sign I just read the whole it's not a long song just read the song there's no mention of Sinai and in the Sinai accounts well maybe we'll go back and look at the Sinai account let's guess what Jews who never called Elohim there either so again it sort of like sounds like it might work but when you really think about it it it it just you know vaporizes okay it doesn't make any sense but you can see why you know it's it's important because again you have the that the problem is is again this feeling of I don't want multiple Elohim what do I do with that I have to make them people you know that's much more comfortable well it's not really a problem but a lot of people think it is last resort Jews are called my son by God in other words the nation is referred to as my son and this is when Moses goes you know gets his commission from God God says I want you to go back to Pharaoh and this is what you tell I mean I let my people go let my son go into the wilderness to worship me so the nation is referred to as God's Son yeah we understand why they're God's offspring and all that kind of stuff this isn't a solution either because again sign it's not about Sinai nothing in John 10 is about Sinai and again the Elohim of Psalm 82 are in the heavens so there's really no connection here but this is still important Jews are called my son by God who else in the Old Testament is called the son of God anybody it's pretty rare this is one there are actually two other passages and it's the same person this cook is called God God looks at the person who says my son the king okay the king of Israel so now think about that when Jesus is in this conversation with the Pharisees and he's claiming in according to John 10:30 you know and my father 1 then he quotes Psalm 82 and says hey you know you guys are upset but here you go psalm 82:6 why are you upset that i refer to myself as the son of God is Jesus claiming to be the nation is he claiming to be the king no you know there's one verse earlier in the gospel that uses that language but he doesn't claim that in the passage so what what could he possibly be thinking about why psalm 82:6 not corporate israel not the king who's left who are or is there anybody else that's referred to as son of God or sons of God yeah Psalm 82 that's the only other place okay you're gonna find this job 1 and 2 you have sons of God but this is the only other place where their Elohim and sons of the Most High are connected so what is he claiming them he's claiming to be more than human because the Elohim of Psalm 82 are not human that's where he's starting the debate ok I've just said I and my father are one you guys are torqued let's start with something simple doesn't your own Bible say that there are Elohim there are sons of God that are not human if they know their Bible that's true are you claiming to be more than human Jesus well like weren't you paying attention four verses ago God isn't human is he I and the father are one can't you guys even think this far okay it's just a starting point for it he takes the quotation at face value and so do i divine beings it's from psalm 82 and they're not humans again cross reference here and reasons why to eliminate the other view again these other human or non-human x' are the ones over the nation's we'll just skip through this so he says I said you're God's sons are the most time if you look at it go to look at Psalm 82 of yet if you're not turn there even if you're still in John 10 put a finger in it just walk through the passage who is the speaker the speaker is God God is looking at a group of Elohim the heavenly host and he's upset and he looks at them these non-human beings and says I said you're God's sons of the Most High all of you nevertheless like humans you will die you're gonna die like any man and fall like any prince God is the speaker accusing divine beings of messing up it says I'm going to strip away your immortality so when Jesus inserts himself or uses this passage he's claiming first of all to be more than man it's the only conclusion you can draw that's step one I'm establishing the point that there are sons of God who are not people that's point number one now what does he do then or what's the effect here are the two views contrasted here's the human view and here's what I'm gonna argue for here the Word of God that came is not a reference to the law at Sinai it is the actual utterance out of God's mouth in Psalm 82 that's the Word of God who's coming to the ones hearing at the Elohim the Word of God is the utterance itself the pronouncement from God that you're in trouble the effect is this Jesus reminds his detractors that there are again non-human divine beings who get to call themselves this third if you link this statement with John 10:30 and the verses that follow Jesus is claiming to be divine if I'm not human what would I be okay if I'm not human do the math fellows you know do the math Pharisees if I'm not human I'm divine so he goes to Psalm 82 to to establish this point if you look at the passage look at what he's doing he's just said I and my father or one they get mad at him the Jews answered him and said for a good work we're not going to stone you but for blasphemy if he was claiming to be just a you know a human being down here when he quotes psalm 82:6 if he's just saying hey look guys calm down I'm just saying the same thing that you guys can say we're all children of God if that's what he's saying why would they be man they know he's not saying that isn't it written in your law I said your gods I and the father are one the father is in me and I in him look at these two clients they're about as dramatic as you can get especially this one if they know they're Old Testament the stuff we've been talking about for the last three weeks the father the father is in me remember the whole thing about the name being Yahweh that was in the angel and you know you just run run with it from there he's saying I'm number two I'm the number two guy back in your Old Testament these are dramatic statements and in between he coats Psalm 82 and again his point is look first we have to establish that there are divine beings there are nonhumans who are sons of God but I'm more than that the father is in me and I in him now if they know Psalm 82 and they do because they're not happy I mean they're this doesn't solve anything for them they're still mad at him if they know Psalm 82 they know that not only by virtue of this quotation is Jesus saying I'm more than human when he gets to this he's saying not only am I more than human not only am I like in that Psalm 82 but the character in Psalm 82 that I really am is the lord of the council I am Yahweh in flesh right here in front of you that's why he's using Psalm 82 he's establishing his divine nature and also when he gets down here his authority I'm not only more than human I'm even more than anybody in heaven okay let's just up the ante a little bit instead of shrinking back and saying I'm just like q guys don't be mad at me I mean he just goes the other direction just doesn't about-face and gives it to him both barrels so another way of putting it his logic the problem is again for the Jews not for us but the problem is Jesus makes himself God so here's his chain of thinking other nonhumans are Elohim I'm justifying my claim by showing you that I'm more than human I also claimed in 10:30 to be the one with the father so we're Co I dent off' ID in some way all this is provable by my works look back here for which of the works do you stone me and of course there they're gonna deny that you know it's not valuing you for blasphemy what's this point in bringing up the works if my claims aren't true how could I do what I do Weatherford's if I'm just like making it up here and I'm looking for the exits while I'm doing it if I'm just making it up here how am I able to do what you've seen me do it's your turn to talk it he has these moments with the Pharisees that he just boxes them in he just boxes them in so basically I have a biblical precedent and I work miracles what else would you like you know I I have somewhere to hang this on the idea that I'm more more than than human they're sons of God are not just people I am more than a man not only that I'm one with a father the father's in me and I'm him and I work miracles any questions you know he's again he's boxing them in with this because they they know Psalm 82 they got nowhere to go they have nowhere to go because he's he's using scripture against like you know like he normally does so by way of summary I want to get through summary that way if you have any questions just generally we can take them the four weeks I've tried to get you and you know there's a lot more to it than this but the Old Testament has again the categories that we think of that we attribute to that we associate with Christianity Christianity is very Jewish in that respect this is why we accept the Old Testament as well as the new one grows out of the other the promises are made and wanted fulfilled in the other okay you know all that but I want you to get to think about the fact that some of these ideas that are so intimately associated with Christianity they don't just come out of the blue they don't just come out of the ether there's something going on here that ties them to what God said and did earlier it's not like you know we have like a shift where there's like a there's a new planner there's a new there's a new something or whatever yeah that's the old this is the new and there's never the twain shall meet the twain meets a lot it's an awful lot even something as fundamental as this Christian saw the second God had member incarnated as a man in Jesus we talked about that last week God had thinking again was around long before the New Testament it's not late it's not a late invention that a lot of scholars like to say divine plurality is not a denial of monotheism hey there's a reason why a Jew who love God in the first century could be willing to be put to death rather than say Caesar is God and then in the next breath to say I'm gonna pray to Jesus and not feel it all but he violated monotheism one was a clear violation the other was of course it's not there's a reason why they could think that in their heads and it's because they had these categories in the Old Testament that Caesar didn't fall into again we looked at Old Testament trajectories about some of the things other religions say the word in John 1:1 is not any God he is the word and we looked at passages in the Old Testament where the word was Yahweh I mean it says it point-blank Jeremiah 1 is a great passage to go to the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah saying Jeremiah addresses the word as Yahweh and then in verse 9 the word of the Lord reached out his hand and touched me I mean come on how much clearer can you get that's like reading something in the New Testament Yahweh also has no equal among the Elohim of his Council Jesus and other divine sons of God are not brotherly equals now this is really directed at Mormonism as Mormons love Psalm 82 there are Mormons on the internet that you know like they're fans of mine because I you know I'm into Psalm 82 and they like that you know and you have to sort of slap them on the wrist occasionally and say look you guys are thinking this you can't possibly think that right and get that from the data because Yahweh is an Elohim but no other Elohim Yahweh he doesn't have equal brothers and if he doesn't have equal brothers neither does Jesus okay it's it's it's it's not terribly complicated but again this is where this is the parting of the ways between what we would call you know in evangelical Christianity an Orthodox view of trinitarianism and something that would you know would be a part of Mormon theology Psalm 82 provides no justification for humans being divine now this is a little word for again my detractors out there in video land who love the human view my question to you is why aren't you a Mormon because if you believe humans are Elohim your button that far away you're about that far away from embracing a cardinal idea in Mormon theology Mormon theology teaches that Yahweh was once a man and you as believers when you're glorified you will eventually become God just like Yahweh is okay that is not what Psalm 82 says but if you're looking at Psalm 82 and you're somehow importing humanity into Elohim language you're about that close okay you're about that close so I would encourage you to reexamine that idea not only doesn't it make sense in John 10 but it sort of drifts over into that other territory so that was the last slide

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Keywords: Jesus Christ Trinity Bible Old Testament Dr. Micael Heiser

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Length: 214min 40sec (12880 seconds)

Published: Wed May 23 2018