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====== Transcript of The Jewish Trinity - Dr. Michael Heiser ======
===== Introduction to the transcript by editor =====
This is a transcript from the four part lecture series done by Dr. Michael Heiser called 'The Jewish Trinity'. I have found multiple versions on YouTube, this [[https://youtu.be/lS22MPVFngs?si=qfDju1_xImz4-qt7 | link]] leads to the compilation video that this transcript is based upon. 
===== Lecture one =====
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 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 edgy or 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 doctoring 
  * 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 the Jewish Godhead the first
1:50
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
1:58
Testament the paint off again is going
2:05
to be Jewish evangelism if you have a friend who's a Jew one of the things
2:10
that they stumble over the easiest is the idea that if you know how can you
2:16
worship Jesus to be a monotheist how can I accept the
2:21
idea that Jesus is God that God is God and not be a heretic okay just you know
2:29
not be going off the deep end and just giving up something that is essential to the Bible that you claim to believe you
2:36
got this thing the Old Testament you got the Shema hear o Israel the Lord our God is one I mean right away that you just
2:43
have a barrier so we're gonna be looking at that and in success succeeding weeks
2:48
we're gonna see how once you're sort of over the hurdle of divine plurality okay
2:55
this is this plural idea which we're gonna get tonight you start to get into
3:00
an Old Testament doctrine believe it or not this was Jewish theology up until the end of the second century right
3:07
after the Christian era it used to be pardon the pun kosher and
3:14
Judaism to believe in what they call then two powers in heaven - like to
3:21
Yahweh's not one good and evil both good guys that was normative Judaism until
3:28
after the Christian era so we'll be hitting that the second week but Mike a little taste of it tonight
3:35
but we got to get over this divine plurality hurdle before we get to what you could really show a Jewish friend in
3:41
terms of hey your old testament is not really different than the New Testament you just got to look at it a little bit
3:47
you know from different angles and you're gonna come out the same place the
3:52
other is apologetic discussion now in terms of your experience you may have
3:58
run into certain groups Jehovah's Witnesses would be one Mormonism would
4:05
be another you might have seen specials on television where academics are talking about Christianity and it's them
4:12
you know you don't recognize it for the Christianity here familiar with and also
4:17
sort of weird ideas about Jesus that you might see on TV or here the radio all of these groups are saying
4:25
things about Jesus that in the course of the four weeks we're gonna cover here
4:30
I'm going to show you from you know the Old Testament or just how to understand the Testaments in tandem how to deal
4:37
with that now for Jehovah's Witnesses they're they're more famous for denying that Jesus was a deity okay was God in
4:44
the flesh he's a creative being though Jehovah's Witness Mormons sort of see lots of gods
4:52
in their Bible and Jesus and Lucifer like brothers so they have many God
4:59
figures and they're all sort of equal and interchangeable the academics are
5:04
fond of saying things like you know the New Testament authors the New Testament
5:09
guys they just sort of made this up about a Trinity or Godhead you won't find this in the Old Testament so they
5:15
were literally sucking it out of their thumb so why should we pay any attention to to them they were aberrant they were
5:22
they were not consistent or they'll say the New Testament writers use the Old Testament in such a way where they're
5:28
just using it badly or incorrectly they're reading things into it and again
5:34
Jesus revisionists this whole notion of you know Jesus being either non-existent
5:39
or some you know odd sort of figure that was saying things about himself that he
5:45
was just making up there's also biblical continuity an interpretive clarity
5:52
you're taught the two Testaments are very consistent with each other even if
5:57
something is fundamentally Christian as a Godhead you will see in the Old
6:03
Testament you just sort of have to know what you're looking at and what to look for
6:09
what we'll cover as well will in some ways clear up a lot of weird passages
6:15
there are a lot of these between the Testaments and I think we'll get some help there but the big one is
6:23
contextualized theology and by that I mean this whole thing of interpreting in
6:29
context that everybody talks about this but my question is how serious are you
6:34
about it because again this is this is sort of a little bit of warning here the
6:41
political theology did not begin with any of these theologians I have all the big names up here and of course the
6:48
bottom has any theologian you can sort of fill in the blank with there are certain things that you need to think
6:55
like an ancient Israelite to get and we're going to cover some of those tonight and we'll show you how it's
7:03
valuable Niblick own theology is framed by the world the people who created it
7:08
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
7:15
things going on so to get to these points this is what we're gonna cover in
7:22
succeeding weeks monotheism of course tonight then the two powers and we're
7:27
going to talk about how Jews interpreted the two powers idea that they see in the Old Testament because they didn't all
7:35
flock to Jesus okay they had different ideas and then lastly Psalm 82 which
7:41
will come up tonight as well so understanding Israel's monotheism is the subject for tonight and you might think
7:49
well what's to understand there's only one God well some things just aren't as
7:57
simple as they have prepared specifically many Jews again see a
8:03
belief in Jesus as God is a problem we need to be able to fit we catch this we need need to be able to fit the idea of
8:10
Jesus is God and then God is still there into monotheism somehow that needs to be
8:18
monotheistic if you're talking to a Jewish friend you got it you got to be
8:23
able to do that and then we talked about some of the beliefs of scholars other religions and again sort of is your
8:32
theology invented so these are the problems again just by the way of review that we're going to try to address and
8:39
on the way to doing that we want to start with a monotheism test on the
8:46
left-hand column here these are common Hebrew terms for God and most of you I
8:51
would think probably know all of these the numbers next to them are in round
8:58
numbers how many times you'll see that occur in the Bible in the Old Testament so elohim a lot a thousand el is sort of
9:08
a shorter form couple hundred times Yahweh the divine name is the most frequently used and then lor is most
9:17
often in the book of Job but I threw it in here to be consistent so we have four
9:22
terms for God I want to look at Elohim tonight the top one here now look at
9:31
this carefully the term Elohim is used to describe this list take a look at the
9:41
list the God of Israel is naturally Elohim the gods of the nations are
9:50
called elephant in fact in this verse first kings 11:33 you get three of them and one of them is a god s which oddly
9:57
enough Biblical Hebrew does not have a word for God ass it still uses Elohim
10:02
even though there was a word for goddess and the gods of Yahweh's council saw eighty
10:10
to one will hit Psalm 82 tonight if you're not thinking what is that we'll
10:16
get there now this one you're probably going to be familiar with believe it or not in
10:21
deuteronomy 32:17 demons the Hebrew word is Shaving are called Elohim in that
10:29
verse first samuel 28 remember the story when saul visits the medium at Endor and
10:39
says hey can you bring up Samuel I want to talk to him because I'm just didn't
10:45
he big trouble and she doesn't know who he is right away and she goes through
10:50
whatever machination she goes through and it works because she says oh no I
10:56
see an Elohim coming up out of the ground and then Saul asks what does he
11:04
look like and then she describes him you got it
11:09
that's Samuel and then they have this conversation and Samuel is not too happy with Saul and says you know you're
11:16
essentially your history Saul you're gonna bite the dust God's gonna do this done the other thing and all that comes to pass well it's really curious that
11:25
you have the deceased human dead called Elohim the last one here angels I have a
11:33
question mark because it depends on how you take a couple passages and sort of some nitty-gritty things in the text but
11:39
I would argue that at the very least the angel of the Lord is called Elohim and
11:46
possibly you get a plural use in Genesis 32 we're not going to worry too much
11:51
about that tonight next week we'll hit some of that now here's your monotheism test take a look
11:58
at the list lots of things called Elohim here's the first question
12:06
up here is there more than one Elohim
12:12
that is real what exists anybody yes
12:23
anybody else say us we've got three to
12:29
four do I hear four you're all looking at me like like my classes look at me
12:35
like I know there's some trick here what is he okay
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I would say yes it's kind of obvious because I just gave you the list now here's the problem
12:46
pretty amano fiesta
12:54
how many say yes are you a monotheistic if you believed in more than one Elohim and you know
13:03
these can't be the Trinity demons aren't in the Trinity last time I checked they
13:08
weren't deceased human dead I don't think any of our aunts and uncles or departed loved ones are up there in the
13:14
Trinity so we have plural Elohim yep they're right there I see them but I'm a
13:21
monotheists you see the sort of there's
13:26
some tension here because we're used to thinking of the term monotheists in a
13:31
certain way and by the way the way we think of it does not conform to the list
13:36
that's the problem that's the tension we feel so on the one hand the use of the
13:43
hebrew term is really clear all you got to do is look up Elohim in a concordance you're gonna find those verses I mean it
13:49
might take you a while because you got a few thousand hits to go through but our English translations often obscure what
13:56
I just showed you here's an example this is First Samuel 28 13 now I have the red line here for a
14:04
reason because the ESV to the left of the red line that does a really good job
14:10
of telling you what word the Hebrew you know actually has it uses g.od small G
14:17
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
14:24
you know it's just a neutral term you can't divine being that's not bad
14:31
spirit ghostly figure I mean come on and this last one here I can't quite
14:38
read spirit now if you were looking at these translations you'd never guess
14:45
that what you have is all of here you might think spirit oh maybe it's rule
14:52
lock does that say the word for spirit what's actually there here's another one
14:58
deuteronomy 32:17 red lines over here so I think these four translations do a
15:04
pretty good job with this look at the nasbe over here they sacrifice to demons
15:11
who were not God did gene the word there is Allah wah
15:17
by the way to gods to Elohim whom they have not known so on and so forth so
15:23
this translation carefully distinguishes that the beings that the Israelites
15:30
wound up sacrificing to were not God we're not they're the true God but they were other gods they should not have
15:37
been worshiping so these translations do a good job over here now if that isn't a
15:44
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
15:51
like are they aren't they doesn't make any sense and demons that were no gods
16:01
to gods then again what's going on there I'm not gonna guess at what's going on
16:07
the translators mind translators have a tough job but that just really is a very good choice Psalm
16:15
82 one again here's our red line psalm of Asaf god has taken his place in the
16:23
divine council by the way this is elohim in the midst of the gods this is also elohim except this one is plural he
16:29
holds judgment so New King James ESV do a pretty good job here we have
16:36
heavenly beings rulers like like with 12
16:41
inches that was an attempt at a joke yeah hey rulers and then I this is my
16:48
favorite play here gods and scare quotes
16:54
come on it's just your Bible you don't need to put scare quotes around things
16:59
so again you see that you have a problem if you're dependent on English
17:07
translations 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
17:15
hit-or-miss proposition now I think at least part of the reason why these and
17:22
other verses have this sort of translational difficulty or problem with
17:27
the translators like I don't know what I should put here is because we are used
17:32
to looking at the letters geo and V in that order and thinking of that word in light of a
17:43
specific and unique set of attributes that's what we're used to doing but that
17:50
isn't what the biblical writers did with the word because they apply it to you know six different things so that alone
17:58
should tell you the fact that an inspired biblical writer would use the
18:04
term Elohim of some you know flunky demon over here or again spirit of you
18:11
know the deceased human dead that alone should tell you that the biblical writer did not attach a specific set of
18:20
attributes to the word to him it meant something different now again here's our
18:28
list and these figures these entities
18:33
are not equal in attributes again obviously an angel is not at the level of the God of Israel none of these are
18:39
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
18:48
if you walk up to a biblical writer and said hey I want to know if you're a monotheists I want to know if you if you
18:54
believe that only one elohim exists he looked at you ago of course not I mean you know haven't you
19:02
read the stuff we've been producing here you know you go to these passages and this is how we use Allah he made all
19:07
sorts of things and then he you know you'd hear him say that and it would be like man I can't
19:14
fellowship with you you know you're just off limits or you're a heretic if you
19:20
change the question a little bit that would allow him to say what he really
19:25
thought he would say something like this Yahweh is if you asked him do you
19:36
believe in a single unique Elohim in the entire spiritual world do you believe
19:44
that or not do believe there's one of those and only one or not you say sure absolutely he's the one we should
19:51
worship he's the one that's the creator you know fill in the blank then you start talking about attributes once you
19:57
get past that point but again we're just not used to thinking in these terms
20:02
what Elohim really means you need a succinct definition is it's a term that
20:09
you would use to denote what I call place of residence that is if I called
20:15
something in Elohim it meant that thing lives over there in the spiritual world
20:22
if I call you an Elohim that means I believe you are a an inhabitant your
20:28
proper domain is not my world it's the spiritual world if you look at that
20:35
again all of these are Elohim I just took the list and put them in this sort
20:41
of little diagram that represents the spiritual world and you have where the
20:47
Elohim live that's where they're from that's how you identify an inhabitant of
20:52
that realm a summary to this point
20:58
here's what I want you to get somewhere we've gone so far the biblical use of
21:03
the word Elohim shows us that it's not tied to a specific set of attributes
21:10
that explains why more than one thing
21:16
gets described with the term English translations at time obscure that and
21:26
important point since Elohim is not about attributes the biblical writers
21:33
were not denying monotheism by using that word to describe other figures they
21:41
believed were real that were also Elohim now if you were thinking this if you
21:48
understood that this term really refers to the spiritual world something in the
21:54
spiritual world it undercuts the threat
21:59
and the problem of a Christian going to a Jew and talking about Jesus as God as
22:08
to seek Jesus as elevated along with God the Father is a lie
22:15
they can handle that that's now they're gonna want to know about attributes for sure are you drawing an equation you
22:24
know or is it like a pecking order or what but they're there over the first hurdle they're over the first hump again
22:33
for Jews divine plurality language should not be a threat again I've been
22:40
usually accidentally I've been in rooms that were filled with Jewish people going through this I've told you the
22:48
story before in grad school I started going through a lot of this stuff especially what I'll cover next week on
22:53
the two powers of heaven and I could just see that we were having a communication problem and so I said do I
23:02
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
23:10
me this and I saw your Jewish then some some guy in the back yells out we're all
23:16
Jewish you know there's like 50 people there like well I didn't know that would
23:21
have been handy you start looking for the exits but they were they were really
23:28
nice about it but I had no idea but this was a big deal because if you start
23:34
leading them by the hand and getting them over this sort of threat of do you
23:40
know plural language for God they can sort of go with you to the next step now
23:48
let's move on from this point what about Yahweh the God of Israel and
23:55
these other beings will say a little bit about that before I do that you have any
24:01
questions to this point and we could stop for questions yes
24:11
yes he's quoting Psalm 82 he is quoting
24:20
the psalm directly and exactly he's caught its verse 6 to be more precise in
24:27
the 4th week we're gonna spend almost the whole session on Psalm 82 because
24:34
I'll just Telegraph it this way the common view of Jesus quotation of psalm
24:42
82:6 it's in John 10 34 if you want to look at it is that Jesus and the rest of
24:50
the Jews in the audience thought that the Elohim the gods of psalm 82:6 were
24:57
just people I don't believe that at all
25:03
okay I think Jesus understood his Old Testament any understood but Elohim meant
25:10
the issue is if you just say its people what it amounts to is that Jesus is
25:16
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
25:24
and when people are saying yeah it's the Messiah the son of God God's come to earth all this stuff I haven't told him
25:30
to shut up so I know you're upset with me and I just said I and my father are
25:37
one a few verses back but you know what
25:43
you need to let me do that because I get to call myself God just like anybody
25:50
else how does that make any sense
25:55
if Jesus thinks the gods of Psalm 82 are people that's what that's what then
26:01
that's what commentators have him saying I can do it because you guys can do it makes no sense at all
26:08
but if he's thinking of them as divine
26:13
beings it's a different story especially because four verses earlier
26:19
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
26:29
okay he's going to say look your own Bible has divine plurality language in it
26:35
take a look you're supposed to know that now you should learn from that that
26:43
other non human beings are called Elohim so you shouldn't be throwing anything at
26:50
me for that but you know what I'm more than just one of these Elohim in the Sun
26:58
in Yahweh's Council of Psalm 82 I'm him I'm the lord of the council so you'd
27:05
better watch what you're saying okay two
27:10
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 it
27:18
that's a significant verse you know so drive home the point that he that he's
27:23
trying to make to reinforce what he said in two other occasions in the same chapter so any other questions
27:31
okay well let's jump in here we'll hit Psalm 82 a little bit for the rest of
27:36
tonight I want to sort of focus on two points or have these two points in your mind one is again that Yahweh while
27:45
Yahweh's an Elohim and no other Elohim Yahweh that means Yahweh is inherently superior he is in command he is
27:54
ontologically fancy theological word their ontology means what a thing is he
28:01
by definition is superior to anything else in the spiritual world and of
28:07
course our world too so that's one thought to keep in the
28:12
back of our minds the other one is this sonship language that you will see
28:18
associated with certain Elohim in the spiritual world gets rightly applied to
28:26
divine beings because God created all those other divine beings not only humans without threatening monotheism so
28:34
the first hurdle you have to sort of cross is this idea of again especially
28:40
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
28:46
like I shouldn't even be using phrases like plural gods or plural Elohim because I know God is gonna strike me
28:52
down because the Lord our God is one we that's a hurdle we can get over now
28:59
let's talk about since divine plurality doesn't interfere with monotheism let's talk about this divine Sun idea because
29:07
to a Jew who is the son of God to a Jew
29:12
there are two candidates in the Old Testament this is like Old Testament
29:20
final jeopardy here okay who is the Son of God in the Old Testament who gets
29:26
called my son Israel you know Hosea 11:1 out of Egypt I have
29:34
called my son okay referring back to the exodus who else
29:41
the other passage for that is when when Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh and
29:47
they request to you know be permission to leave Egypt you know thus says the Lord what my
29:54
people go so that my son can go out in the desert and worship me again it's a
30:01
corporate reference but what's the other candidate who does God call my son the
30:09
King Israelite King there's some Psalms to that effect so if you're a Jew and
30:16
you know your Old Testament you're thinking okay you know all this divine
30:22
son stuff you know I don't know about that because I get the divine plurality thing but Jesus is saying he's the son
30:29
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
30:34
buy that that seems to contradict this whole you know divine plurality thing
30:40
that Jesus could be divine well no it doesn't because we have passages like
30:46
Psalm 82 where the same language is applied to these beings again these are
30:53
just baby steps you know to get a Jewish person to think about divine plurality
30:59
from their own Bible without use of the New Testament God has taken his place in
31:06
the divine council you know you have you see see you have God in blue here the
31:11
column here in blue we have Elohim is the term this is singular this is a good
31:16
translation so the ESV we know it's singular because the verb it goes with
31:24
taken his place is a singular and it saw is a singular participle I mentioned
31:32
that because Elohim as a word is what grammarians call morphologically plural
31:39
that is the shape the spelling of the word is plural if you know a little bit
31:45
of Hebrew and other words nouns that end in M or plural Elohim Fleur okay so the
31:52
shape of the word is plural but in most cases throughout the whole Old Testament
31:58
the meaning of the term is actually singular you say why do you know Mike you're just saying that because you want
32:03
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
32:12
really useful on occasion Elohim is actually a word like in English dear de
32:19
ER or sheep if I walked up to you and
32:25
said sheep more than one or just one you're like other than thinking who is
32:32
this crazy man you're thinking oh I don't know it's just a word put it in a
32:38
sentence if I say the Sheep is lost how
32:44
many grammar tells you that if I say the sheep are lost more than one Hebrews the
32:54
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
33:01
English now if you go to the second half of the verse so here Elohim has taken
33:08
his place in the divine council in the midst of the here we have another blue column in the midst of the Elohim he
33:14
holds judgment now this one has to be plural because this nasty thing called a
33:19
preposition tells us that it's plural you can't be in the midst of one and of
33:24
course our first reaction as Christians is oh this must be the Trinity trust me
33:31
in Psalm 82 you do not want the Trinity because if you read the rest of the psalm what happens to the Elohim God
33:38
says you guys are jerks I mean they they get blasted for being corrupt and evil
33:46
you don't want the Trinity in Psalm 82
33:53
it's just it's real just really bad theology to do that so here we have in
34:00
one verse Elohim two times one singular one plural but again depending on the translation you're using you just yeah
34:07
you may not notice that at all let me go back here the other just just again what
34:14
we'll spend more time and Psalm 82 in week four but I do get a lot of pushback
34:19
for this Psalm 82 business this is sort of where I live I'm gonna really impress
34:26
you now I'd say this was the focus of my dissertation and it was this this is
34:33
like my favorite subject but I get a lot of pushback on it and I understand why one of the things I hear is well this
34:39
counsel this again they must just be people you know then somebody will quote you know Jesus in John chapter 10 not
34:46
realizing that that undermines his deity in the passage well really it's not
34:51
because if you go over to Psalm 89 here we have this amazing just look at this
34:59
you go back to Psalm 82 absolutely literal Elohim here we have the heavenly
35:06
beings it's been a a lien a lien is the plural el singular god plural God's sons
35:13
of the Gods or sons of God but here we get heavenly beings same translation you
35:20
know a couple Psalms over a why I don't know but here we have again a reference
35:25
to the Assembly counsel counsel the Holy Ones heavenly beings and guess where the
35:30
council is it's in the skies so the last time I checked human beings don't like
35:39
rule the cosmos of the nations in the skies okay it's a reference again to the
35:44
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
35:51
because if they don't they're going to get punished and it's not terribly difficult
35:57
back to Psalm 82 here's the verse that is quoted in John 10 God says to the
36:05
elohim of his counsel i said you are gods elohim sons of the most high all of
36:10
you nevertheless like men you shall die and you don't want the trinity here okay it's just not a good idea
36:16
nevertheless like men you shall die and fall like any prince again this is a this is a declaration that because of
36:24
your corrupt administration of what i gave you to do ruling the nation's as
36:30
will find out because you did not do a good job and part of their failure was
36:36
having men allowing humans to worship them instead of the true god we find out from deuteronomy because of that i'm
36:43
going to strip you of your immortality you see I'm bigger than you are I need
36:51
you not the other way around I gave you life and I can take it now here's the
37:00
passage that's sort of the springboard for what in the world Psalm 82 is talking about Deuteronomy 32 8 and 9 and
37:08
verse 43 you'll notice I have two translations here an IV ESV 1 says sons
37:19
of Israel in fact most of your English translations will have sons of Israel the other one says sons of God now let's
37:25
look at the verse when the most high gave the nations their inheritance when he divided of all humankind all mankind
37:32
when did that happen when did the nations get divided Tower of Babel Genesis 11:1 through nine when
37:41
God did that he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel and here we have
37:48
according to the number of the sons of God ESV is one of the few translations that
37:55
will have this that is the reading in the Dead Sea Scrolls it's also the
38:00
reading in the Septuagint so the oldest manuscripts of the of the Hebrew Bible we have
38:05
read sons of God in this passage now I don't want to get into this too far
38:12
we'll do it in the fourth week what the story is here is that God if you
38:19
remember back to the Tower of Babel episode we get a little more detail here God looks down humanity is not
38:25
dispersing as he had commanded them to do he goes down confuses their languages
38:32
and splits everybody up and then they disperse the chapter prior to that Genesis 10 you have the table of Nations
38:39
it gives a list of the nations that are you know are associated with Genesis 11
38:45
what happens here is God says okay you don't want to listen to me that we thought that the flood would sort of
38:50
take care of this but it didn't you don't want to listen to me I'm not going
38:56
to be your God anymore I'm going to split you up I'm going to put you under
39:01
the authority of lesser divine beings sons of God who work for me and I'm
39:09
going to create a people of my own from scratch that people was Israel Israel
39:18
does not exist at the time of the Tower of Babel because God hasn't called Abraham yet and Israel's not listed in
39:26
the table of Nations for that reason this is why it says he divides that
39:33
peoples up a part of the number the sons of God but the lords portion is his people Jacob also known as Israel is his
39:42
allotted heritage so this is the story of the rest of the Old Testament in a nutshell this is the beginning of the
39:49
antagonism between Israel and everybody else and between God and other deities
39:57
other Pantheon this is the Old Testament explanation for why the other nations have their own Pantheon it's why they're
40:04
messed up because God punished them by abandoning them
40:10
disinheriting them now we know from the very next chapter when God calls Abram
40:15
what does God say about the nation's does he forget them or they just debt 8
40:21
for the rest of human history no he says when he calls Abram he says
40:26
through you all nations of the earth will be blessed okay so he hasn't
40:32
forgotten them but they are under punishment so again I don't want to get too far into that here are just a list
40:41
of references where you get this son language right here the B'nai sons of
40:48
God bene Elohim Bonet LM in the Old Testament and coming back to the Shema
40:55
is all of this a violation of the Shema because again we're trying to get people again specifically I've been
41:01
highlighting the Jewish person here over the hump looking at their own Bible their own Old
41:07
Testament you know saying it's okay to recognize divine plurality because
41:12
Elohim just talks about where up being it lives and where he's from has nothing
41:17
to do with attributes and some of those Elohim are sons that we have the sonship
41:23
language going on it's not a violation of the Shema I have five translations
41:28
here of the Shema because the Shema is like the most difficult verse in the
41:34
bible to translate you think well look at that it's just a few words what's the
41:39
hard about that in Hebrew there are no verbs there isn't a single verb in
41:47
Deuteronomy 6:5 you have to supply it
41:52
so any one of these can work dramatically but they all have something
41:59
in common the Lord is our God our God Yahweh is our God now that makes sense
42:09
in view of divine plurality because the Israelites believed in a whole spiritual
42:15
world populated with other Elohim and in
42:22
fact God had punished the nations and some of those Elohim had become corrupt and they were demanding and receiving
42:29
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
42:36
from the other gods you stay out of their territory you don't intermarry with them you stay
42:41
away from them because he knows the threat is real again it's the whole Old
42:47
Testament just in a nutshell this is why in the Old Testament you get this sense
42:53
of certain areas were owned or under the domain of different deities this comes
43:01
through in the biblical sir 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
43:10
one in Samuel we're going through 1st Samuel you know when they the ark the
43:15
covenant goes out and the Ark is captured by the Philistines and they take it back to Dagon this temple
43:22
remember the story and then date you know they going the next day and day guns flat in his face his arms are hacked off with all this stuff yeah I
43:30
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
43:37
the narrative that says and this is why to this day the priests of Dagon don't
43:43
walk across the threshold what does that
43:48
mean it's because it was Yahweh's turf so
43:55
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
44:01
gonna like step over here and I'm gonna walk around because in their thinking
44:08
yahweh owns that ground because he defeated Dagon that is holy ground to
44:16
the God of Israel Nahum in the leper he gets healed miraculously by Elijah can't pay the
44:24
prophet and he finally gives up and says okay I got to go back home now can I
44:32
have your permission maybe some of you remember this what does Naaman ask Elisha to take back home with him he
44:44
wants to he wants to load two mules with dirt why would he ask for dirt this is
44:56
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
45:05
take some dirt back with me because it's part of my job you know I got this King
45:11
and he's old so that like I have to take him into the temple of Ramon his God to
45:20
worship and so he's old I gotta take him by the arm and we cover it we sort of shuffle I always think of Tim Conway if
45:25
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
45:32
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
45:38
some dirt to take with me boy its
45:43
protection it's I don't know if we're not told is he gonna like sprinkle some like okay
45:49
I'm I'm safe now I mean the temple of Ramon but I got I got this real is really dirt dirt with me or is he just
45:56
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
46:05
this is Yahweh's territory and I'm taking it with me I can't live here got
46:12
a job got kids back home and all that stuff I'm an important man but I'm taking dirt with me so what does he lie
46:19
she say that'll work sure good idea go ahead take all you can
46:26
Gary yeah we got more of that you know you know so you get this again the sense
46:33
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
46:40
there's a context for it yeah it's just not one we're used to you might be
46:46
thinking what about statements like there's none beside me none like me they're not denials of the existence of
46:53
other Elohim there are statements of Yahweh's incomparability I I'll just
46:59
point out some of these denials are in Deuteronomy 32 verse 39 they're in Deuteronomy 4 which is the parallel you
47:06
tirana me for 19 and 20 is the parallel to Deuteronomy 32 8 and 9 you get two
47:12
denials statements in Deuteronomy 4 verses 35 and 39 well what's going on
47:17
there 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
47:23
know you got this none beside me stuff what's going on I'm so confused well if you think of
47:30
them as statements of incomparability there actually is no problem now I here's a list of places and I want to
47:37
focus in on these two these are all denial statements and their formula if
47:42
you can read a little a broom right down here the city of Babylon says there is
47:50
none beside me there is none like and over here in Zephaniah its Nineveh
47:57
that says that exactly the same phrases a couple of these phrases over here that
48:03
are in the denial statements now here's the question is is Babylon really saying
48:09
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
48:19
do is travel a couple miles and you run into one the whole point is that Babylon
48:25
is saying I'm the best none can compare to me and that's what the denial
48:32
statements are about so by way of ending summary a couple of thoughts to take
48:38
away we have this list here again the Shema not being a contradiction to
48:44
divine plurality firming the uniqueness of Yahweh divine plurality is not
48:49
inconsistent with monotheism and it paves the way for the next step which is
48:55
next week of explaining how Christianity grew out of Judaism now we're gonna see next week that the Old Testament
49:01
identifies one particular Elohim as Yahweh along with Yahweh I'm going to
49:10
show you passages where you have God and this other figure in the same passage and they're indistinguishable and some
49:19
of there are some things that you sort of miss in the English translation that are pretty dramatic to sort of Telegraph
49:26
that what you have in the Old Testament is you have Yahweh invisible and Yahweh visible and sometimes they're in the
49:31
same scene and sometimes the visible one is the Yahweh you think of other times
49:37
the visible one is the other Yahweh and you say well that's confusing there's like to Yahweh's and what is but isn't
49:43
Yahweh yeah that's exactly the way we talk about Jesus think about it Jesus is God but he isn't he's he's God
49:51
he's not the father and the Old Testament has those categories already
49:57
in it okay they they were tracking mentally with the idea of - you know
50:04
we'll get to three as well they're tracking on two on the one hand
50:10
it's an easy shift to accept the I for a Jew intellectually to accept the idea
50:16
okay we got Yahweh and we got this other yah okay I know I know what you're talking about
50:21
the other time was it was a life-altering life-threatening decision
50:26
to turn your back on Judaism and become
50:32
one of these Christian people because you had to believe that Jesus was the
50:37
second one the co-equal second person that was a huge step but they had the categories
50:45
already in their head now I wanted to make a few comments about scholars the
50:52
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
50:59
talk about how you know this New Testament stuff you know I just think
51:06
they were making that up or the early Christians wouldn't even have known what they were talking about
51:12
this Jesus is God business and Paul made that up and then Paul in the early church they were actually disagreed on
51:17
their theology next time you hear about that just kind of smile to yourself and say you're just not too bright okay
51:28
you don't know your old testament context for the New Testament very well
51:34
dr. so-and-so do you hey cuz you don't
51:40
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
51:48
that's usually what's going on I think we've hit this before the last point
51:55
again this is but isn't Yahweh thinking again that's what I want you to sort of
52:00
be tracking on for next time so a teaser last slide I'm not you know some of you
52:09
will know this because you've heard me bring this up before others this will be new to you there's something odd about
52:15
these two versus don't guess that up is I'm not
52:20
going to tell you if you're right the first one is a little easier than the second one
52:26
there's something odd that's going on in these two verses and I'll be referencing
52:32
those next week when we hit the two powers idea I don't have any problem
52:39
telling you that tonight and don't take this like the next two weeks will be
52:47
less interesting but what we're gonna what we're gonna cover tonight is my favorite thing to do in lectures this is
52:54
my favorite topic because I think this is probably the most easily transferable
53:03
component of the four weeks at least in terms of importance to someone who just
53:09
hasn't had their head and all this stuff like I have and that is something as
53:18
centrally fundamentally Christian Christological has an idea like the
53:25
deity of Christ actually has very strong roots in the Old Testament and I know
53:32
you've had Inklings of that before you've probably read something or heard something about Jesus in the Old
53:37
Testament and those sorts of things but I'm going to show you tonight a number
53:43
of places where if you just have your your sense is sort of tuned to what
53:48
you're looking at I think you're going to be struck by the the Godhead
53:57
of the Old Testament there's a there's a Tunis that's very easy to see we're
54:02
gonna go through how you know for lack of a better term buying at arianism okay
54:08
to how that's evident in the Old Testament and I'm gonna use that to trickle over into three and then next
54:17
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
54:24
Christians parse things so you can get an idea of what the discussion was in the first century before the New
54:31
Testament was even written about the Old Testament and a Godhead because that's
54:36
what they were talking about they were getting it somewhere prior to Jesus
54:42
coming to Earth beginning his ministry and prior to a New Testament ever even existing and so the people that God used
54:49
to write the New Testament they're not just getting this out of the ether it's not all new revelation okay they're
54:56
being taught either you know directly or directed or they've had in Paul's case a
55:01
lot of schooling they're looking back at their Old Testament and they're seeing
55:07
Jesus in all sorts of ways and this one is particularly important because of again the Christian idea that Jesus is
55:13
God incarnate so with that in mind let's
55:19
jump in here I hope my my thing works if it doesn't we'll just
55:25
use the button let's use the button last week just to review a little bit by way
55:33
of summary that the thoughts I wanted you to take away from the session was the divine plurality did not conflict
55:39
with monotheism and again to a Jew that was a big deal for obvious reasons so
55:47
that thought from last week heading into this week when we get this Godhead idea
55:52
I'm hoping that you'll see that the Jewish mind let me a Jew who was really concerned about his faith but he or she
56:00
could hear the claims of the Apostles I hear this idea that Jesus was born of a virgin he was God incarnate that they
56:06
had someplace mentally to put that where it made sense and they didn't feel that
56:12
they were violating monotheism we also said Yahweh was unique among Elohim we
56:18
talked about Elohim last week how the term was not attached to a set of attributes that's why the biblical
56:25
writers could use it of an a whole assortment of things one of those Elihu
56:30
was Yahweh and he was and my phrase I like he was species unique there was
56:36
none like him in terms of what he is and what he could do yeah no that's just standard
56:41
Trinitarian theology but what's different about it is I'm getting you to think about it in in very more ancient
56:49
terms than your New Testament and the third thing that we mentioned was that one of the Elohim besides Yahweh I
56:57
mentioned this at the very end is going to get identified with Yahweh let me
57:03
just say that again one of the other Elohim because one of the figures that
57:09
Elohim could get applied to was an angel one of the Elohim is going to get
57:16
identified with Yahweh himself now if you're following that trajectory right
57:22
away you have this feeling of well there's two but they're sort of the same
57:28
because they're identified with each other and and one of them's Yahweh's so
57:33
the other one must in some sense be our way as well that's where we're gonna camp tonight so
57:39
I showed you this slide about a practical sense you know why this is
57:46
important and we covered the first options so tonight second week Judaism's
57:52
two powers in heaven doctor now I say Judaism because Judaism Jewish theology
58:00
before there ever was Christianity Jewish theology had the notion that
58:05
there were two powers of heaven that's not my term that's a term you will find in rabbinic writings the second power
58:13
the lesser Yahweh the second God the second Yahweh you you actually find
58:20
this in Jewish rabbinic writings and it has a context and we're gonna go into
58:26
what that context is so the Israelite God had the Old Testament precursor to
58:32
Christianity's belief in Jesus is God the Shema of course we looked at last
58:38
week here o Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one so we have a Jew that would
58:44
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
58:51
here the only God only kind of suggests one who is at the father's side no wait a
59:01
minute how can you have the only God at the father's side isn't that - because one
59:08
of them is the father the other one isn't but they're both God and this one over here is the only just look at the
59:13
terminology that's being used right in the text the only God who is at the
59:18
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
59:25
at the same level and the the peripheral one is actually called the only God here
59:31
so how in the world kind of Jew how could a first century Jew and that's
59:36
what John was how can he affirm the faith of his his ancestors the Shema God
59:44
of Israel the Lord our God this one how can he affirm that and then believe that
59:49
Jesus was also God because Jesus was worshiped
59:55
I mean think of think about what a conflict that is for a Jew did you okay you say Jesus died on the cross for my
1:00:02
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
1:00:08
things to him that we were doing to the God of Israel but that's okay because it's not a violation of monotheism
1:00:15
can you can you sort of feel what they're up against you know intellectually hunt how do we do this
1:00:20
how do we parse this I gave you a little homework last week and here's what we'll start answering
1:00:27
the question how in the world could they could they digest this one of those passages was Genesis 1924 now did
1:00:34
anybody from last week figure out what's odd about this verse
1:00:54
and you read it you read like a Jewish translation right now that's fascinating because both of them are the divine name
1:01:00
but you're what you're telling me is your translation actually translates them differently correct
1:01:06
okay that tells you right there that there's a tension because if you look at
1:01:13
the verse you have Yahweh twice Yahweh rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfurous
1:01:21
fire from Yahweh out of heaven and so Ryan's translation actually reflects
1:01:29
well we got to do something we got to distinguish them because it's just kind of freaky that we have Yahweh two times
1:01:34
Yahweh doing something you know sending something that came from Yahweh the
1:01:40
wording is just odd and rabbinical writers writers in the intertestamental
1:01:45
period noticed this and this became part I'm going to show you a lot of other passages tonight this became part of
1:01:54
their compulsion to somehow come up with
1:01:59
this two powers and have an idea so that they could deal with their Bible they
1:02:05
knew their Bible really well okay they didn't miss this they didn't miss the next one either what's odd about this
1:02:19
nobody pick it out
1:02:26
take a guess
1:02:31
it revolves around that fascinating subject of the use of person and number
1:02:37
in grammar isn't that fascinating okay now watch when you begin with the first
1:02:45
person I have wrought destruction among you and we know from the end of it that the speaker is Yahweh so he says you
1:02:55
know Yahweh says I have wrought destruction among you as when God God
1:03:01
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah you'll
1:03:06
actually see this a number of times Yahweh using both of the first person
1:03:11
and the third person it just sounds odd
1:03:18
it sounds like there's some two thing going on but it's just kind of weird
1:03:25
like what do we do look at this one I didn't give you this one last week this
1:03:30
is Abraham and Isaac story God tested Abraham and said to him verse two take
1:03:37
your son offer him as a burnt offering we get down to verse 11 but the aims of
1:03:42
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
1:03:48
the child for now I know that you fear God seeing it you have not withheld your
1:03:55
only son from me okay here's the highlighting if you want to look at
1:04:00
coloring look at the inner change God speaking about himself and then he
1:04:07
speaks about himself as though he's somebody else first person third person interchange again this is not that rare
1:04:16
in the Old Testament I'm just showing you a few examples behind it but again rabbis know their texts really well and
1:04:23
they see this going on so we got to do something with what is going on
1:04:32
this is a book if you are interested in the subject from a purely Jewish perspective and I put this in here
1:04:39
because if you do have Jewish friends I told you last week and especially tonight if you're trying to do it you
1:04:47
know evangelism you're trying to get your Jewish friend to at least consider okay Christian theology
1:04:54
Christianity but the claims of Jesus the gospel they're big problems are this
1:05:00
whole monotheism thing and then the status of Jesus is God well if you want
1:05:06
to just give them something they don't believe you I don't believe that this used to be part of Jewish theology this
1:05:11
is the book right here now it's an academic book two powers in heaven
1:05:17
Alan Segal is a Jew he just passed away last year he was a Jew when he wrote it
1:05:22
he thinks the two powers idea is heretical but he's a scholar and he says
1:05:27
I know we used to believe this and so he made it part of his life's work to
1:05:33
chronicle the presence of Godhead thinking in Judaism okay prior to the
1:05:40
2nd century AD other things now we're going to go
1:05:45
through through matically and I'm gonna gonna introduce you to some biblical theological concepts that dovetail with
1:05:53
this sort of tunas going on so we looked at this weird interchange of person a number but we're gonna get more specific
1:05:59
here I think the easiest way to start is with the angel of the Lord the angel of
1:06:07
Yahweh and then something referred to as the name now if you're a Jew today or if
1:06:13
you know a Jew today you do not when you read your Hebrew Bible when you come
1:06:19
across the Tetragrammaton the four consonants special name of God why HWH you do not
1:06:27
say if you're really sort of conscious or strict about it you do not say Yahweh
1:06:34
you use a substitute often it is what was in Ryan's translation out of nine
1:06:40
that's very common the other option is Hashem which is the name he
1:06:49
a shell the name is it kind of interesting I went through
1:06:56
Hebrew Bible program at Wisconsin and all of our professors except one at the
1:07:04
time was Jewish and one of them insisted that we say Hashem the other one didn't
1:07:11
care so it just depends on your app but this is still going on today let's look
1:07:18
at some passages Exodus 3 this is the burning bush who's in the bush is the
1:07:23
question well believe it or not the angel is in the bush the angel of Yahweh
1:07:30
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
1:07:38
spectacular I got to go see what's going on in verse 4 when Yahweh saw that he
1:07:44
had turned the side now here's the question are there two
1:07:52
looks like there's two there and an even more subtle question is if the writer
1:08:00
cared about there being two in the same sacred presence he could have
1:08:08
distinguished them in some way to make sure the reader knew that one was up here and one was you know he could have
1:08:14
done something but he doesn't just lets it go exodus 20:3 this is a crucial passage I
1:08:21
am sending an angel this is God speaking to Moses I'm sending an angel before you
1:08:27
to guard you on the way they've just gone through the Red Sea this is Exodus
1:08:32
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
1:08:39
gonna send an angel to guard you on the way in 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
1:08:46
pardon your offenses right away that's kind of unusual because I thought only God why won't he pardon your offenses
1:08:54
since my name is in him that's just an
1:09:01
odd thing to say it's an odd thing to say to us to them
1:09:07
a Jew reading this would know instantly that what this is saying is my presence
1:09:13
my essence me
1:09:18
I'm gonna do the angel thing so that you can see him alright so I don't just like
1:09:25
popping it out and audible sounds you're gonna be able to see my presence leading
1:09:31
you to the promised land Deuteronomy 12 we get a lot of this language about the name this is very
1:09:38
common I'm only going to show you one example basically when they get into the land God told Moses to tell Israel look
1:09:46
don't worship the Lord your God in the manner like you know the pagans do look
1:09:51
only to the sight that the Lord your God will choose amidst all your tribes as his habitation to establish his name
1:09:59
there and when they get into the land ultimately what is going to be the place where God chooses to establish his name
1:10:07
his presence Jerusalem and specifically
1:10:12
the temple now it takes a while to get the temple and we have the presence of God dwelling at other places but even
1:10:19
before even before you have Jerusalem the point was you don't start making altars everywhere okay I'm gonna be one
1:10:26
place you know with the tabernacle the Ark of the Covenant the whole bit but ultimately I'm gonna choose a place to
1:10:32
put my name that's where I'm going to dwell now the point is not again
1:10:37
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
1:10:44
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
1:10:50
sharpie and scratch yhw H on it and we're cool
1:10:56
it has nothing to do with the consonants themselves it's about the presence of
1:11:02
God he's not talking about spelling and about you know the inscription itself
1:11:08
was talking about his presence elsewhere you get again this idea of the name just
1:11:16
being another way to refer to Yahweh himself may the Lord answer you in the
1:11:23
day of trouble may the name of the God of Jacob protect you it's very transparent there in Psalm 20 some trust
1:11:30
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
1:11:36
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
1:11:41
are ready to you know slaughter them they're gonna say oh yeah well I'm gonna run out there and I'm gonna write yhw H
1:11:49
cross over that well you're gonna get trampled okay again the point is not the
1:11:55
consonants it's not the name itself it's the presence of God Hashem the name is
1:12:01
another way to refer to God himself so if that's the case what God says to
1:12:06
Moses you better listen to this angel because my name is in
1:12:13
that's me in human form
1:12:19
second Samuel six I like this one too because translations just do a number on
1:12:27
this one David gathered again all the chosen men
1:12:33
of Israel 30,000 this is when they're gonna move they are David arose and went with all the people who are with him
1:12:39
from Bali da to bring up from there the Ark of God which is called the name the
1:12:46
name of the Lord now in Hebrew you'll notice Shem occurs twice and so the
1:12:54
translation I have here is a good translation if you look at what the ESV does it does with it called by the name
1:13:01
of the Lord of hosts it really obscures the whole point the point is that the ark itself was
1:13:07
referred to as Hashem why would that be
1:13:13
why would you look at the box you know with the cherubim on top and look at it
1:13:19
and say Hashem the name why would they do that
1:13:25
because that's where God lived okay I mean you
1:13:32
know to put it that way that's why they called the cherubim his throne he who
1:13:38
dwells between the cherubim that's that where he is that's where his house is that's where he lives
1:13:44
regardless he is you know again this idea that this object the Ark of the Covenant localized the presence of God
1:13:52
so it's very natural that they would look at it and say Hashem that's the spot right there and it was associated
1:14:00
with the presence of God sometimes the name gets described as a person
1:14:05
behold the name of the Lord comes from afar in blazing wrath with a heavy burden his lips full of fury his tongue
1:14:13
like devouring fire again anthropomorphic language applied to Yahweh in this case but the name who is
1:14:21
Yahweh Exodus 23 again we come back here again to make the point this idea that
1:14:28
the name is in the angel is the Old Testament way of saying that this angel
1:14:34
you're looking at is Yahweh his essence his presence in visible human form now
1:14:44
we're gonna look at some other in a moment you know we're gonna really sort of twist your line
1:14:49
about this but I want to hit this first and Deuteronomy for this this passage
1:14:58
here might not seem relevant to what we just said that you have this one Deuteronomy 4 and then Exodus 33 and
1:15:06
judges too so we're gonna take these in tandem Exodus 23 we had a name in an
1:15:13
angel what was the angels job God says to
1:15:18
Moses I'm going to send an angel before you to what to lead you to the promised
1:15:23
land okay but here it's his own presence that
1:15:31
takes them out of Egypt to the land here it's my presence here it's the angel
1:15:39
well which is it Mike you know who led you know Israelites out of Egypt the end of the promised land was it Yahweh was
1:15:46
that the angel was it his presence the answer is yes okay it's all of them and
1:15:54
they're all different but they're the same
1:16:00
Genesis 30:1 a little bit more about the angel because even before Exodus 23 you
1:16:06
get this figure this angel Eve in Molokai denied the Molokai away the angel of the Lord this is Genesis 30:1
1:16:14
this is the part of the Jacob story when he's going through the little kind of
1:16:20
weird experiment about the his flock with Laban then the angel of God said to
1:16:27
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
1:16:32
stripes bottle the model for I've seen all that Laban is doing you too you know Laban was cheating him and look at what
1:16:39
the angel says in verse 13 now the angel says this I am the God of Bethel
1:16:44
now Bethel was where Jacob had met Yahweh earlier his journey and so when
1:16:53
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
1:17:01
your head that should help you associate God with
1:17:07
this particular angel I am the God of the fell this is probably my four
1:17:14
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
1:17:21
this is where Jacob is blessing the sons of Joseph but Israel
1:17:27
Jacob stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim said remember Joseph had not affirmed and Manasseh he puts
1:17:35
his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head though he was the younger and his left hand on manassas head thus crossing
1:17:41
his hands although Manasseh was the firstborn and he blessed Joseph again through his two
1:17:47
sons saying I want to look at with Jacob says the God in whose ways my father's
1:17:55
Abraham and Isaac walked God there is hot Elohim the God the God who has been
1:18:04
my shepherd from my birth to this day got an idea who he's talking about
1:18:13
now he's gonna throw you a curve ball the angel who has redeemed
1:18:21
here's the kicker may he bless these lads the verb in
1:18:29
Hebrew is singular it is not plural
1:18:35
which one did he have in mind was it God or was it the angel the answer is yes
1:18:42
okay the writer fuses the two characters because it's six a woman half a dozen of
1:18:49
another okay is the angel is but isn't Yahweh he is Yahweh he's because yeah
1:18:55
the essence is in this angel but yet they're they're two different characters because they were both in the bush again
1:19:02
you get the feeling of this too and yet one two and yet one two and yet one
1:19:08
sounds suspiciously like Christology doesn't the way the New Testament
1:19:16
writers are talking about Jesus and the father judges six the hair you're gonna see
1:19:22
you're gonna see both characters in the same scene yeah this is the Gideon
1:19:29
narrative an angel of Yahweh came and sat under the terebinth at Oprah so remember who's under the tree the
1:19:36
terrible tree that's the angel which belonged to joash the obvious right his son Gideon was then beating out wheat
1:19:43
inside a winepress in order to keep it safe for the Midianites the aims of the Lord appeared to him and said to him
1:19:50
Yahweh is with you so right away you have the angel referring to Yahweh the
1:19:56
third person okay there's a distinction Yahweh is with you valiant warrior
1:20:02
Gideon said to him please my lord if you always with us why are you why are we in this mess Yahweh turned to him which is
1:20:10
really interesting language and said go in this might of yours now wait a minute
1:20:15
wait Yahweh turn wait a minute let's go back a slide I thought the angel
1:20:20
appeared to him what wasn't it wasn't he talking to the
1:20:26
angel and now Yahweh turns doing well which is it Mike is it the angel is it
1:20:31
yahweh well just take your pack you know cuz they're basically the same they're
1:20:36
the same but they're different so yahweh turns to him and says go in this might have yours and save israel
1:20:42
from the hand of Midian you know I'm sending you go down to verse 16 you always said to him I'll be
1:20:47
with you so on and so forth then he gideon said to him we can't really tell their if he's talking to the
1:20:53
angel or yahweh okay if i found favor in your eyes and show me a sign that it's
1:20:58
you who speaks with me please do not depart from here until I come and bring you out my presence said it before you
1:21:03
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
1:21:13
and he makes his little present and he brings it to him under the terebinth
1:21:18
tree okay you know who was at the tree that was the angel so that helps Borean
1:21:24
just a little bit the angel of God said to him take the meat unleavened cakes put them on the rock and the angel of
1:21:30
Yahweh reaches out the tip of the staff that was in his hand touches the meat and the unleavened cakes and you know
1:21:35
fire consumes it and then the angel of Yahweh vanished from his sight okay I
1:21:44
got something else to do thanks for though that little little gift there and isn't it interesting that it's the angel
1:21:50
who accepts it thank you I'm out of here
1:21:57
I've got another task to do and then eight you know Gideon's kind of wakes up and says whoa
1:22:02
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
1:22:09
I'm scared but Yahweh said to him I always still there
1:22:16
peace be to you do not fear you will not die
1:22:21
they're both there one leaves which ones we get these other parts where they're
1:22:28
blurred so there again there's this Co identification but then there's this
1:22:33
distinction is this - and - and yet one - and yet one - and yet one idea
1:22:40
so to summarize to this point the Hebrew Bible contains clear suggestions of a
1:22:47
god that is Yahweh sort of as being -
1:22:52
but yet one figure two figures but yet wanted and again as a Jewish reader as a
1:22:59
Jewish writer and thinker you're looking at your text going okay how do we like
1:23:05
articulate this theological because we got that Shema lurking around over to Deuteronomy 6 gonna be careful here but
1:23:13
yet this is in our Bible I can't like just pretend it's not there the name is
1:23:20
another way of referring to Yahweh as Jews do today the name is within the angel and the angel is therefore Yahweh
1:23:27
in human form at least visually in some sense so again we've got this - but yet one other items besides the angel the
1:23:38
word this is not an exclusively New Testament concept because when I put the
1:23:44
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
1:23:53
John got that somewhere okay that just didn't pop into his head he didn't get
1:23:59
it from Greek philosophers and all this other stuff that you read in the academic literature he gets it from his
1:24:04
Old Testament and no next week will he
1:24:10
had there was some other Jesus thinking the same thing that John could have looked at too let's stick with the Old
1:24:16
Testament now Genesis 15 after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision now I would suggest to
1:24:25
you that visions are things that you see isn't that profound visions are things
1:24:32
you see a I'm pointing it out because a lot of people a lot of commentators will
1:24:38
go right by this in their commentary and start talking about Abraham hearing something in his head or just a voice no
1:24:45
it was a vision visions are things you see word of the Lord came to Abram in a
1:24:52
vision don't be afraid Abraham I'm your shield your reward will be very great 1st Samuel 3 again we all know the story
1:24:59
of Samuel but do we do we really notice what's going on now the young man samuel
1:25:06
was ministering to the Lord to Yahweh under Eli the word of the Lord was rare
1:25:11
in those days and it's not just that not everybody had a Bible you know hey that
1:25:18
was basically like everybody didn't have a Bible there was like one copy of this
1:25:23
and it was with the Ark of the Covenant so you know that would be the understatement of the year it's not what
1:25:29
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
1:25:38
last time this is going to be something visual just watch the word of the Lord was rare in those days there was no
1:25:43
frequent vision the text is very clear here now Samuel
1:25:49
had not yet experienced the Lord why what does that mean because the word there is again the word of the Lord had
1:25:58
not yet been revealed to him same word and aback in this you know God revealed
1:26:05
himself to Abram the division the Lord called Samuel again the third time now we know the story you know this is how
1:26:12
it starts out and Samuel hears this voice and he doesn't know what to do you
1:26:18
know he thinks it's Eli so he gets up and he runs over to you I hear I am no it's not me and they Eli finally figures
1:26:24
it out and says okay what happens again you say speak Lord for you under servant
1:26:30
your servant is here right here so the Lord calls him again the third time the
1:26:36
Lord came and stood again this is the language of at least visibility or
1:26:43
perhaps embodiment the Lord stood he didn't like float around in his head okay he stood calling it as at other
1:26:51
times Samuel Samuel Samuel said speak for your servant hears and then he gets
1:26:57
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
1:27:04
Lord Yahweh was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground and all
1:27:10
Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of
1:27:15
the Lord and the Lord appeared again at Shiloh which is where
1:27:22
they were the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by or as what this
1:27:34
passage and the other one shows you is that the idea the Old Testament has the
1:27:39
idea of the Word of God being visible a visible person who was God that's an Old
1:27:48
Testament idea Jeremiah 1 and even
1:27:54
Jeremiah 1 even ups the ante a little bit he says this is Jeremiah's call the word
1:28:01
of the Lord came to me saying before I formed you in the womb I need you then I
1:28:07
said ah Lord God he addresses the word as Yahweh Elohim
1:28:16
no ambiguity here the word is Yahweh truly I do not know how to speak for I'm
1:28:23
only a boy but the Lord Yahweh said to me don't say I'm only a boy for you
1:28:29
shall go to all to whom I send you then the Lord Yahweh put out his hand it's
1:28:37
the language of embodiment puts out his hand and touched my mouth and the Lord
1:28:44
said to me now I put my words the Word of God who is Yahweh puts forth
1:28:52
his hand and touches the Prophet sounds suspiciously like divine
1:29:02
embodiment okay when the New Testament writers are
1:29:07
thinking about what Jesus said and did they parse it by stuff like this
1:29:17
okay they they know the word became flesh well you know flashback here -
1:29:23
apparently I mean you can touch them you know people and there are all sorts of passages that just sort of zoom into
1:29:30
their minds that the Spirit uses for them to articulate the relationship
1:29:35
between Jesus of Nazareth Israel okay
1:29:41
they're getting it from somewhere another one this one's a little obscure but it has a real impact especially of
1:29:50
Jesus trial which I'll just I'll summarize it now but I'll show it to you
1:29:55
next week he who rides the clouds some some such
1:30:01
language like that the one who rides the clouds or rides through the heavens or something like that this was a known
1:30:06
title in the Old Testament world the ancient Near Eastern world for bail
1:30:14
Bale the enemy God I bring that up because nobody thought Bale was sort of
1:30:22
a sub level divine being Bale was a big deal bail was everywhere
1:30:30
they couldn't Israel couldn't go anywhere without running into bail the Vail call lasted into the Roman period
1:30:37
just because everybody knows this is a passage from Riddick literature where it
1:30:44
has bail called the charioteer of the clouds now why do I bring this up because what the Old Testament writers
1:30:51
did on occasion is they would say okay we got this bail problem we need to make
1:31:00
a theological statement we need to make a put a theological land a line in the
1:31:06
sand and say look Yahweh is God Yahweh
1:31:11
is the one to worship or not to bail one of the ways they would do that was they would take lines out of things like the
1:31:19
bail cycle Luga Riddick literature kay night literature about bail they would lift it put it into their what they're
1:31:25
doing in the Old Testament and then they would change the name put Yahweh to make the point bail was the god of
1:31:35
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
1:31:42
to rain and so the famous confrontation of Elijah with the prophets of bale
1:31:49
there's all sorts of punches in the nose against bale in that narrative it has to
1:31:55
do with who fire from heaven and all this kind of stuff who's gonna bring rain and who's not okay because there
1:32:01
was a drought there well one of the things they do is this title everybody
1:32:07
knew that this was a known title of bale so on four or five occasions the Old
1:32:13
Testament writer takes it and says no bale is not the one who rules the
1:32:19
heavens who rides to the heavens as though it's his turf it's Yahweh who is the God
1:32:26
they and so here you have Deuteronomy 33 26 there is none like God
1:32:32
Oh gesture on who rides to the heavens to your health through the skies in his majesty Psalm 68 o kingdoms of the
1:32:40
kingdoms of the earth sing to God sing praises to the Lord to Yahweh to him who rides in the heavens Psalm
1:32:47
104 bless the Lord O my soul O Lord Yahweh my god you are very great so on
1:32:53
and so forth he makes the clouds his chariot Isaiah 19 behold the Lord is
1:33:01
riding on a swift cloud it comes to Egypt to judge now here's why I bring
1:33:08
this up I'm going to show you one of the fundamental two powers passages in
1:33:15
Judaism because everybody in the ancient world knew that he who rides in the
1:33:22
clouds as a title of bail and they understood when it was applied to Yahweh
1:33:27
what the message was its theological messaging Yahweh is the God of heaven
1:33:32
not this divine flunky okay not this underling
1:33:39
we worship Yahweh not the sky every time they use it the God of Israel wakes up
1:33:45
at one time on one occasion it's used of a second person and that's Daniel
1:33:55
Sabbath so Daniel writes as I looked on Thrones
1:34:00
were set in place there's the plural again divine council idea from last week Thrones were set in place and the
1:34:07
Ancient of Days took his seat know who that is it's God and throne His garment was like
1:34:16
white snow and the hair of his head was like lamb's wool his throne was tongues of flame its wheels were blazing fire
1:34:22
what does that sound Ezekiel chapter one is there any doubt who's on that throne
1:34:29
flame the wheels the whole bit Daisy keel chapter 1 when Ezekiel sees the vision of God the throne descended a
1:34:36
river of fire streamed forth before him thousands upon thousands served him marian's upon Myriad's attended him the
1:34:42
courts at and the council set books were open and one like a human being came
1:34:50
with the clouds of heaven it's the only time you get that phrase
1:34:56
of anyone else other than the God of Israel who is the son of man
1:35:05
who is the human one who receives Dominion and glory the kingdom anybody
1:35:14
know where this passage shows up in the New Testament even Siegel's a juice
1:35:20
saying hey you can easily look at this passage and see two Ancient of Days the
1:35:28
one who rides in the clouds the human anybody know where this passage is
1:35:37
quoted in the New Testament in case you can't come next week I'll
1:35:43
tell you it's when Jesus its Matthew 26 when Jesus is standing in front of
1:35:49
Caiaphas the high priest and Caiaphas has just had enough it says look quit
1:35:56
beating around the bush tell us who you are so what does Jesus answer to us it
1:36:04
looks like Jesus is just you know like has attention deficit disorder or
1:36:09
something like he's not paying attention or just wants to be cryptic Jesus quotes Daniel 7:13 he says hereafter Know Who I
1:36:19
am are you listening hereafter you will see the Son of man coming upon the clouds
1:36:26
with great now we know Caiaphas instantly understood that he was claiming to be
1:36:34
the second Yahweh figure because what this Caiaphas do he tears his clothes
1:36:42
and says this is blasphemy we have no more need of witnesses Jesus just signs
1:36:51
his own death death certificate is that clear enough for you Caiaphas he quotes
1:36:58
this passage and again if you're a Jew again even before you get to the New
1:37:04
Testament era Daniel 7 became a pivotal pivotal passage because again
1:37:11
everybody knows who the Ancient of Days is and everybody in the ancient world knew that the cloud Rider was a title
1:37:18
you applied only to a god a legitimate deity figure and when the biblical
1:37:24
writers take it and apply it to Yahweh everybody knows what's going on but the one time they don't is Daniel Sabbath
1:37:33
and the rabbi is understood that there was a tunas going on
1:37:38
and so the new comes around the New Testament Jesus essentially just gives it to both barrels right in the face
1:37:45
again is that clear enough for you kind of this you really want to know I'll tell you you know if he realized this is
1:37:53
blasphemy now if you have all that in your head which I know is a tall order I want to
1:38:00
show you a few hints of three oK we've gone through that pretty rapidly we've
1:38:05
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
1:38:12
a couple passages in the Old Testament now this is Isaiah 63 and we have the
1:38:20
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
1:38:27
praises of the Lord so on and so forth and he begins to narrate the the
1:38:33
wilderness wanderings that whole episode from Israel's history he says in verse 9 let's go to verse 8 surely they are my
1:38:41
people children who will not deal falsely and he became their Savior who the Lord the Lord became as their Savior
1:38:47
in all their affliction he was afflicted and the angel of his presence saved them
1:38:56
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
1:39:01
one who saved them in his love and in his pity he redeemed them he lifted up carried them all the days of old but
1:39:08
they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit
1:39:13
you 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
1:39:21
the key are the two terms rebelled and grieved exactly the same Abe returns occur in this these two verses in Psalm
1:39:28
78 if you know Psalm 78 it's about the wilderness journey exactly the same
1:39:34
context how often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in
1:39:39
the desert they tested God again and again and provoked the Holy One of
1:39:44
Israel so if you pardon the pun if you triangulate between Isaiah 63 and
1:39:52
Psalm 78 you have God and the Holy One interchanged with the Holy Spirit
1:39:58
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
1:40:07
again that's difficult to see but if you compare the two passages describing the
1:40:13
same event you either get a writer that's really confused or you get now
1:40:19
you get sort of a three-in-one feeling there's another one from Ezekiel then I
1:40:26
looked and behold a form that had the appearance of a man below would appear
1:40:33
to be his waist was fire and above his waist was something like the appearance of brightness like gleaming metal where
1:40:40
have we heard that before in Ezekiel chapter one remember Ezekiel sees the throne come
1:40:47
down with the wheels within wheels and all that stuff and there's a round
1:40:53
throne platform underneath we have the
1:40:58
the chair beam and on top of the platform is the throne and seated on the throne was one that looked like a man
1:41:04
and this is the description of Ezekiel 1 so we have the same divine Yahweh man
1:41:10
thing going on here he put out the form of a hand and took
1:41:17
me by a lock of my head so God grabs him by the lock of the head
1:41:24
but who lifts him up the spirit what are they taking turn so
1:41:30
they take and turn yank in the ponytail I mean no it's deliberately designed to
1:41:35
get you to interchange that the idea is to interchange the person's he put out
1:41:41
the form of a hand took neither the locker they had the spirit lifted me up between the Earth's in the heaven brought me in visions of God to
1:41:47
Jerusalem to the entrance of the Gateway the inner court that face is normal so he has this vision of the temple if you
1:41:52
look at verse five then he was one of
1:41:58
those both and things he said to me son of man lift up your eyes now toward the north let me start showing him things
1:42:04
and in verse six the one speaking to him describes the temple as my sanctuary
1:42:11
whose sanctuary was it and he in those other passages we just went through it was the name who is Yahweh who was in
1:42:20
the angel who now is somehow linked to the spirit
1:42:26
again you look at it you go I wish they'd sort that out for me
1:42:31
I wish they'd tell me who's playing what role and what I'm suggesting to you is in passages like this they don't care if
1:42:40
they wanted to distinguish all these things or not distinguish they would do
1:42:47
but they leave the ambiguity there and you get passages like this where the spirit is thrown into this divine
1:42:53
language that elsewhere is used of - now you have the spirit thrown into the mix
1:42:59
again there are hints of this in the Old Testament now next week I'm going to
1:43:07
spend some time showing you how the interlocking ideas that produce the two
1:43:15
and then bring the third along how the New Testament writers use that to articulate
1:43:23
okay there again they're getting it from somewhere so to wrap up I would say take
1:43:31
away try to take away these points the Hebrew Bible identifies another figure
1:43:37
besides Yahweh with Yahweh's presence that's an important idea
1:43:44
the second Yahweh figure is also distinguished from Yahweh so again
1:43:50
- but yet 1:1 but yet - the second Yahweh figure was frequently described
1:43:56
in human form and at times even embodied the second Yahweh figure was but wasn't
1:44:02
Yahweh just like Christians have to speak about Jesus listen to somebody
1:44:08
prays sometime and how they interchange cheese isn't God let's just so you just
1:44:13
do it reflexively because it really doesn't matter I don't have to be precise do I know we kind of
1:44:22
get it they kind of got it they get they got first century Jewish writers
1:44:29
speculated a lot about the identity of who number two was we're gonna talk about that next week because again prior
1:44:36
to a New Testament prior to Jesus showing up the Jews were not running
1:44:41
around wondering what was in their Bible they knew everything that I just showed you and they were talking about it how
1:44:49
do we articulate this hot over parse that's who's number two who is this guy you know did God like take some some
1:44:54
human he like them and sort of glorify him to this level or is it some some really important angel or who is it they
1:45:03
had a lot of speculation of course when Jesus comes around the answer to the
1:45:09
disciples is pretty easy but we'll tell you who the second one is that's an easy
1:45:15
question the harder question is are you gonna believe
1:45:20
Jews were therefore used to the idea of two and one before Christianity and could embrace the theology without again
1:45:27
violating monotheism and so one can't argue a Godhead idea was late or foreign
1:45:34
like Christianity violates Judaism it just doesn't the second Yahweh was
1:45:41
distinct from and superior to other Elohim this is really important if you
1:45:47
single one out and identify that one with Yahweh by definition Yahweh and the
1:45:56
second one are on an equal level they are the same essence think of think of
1:46:01
your Nicene Creed okay they're of the same essence but different figures
1:46:08
different persons by definition that means that any other Elohim that we talked about last week are not okay that
1:46:17
is a direct contradiction to things that like Mormonism would teach
1:46:22
Mormonism loves the idea of divine plurality they don't like trinitarianism
1:46:28
you know this is this Mars what's going on in their theology and and frankly
1:46:35
overturns and frankly confronts it the term angel another one does not of
1:46:42
necessity rule out the Godhead all the jobs witnesses love Jesus wasn't God he
1:46:48
was he's a single guy and blah-blah-blah-blah-blah big deal let me
1:46:54
show you Genesis 48 with the angel and the God of Israel are fused together I'm
1:47:02
not moved by the word angel to think that you're correct it has nothing to do
1:47:08
with the issue in fact it's the foundation to 2 and 1 and 3 and 1 ok but
1:47:16
we're not unless you're sort of on that wavelength you're missing a good argument I'm not saying go find a
1:47:23
jehovah's witness to go argue it but you're missing a good trajectory to have
1:47:29
that discussion and just and just lay it you know right where it belongs put it
1:47:34
put her in a lie and say look go through all these passages now you tell me that this other one isn't yahweh as well
1:47:43
that's your test prove to me he's not if you can't do that
1:47:49
maybe you should be listening to me instead of the other way around
1:47:56
teaser for next time if you were a Jew I've already given you a little hint
1:48:02
Jews sort of thought in two categories angels and special people if you read
1:48:11
you try to erase the New Testament from your mind who would you imagine how would you imagine what was going on at
1:48:21
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
1:48:28
persons of the Trinity without Jesus how dude just try to try to noodle that a
1:48:35
little bit I'll take you through a lot of Jewish text I'll show you what they were thinking anyway any question right
1:48:41
if you were here last week while you watched video from last week I
1:48:48
introduced the Old Testament idea of the two powers specifically getting a little
1:48:57
ahead of the Old Testament period two powers in heaven was a Jewish idea it
1:49:03
was part of Jewish theology and that's significant because it's Judaism Judaism
1:49:09
is known for its insistence on one God one Yahweh and not having a Godhead if
1:49:19
you would talk to a Jewish person today they would not have any inkling of this
1:49:25
thing that Christians refer to as a Godhead but we looked at the fact that
1:49:30
early in Judaism's history they did have this idea and it comes from the Old
1:49:36
Testament so we spent last week looking over that and this week I want to take
1:49:43
us through how not in the Rabbinical period you know after the New Testament
1:49:48
but rabbis and Jewish thinkers from the time the Old Testament period ended to
1:49:54
the time of the first century how they thought about what we looked at
1:49:59
last week this odd passages that have a second Yahweh figure in them along with Yahweh
1:50:07
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
1:50:13
parsed it as well that'll give you a feeling for when it comes time to the
1:50:18
first century and some of this will overlap with the first century with Jesus actually being here what the
1:50:27
discussion was like and I'm hoping that as we go through Jewish material and Christian material you can see hopefully
1:50:34
I saw this a little bit last week but you can see that for a Jew they had this category in their head already this idea
1:50:42
of God the real question was who is that and Christians of course are gonna link
1:50:48
all that we did last week to Jesus and say look you need to accept Jesus as
1:50:53
Messiah as God incarnate as the second power you've been thinking these spots
1:50:58
for a few centuries at least your own writers have been writing about this
1:51:04
stuff he probably heard it in synagogue and our claim is Jesus of Nazareth is
1:51:10
this person who came to earth died on the cross when it's over so hoping to get a little feel for that as we jump in
1:51:17
but by way of review week 1 we asked or we sort of focused on one question how
1:51:25
do we present Jesus to Jewish people when they think trinitarianism it's polytheism and we really looked at three
1:51:32
answers to that the Old Testament has its own concept of divine plurality and in that plurality
1:51:39
Yahweh was unique in his essence his attributes exactly what we think about
1:51:45
in normal Christian theology in principle and divine plurality is not a reason to reject Jesus as divine that's
1:51:53
a non argument third but you could come back and say but Christians make Jesus
1:51:59
equal to God surely that is Jewish and the answer is well yeah it really is
1:52:04
because that's what we looked at last week so by way of review from last week we talked about the name Hashem in
1:52:12
Hebrew which is another way that the Old Testament and modern Jews still you'd still be this way to the Old Testament
1:52:21
refers to Yahweh without using the yhw H Hashem the name is just another way of
1:52:27
saying so we looked at that we saw that there was one particular angel that in
1:52:35
Exodus 23 the text says God tells Moses my name my essence my presence is in
1:52:44
that angel and you're supposed to obey him so we saw that if you actually look
1:52:50
at the narratives about leaving Egypt and going to the promised land you'll see credited with deliverance from Egypt
1:52:57
and bringing the Israelites into the promised land you'll see verses that say God did it yeah you'll see verses and
1:53:04
say the angel did it and you'll see verses that say my presence did it and I
1:53:10
said well who did it the answer is yes okay they're all it's always essential
1:53:17
II the same essence the same god world but the fact that the angel in other
1:53:24
passages was clearly distinct from Yahweh and then other passages he is Yahweh the passages to get this feeling
1:53:32
of teenis - but yet 1:1 and again this is the conceptual
1:53:39
backdrop for how the New Testament treats Jesus how the New Testament writers talk about Jesus we also looked
1:53:46
at the word since the angel had a human form and had Yahweh in him was
1:53:54
essentially Yahweh and body or at least made visual as man we saw that in some
1:54:01
cases the phrase the word of the Lord described the very same thing went to
1:54:07
Genesis 15 we talked about 1st Samuel 3 Jeremiah 1 is a really sort of palpable
1:54:13
example where Jeremiah says the word of the Lord came to me and he calls the
1:54:18
word of the Lord Yahweh he uses Yahweh several times of that figure that being
1:54:23
an around verse 9 it says the word of the Lord reached out his hand and
1:54:29
touched my mouth so we even have a tactile thing going on in that passage
1:54:35
and lastly we looked at the cloud rioter the one who comes with the clouds the one who comes upon the clouds one who
1:54:42
rides the clouds they made the comment that this was an important passage to
1:54:47
Jews in regard to the to Yahweh's idea because they knew that this idea of
1:54:54
riding the clouds was a known title being in the ancient world specifically
1:55:01
most familiar to them but it was often used five or six times in the Old
1:55:08
Testament to describe Yahweh again it was a theological statement bale isn't the Lord of the heavens who writes
1:55:14
clouds Yahweh is except for one burst that was Daniel 7:13 there was a second
1:55:21
person that gets described with that phrase very important phrase so again
1:55:27
Jewish thinkers look at that and they thought well that's just kind of odd why why would it be so consistent until you
1:55:35
get to this Daniel 7 and lo and behold the cloud rider in Daniel 7 is in the
1:55:43
same scene as the Ancient of Days Oh God on his throne but to boot he's
1:55:49
June he's the son of man he's the human so we went through all that and we ended
1:55:57
up with the thought that you know if you were a Jew you're used to thinking of this - but why one but two and number
1:56:04
two is like human and for human in appearance again this sets up what the
1:56:10
New Testament writers are gonna be saying about Jesus jump into that tonight first I want to show you what
1:56:16
Jews did prior to Jesus coming during the first century when they were arguing
1:56:23
you know with the Apostles and so on and so forth up to the second century AD
1:56:28
there was a big discussion going on within Judaism after the second century
1:56:34
again not coincidentally in the wake of rise of Christianity after that point
1:56:40
they had to declare it a heresy because they could not they were losing Congress
1:56:46
to the early church Jews they were the first Congress to follow Jesus Jews were
1:56:54
telling their friends and neighbors and family look you know we've been talking about this for centuries our teachers
1:57:01
have been showing us this and now you know we heard the Apostles preach about Jesus of Nazareth and he performed
1:57:08
miracles and they performed miracles and you know he he fulfilled all these prophecies I mean to them the pieces
1:57:13
were just falling together in their head and so the Jewish community declared it a heresy at that time part of that there
1:57:20
were a number of ideas I'm gonna run through these quickly because they're kind of interesting some over warning some of them were just like you gotta be
1:57:27
kidding but no they really thought this there was one category of exalted humans
1:57:33
so some Jews their camp was okay the second power is probably some human
1:57:40
person that after they died or even in some cases that's not really weird even
1:57:46
before they died they pre-existed God's help now Adam you'll actually find pecs this
1:57:54
is the book of second Enoch where Adam becomes a candidate we have here and on
1:58:02
earth I assign anise God speaking to be a second angel honored in great and glorious and I assigned him to be a king
1:58:09
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 to
1:58:15
ran the earth and have to have my wisdom there was nothing comparable to him on the earth even among my creatures that
1:58:21
exist so in other texts Adam becomes the
1:58:26
greatest thing in creation and rules all the other stuff and so to some Jews he
1:58:32
became a logical candidate to be God's helper okay this the second guy the
1:58:38
second person of this relationship and when he died they he was thought to be
1:58:44
an angel huh if I know this sounds weird but think about it how many times have you seen on TV or commercials or
1:58:51
cartoons or movies when somebody dies they become a manger I mean we have this
1:58:57
idea and you have you ever asked yourself where's that come I mean do you like really read that in the New
1:59:03
Testament somewhere you know we just sort of have this idea that we go to the
1:59:08
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
1:59:14
here but with Adam Adam was the crowning point of creation so there must be something special about so some people
1:59:21
had you know we're fans of the Adam as far as the second one you'll notice he's
1:59:26
seated on a golden throne as a terrifying appearance so some some Jews
1:59:32
we're actually like making it dramatic you know writing about you know this Adam must have this position the first
1:59:39
form and first format so Adam had his fans Jacob had his fans because Jacob
1:59:45
was Israel he was important the Old Testament something called the prayer of
1:59:52
Joseph we have sort of the deification of Jacob into an angel
1:59:59
called Israel now in the first week I went by this with lightning speed but
2:00:05
the Old Testament has this idea that the nations of the earth were divided and
2:00:10
they were put under the authority of the sons of God they divided the minutes that was very much part of Jewish
2:00:17
theology and it leaks out here because they're saying well who would be who is
2:00:23
the logical teacher and the angel of Israel there isn't one in the Old Testament it must be Jacob when he died
2:00:28
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
2:00:34
those are God's people you see that they're just doing logical extrapolation whether it makes sense or not this is
2:00:40
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
2:00:47
so this again these are Jewish texts we look up what they're they're saying I'm
2:00:54
speaking to you I'm also Israel an angel of God and a ruling spirit here down
2:00:59
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
2:01:07
so Jacob had his fans Enoch and why
2:01:12
would Enoch have his fans because Enoch never died well that's different
2:01:20
okay so Enoch must be doing something in the spiritual world he's not like
2:01:26
retired so what would it what would his job be well again some people thought
2:01:32
well he knocks job is probably this number to Yahweh gosh he's God's biggest
2:01:37
help okay so you had Enoch not being part of this this is from the book of
2:01:42
first Enoch which is a book composed between the Testaments and here again
2:01:48
you get this idea where Enoch is transformed my whole body modified my
2:01:54
spirit transformed Enoch is called the Son of Man just like the n7 some Jews stuck that title to it
2:02:02
because they thought he was the best candidate continuing in second Enoch you
2:02:09
know let me not join in and stand in front of my face my presence forever put him into clothes of my glory
2:02:17
I looked at myself Enoch says and I had become like one of the glorious one so he's like transformed to this divine
2:02:27
some Jews were saying Enoch must be the guy Moses gets his votes this is kind of
2:02:33
a shocking pax born again we're used to thinking of Moses an association it's an
2:02:41
association to the Judah the law was like this is the central focus of faith
2:02:47
so Moses of course has a special place in the hearts and minds of many Jews we
2:02:53
read here that on Sinai speak I Moses saw what seemed to throne that we read
2:02:59
that in Exodus 24 were Moses and Aaron Nadav and avi hew and seventy other
2:03:05
elders get to see but we're getting another account here upon its satin a
2:03:11
man of noble mean the crown with a scepter in one hand I made approach and stood before the throne so Moses gets a
2:03:17
little brave here says I'm gonna see how close so he starts moving up he handed
2:03:25
over the scepter and bade me mount the throne and gave me the crown
2:03:31
have a seat for a while roses that's just that's just kind of shocking for a
2:03:36
Jew to write something especially the Moses this is a little idea what Paul
2:03:43
was dealing finished there were some people who were really devoted to the war now others said no you guys have it
2:03:52
all wrong has nothing to do with an exalted glorified human it must be
2:03:57
number two must be up to someone who was already an angel but just sort of kind of like wins the job Michael is sort of
2:04:05
the obvious candidate Michael was considered by some writers to be always
2:04:11
co-regent in heaven we sort of get a little feel for that in Daniel 12
2:04:16
because Michael is this sort of the patron angel in Daniel chapter 12 of
2:04:22
Israel how come they picked other people don't
2:04:27
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
2:04:35
of feel here and so because of Daniel 12 a lot of Jews felt well it just has to
2:04:41
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
2:04:48
him Michael was identified as the angel of Yahweh not in the Old Testament but in
2:04:54
something called the target anybody know what the target was taught a targum a
2:05:00
target is the translation of the Bible
2:05:06
in this case the Old Testament but you get him with the new as well translation
2:05:11
of the Bible into Aramaic the Old Testament was written in Hebrew so
2:05:17
Aramaic is a related with different language and so when it was translated into Aramaic the name for that was the
2:05:24
target our guns are plural there's lots of translations in the Aramaic of the
2:05:30
Old Testament there are New Testament time that was Muhammad so in the targets
2:05:36
the translator whoever did that work felt justified or you know maybe he just
2:05:44
was a Michael fan but in some passages he actually inserts the name Michael to
2:05:50
identify the angel he just doesn't that was this opinion so that's it works its
2:05:56
way into the translation Testament of Daniel or dan excuse me we have here
2:06:03
draw near to God to the angel who intercedes for you so Michael is viewed as a personal intercessor kind of this
2:06:10
is 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
2:06:17
mediatorial role in Roman Catholicism well so many Jews Michael had a role like that you could he would intercede
2:06:24
for you on your behalf to God
2:06:29
there's a book called joseph and aseneth that was his wife going to the old
2:06:34
testament the Egyptian where we read a little bit about Michael chief of the
2:06:39
house of the Lord Commander of the hosts of the Most High now the Book of Daniel
2:06:45
doesn't actually the book of daniel says that Daniels a little it's a little hard
2:06:52
to figure out who they are the Prince of the host the highest of the princes are
2:06:58
the same guy are they different but in this text they identified with
2:07:03
Michael others had this angel now you won't read this angels name in the Old
2:07:10
Testament or anywhere in the Bible look at the name what strikes you about the
2:07:17
name this is the name of an angel L is
2:07:25
God and so is yah yah is the short form of Yahweh yah shows up in the Old
2:07:31
Testament a few dozen times so a Jew whoever wrote this we don't know who
2:07:39
wrote the apocalypse whoever did took two names of God and gave them to an
2:07:44
angel and didn't feel like he was blasting I don't like any of these kids
2:07:54
for the second power so I'm just gonna make pick an angel and main him yah the
2:08:06
same be a fide figure appears in the life of Adam and Eve again this is another book another jewish book written
2:08:12
between the Testaments that didn't make it into the Old Testament in this case
2:08:18
God Himself is called yah so we have text God is Yael that makes sense
2:08:24
because those are his names but then there's an age that gets those needs so
2:08:31
right away you confront it again these are Jews these are the you know SuperDuper monotheistic Jews militant
2:08:38
monotheistic Jews taking a name of God and giving it to a second person and it shows you that that
2:08:46
was acceptable to them they're trying to sort of articulate how they think this
2:08:52
works here we have yeah Yahoo L again go
2:09:00
yeah all the same name to the mediation of my ethical name here we have clearly again a second character distinct from
2:09:08
Michael because Michael he says with me Michael blesses you forever so this Jew again whoever wrote this
2:09:15
text did not think the second power was Michael it was this other angel created
2:09:21
and gave this name this one you may have heard of Philo it was probably the most
2:09:31
important Jewish writer of his era if you're familiar with two non biblical
2:09:37
Jewish writers they're probably Philo and Josephus and Josephus is a little
2:09:43
later he was a historian Philo is a philosopher and theologian he writes
2:09:49
religious theological stuff and Philo used this term Philo wrote in Greek he
2:09:57
used the term Lagos to apply to number two isn't that interesting because who
2:10:04
else that we know does that John so you
2:10:11
have this again this overlap because Philo knows that back in his Old Testament there's this word of the Lord
2:10:18
character in Greek world war that's Lagos so he picks up on that and tries
2:10:25
to write a full-blown theology of a Godhead how what's the relationship
2:10:31
between God and this other figure now Philo his theology is not the same as
2:10:37
John's because for Philo the law goes I was a creative being he's created in
2:10:43
some passage and other passages was not but Philo really tries to say he's he's
2:10:48
God but he's not like really he's God he struggles it's God but he isn't his just
2:10:58
calling the Lagos now the problem is he
2:11:03
gets a little tongue-tied here he actually refers to the Lagos is the
2:11:09
mighty log who is my Viceroy the Lagos is that power of God by which he made
2:11:14
all things that is because it's Jesus
2:11:20
word five of all things we have here God
2:11:28
is indeed one he's Joey's got to affirm that his highest in chief powers are to
2:11:34
even goodness and sovereignty in the midst between the two there's a third which unites the Braga oscillators to
2:11:40
the log on us that God is both Wilbur and good so the long house is sort of the conduit through which God does yeah
2:11:50
it's difficult Philo gets this dramatic he refers to the Lagos as the second gun
2:11:57
the deuteros he actually uses second God
2:12:02
in his commentary on Genesis so for a Jew and this was not considered
2:12:09
heretical for a Jew to use a phrase like second God was pretty dramatic but
2:12:16
they're trying to figure out how to talk about this memra word of the Lord the
2:12:26
word for word in Greek as long as the word for word in Aramaic is memmer there
2:12:35
are lots of Jewish writers who wrote about the membra because they were
2:12:41
writing in so memmer on is the Aramaic
2:12:48
word for word it occurs widely in the target one of the targets are Aramaic
2:12:54
translations of the Old Testament and when they're doing translation they
2:13:00
let their theologies lie they are putting the memra into all sorts of
2:13:08
interesting schemes some passages that we looked at last week we get this
2:13:14
feeling that there's two persons I'll show you in a moment here so we have
2:13:19
memory to memorize the log cost loss is the Greek word Greek words Aramaic so
2:13:27
memory is again God's Word as though he were a person and I clip some of these
2:13:33
from an article on this just look at some of these examples these are Aramaic translations in the Old Testament here's
2:13:40
the kicker that would have been used it would have been current when Jesus was here on
2:13:45
earth if you couldn't read Greek and you couldn't read Hebrew this is what you
2:13:51
made you're reading Aramaic because it was your native language and they're
2:13:56
getting two powers you know they're getting both barrels it's here we have Genesis 3 9 the Lord
2:14:05
God called unto man to Adam well in the target would you salute tired of it says
2:14:11
the memory of the Lord God called to the man it's not bad it's the memory if you
2:14:19
think back to Genesis 3 what in Genesis 3 might give you the feel that God has a
2:14:26
body there remember back to the passage walk through the garden and Adam and
2:14:34
Adam heard the sound of God walking through the garden so whoever did this
2:14:45
translation when they get to that passage their visual I want that look
2:14:50
like must have been God in a body or
2:14:55
something walking around and so the best way to convey that is tnews member
2:15:01
secondary Genesis 20 Wilf Abimelech it isn't God
2:15:07
who comes to look in a dream it's the member ah no it's another interesting one here though see the Lord said to
2:15:15
Moses the memra of the Lord said to Moses they're getting this from these word of the Lord passages so when God
2:15:22
starts talking in certain passages since the catch list since in passages like
2:15:27
Genesis 15 and verse 7 3 in Jeremiah 1 since the most passage the word passages
2:15:33
the word of the Lord turns out to be like a person it seems reasonable to the
2:15:39
Jewish translator that's what's going on so we're gonna put it in to convey that
2:15:47
it's highly interpretive but you see what they're getting this is the way it
2:15:53
was in Genesis probably going on here to
2:15:58
Genesis 3:8 they heard the voice right there is the passage and so on and so you get the idea this is again the
2:16:07
Aramaic by with the disciples we don't
2:16:14
know what they read when they read it but I'm pointing this out to say look this idea of true yet one one yet - this
2:16:23
is not news to them this is not news
2:16:28
what's news is the fact that number two in Christian theology was incarnated
2:16:34
it's travel through the woman's birth canal that's me that's a little that's a
2:16:40
little freaky right there another one with memra Genesis 1:27 the memorable
2:16:50
that makes sense because we have like physical bodies so you know you know if
2:16:56
you've heard 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
2:17:03
mean like we look like God you know what we chant because God doesn't have a body that's right
2:17:08
with the second power at a body so
2:17:13
that's where he's going right there can you see what they're thinking we're
2:17:19
doing this another one and we're doing this rapidly there's a lot to cover the
2:17:27
Shechinah were shek tEEN TOP was both Arabic ones Hebrew ones Arabic Shekinah
2:17:35
was probably the way you've heard that pronounced if you heard the word at all this is another sort of figure another
2:17:44
term that refers to this embodied deity person comes from Chacon which means to
2:17:53
dwell and the verb is used in the Old Testament phrase when God starts talking
2:17:58
about the tabernacle in the temple he says he refers to it as the place where I will cause my name to dwell replace
2:18:09
where I will put my name so chacón is to
2:18:15
dwell and so the whatever filled the temple
2:18:20
whatever showed up or whatever was imagined to be in the cloud that was speaking to Moses to some Jews they used
2:18:29
the term Shekinah Shekinah glory it's a
2:18:34
reference to God's glory dwelling in that place so it was it was God's glory
2:18:41
sort of put into form and their word for that was the Shekinah mortgage in
2:18:47
Aramaic mashenka shucking table by the way was used not
2:18:52
only the second Yahweh but there are Jewish writings that use that term to
2:18:59
refer to the spirit as well so I want
2:19:05
you to catch the importance of that I know a lot of the material is foreign but think about this you have Jews
2:19:12
running around the first century who are using words like Nimrod and
2:19:18
checking ha Shakira to refer to this to God in form human form or something
2:19:25
physical and they're using the term not just of number two but of number three
2:19:33
there are Jews thinking of a tripartite Godhead before Jesus ever showed up okay
2:19:42
can they have these categories they have the conceptual categories at least
2:19:49
things like this are being discussed things like this show up in their
2:19:55
translations so that when the Apostles come along when Shaw comes along starts
2:20:01
talking about the theity of Christ and in him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily and all this stuff and we
2:20:07
the New Testament they're not like getting whiplash thinking this guy's crazy you know what what's he talking
2:20:12
about they're at they actually have something to think about that confronts them with something do I
2:20:17
believe that Jesus Jesus of Nazareth filled this room do I believe that had
2:20:28
to make a decision to make a choice it was a theological question so just a few
2:20:34
examples we have here I will cause my Shekinah on my Shack King Kong to dwell
2:20:41
in the midst of the children of Israel again it was the glory cloud of glory present some four again targets those
2:20:50
translations God walking among his people sometimes they'll use Shechem kah
2:20:57
instead of memory sometimes their rate of change this is the scene where God
2:21:03
hides Moses in the cleft of the rock passes the targets that this the person
2:21:11
that passes in front of him is the Shekinah it's the glory of God and some sort of
2:21:17
discernable for now when Christians come
2:21:24
along if you're a theologian if you're like me Paul knows all this stuff you
2:21:32
know it's it's hard to know how much somebody like John or some of the other
2:21:38
disciples would've known Paul certainly you could have written the books on it because he was highly educated and for
2:21:48
his time he had the best of training but the other disciples you know would have picked up bits and pieces of it from
2:21:55
their teachers their rabbis things they read translations like the targets so
2:22:02
when Jesus comes along in the New Testament you get the first thing
2:22:08
they're confronted with is the Messiah issue and once they get over the Messiah
2:22:14
issue humph once they realize I've been called by the Messiah we've been walking around
2:22:19
here for a few months we're watching him do these things surely you know this is
2:22:25
the period where the Christ the Anointed One later on when they start writing and
2:22:34
preaching after the resurrection we have to start putting things down on paper as
2:22:40
it were they're gonna be drawing on a lot of this stuff a lot of these pieces
2:22:46
are going to be falling into place for them and especially Paul because Paul is so thoroughly conversant with a lot of
2:22:53
it so in basic terms just the New Testament is we're gonna Park tonight
2:22:59
what did New Testament writers do with some of the Old Testament ideas well the
2:23:06
most obvious one for us is the word we'll talk about this already in the
2:23:12
beginning was the log-house word the Word was with God the Word was God if
2:23:18
you were a Jew who couldn't read Greek and someone was kind enough to put this into Aramaic it would read in the
2:23:26
beginning and the member I was with God promise
2:23:33
that makes got my Old Testament here in Aramaic and it says that - that's easy
2:23:41
and they could understand very clearly
2:23:46
word became flesh no one has ever seen God the only God who is at the father's
2:23:52
side again just look at the verse only God oh and by the way beside that only God
2:23:59
there's this one you just look at the
2:24:04
wording and it's just telling that after the angel this is a curious passage Jude
2:24:12
5 Jude writes now I want to remind you although you once fully knew it that
2:24:18
Jesus we saved the people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those
2:24:24
where do we read about Jesus saving anybody in the old custom where do we
2:24:34
leave them what's Jude thinking who did
2:24:40
save the people out of the land of Egypt
2:24:49
and the presence to insistance hatches
2:24:55
no to him this is like of course it was
2:25:01
Jesus because Jesus is now the incarnation of Yahweh whereas before it
2:25:10
was embodiment but it was an incarnation but it's six of one half a dozen of another same thing just different times
2:25:20
exodus 20:3 very specifically here god sends the angel my name is in him judges
2:25:30
to the name this is kind of interesting
2:25:35
we've read john 17 a lot because it's the high priestly prayer of Jesus think about what Jesus is saying he says
2:25:43
to God I have manifested your name to
2:25:49
the people whom you gave me out of the world yours they were and you gave them
2:25:56
to me and they have kept you is there a Jew alive
2:26:02
was there a jewel alive the first century that did not know of God how
2:26:12
could you be a Jew any time in history and not know that you're God's name was
2:26:22
Yahweh I am the Shema if you knew one
2:26:27
verse the Creed of Israel Jesus isn't
2:26:35
saying hey I thank you Father I came to inform everyone what's your name once it
2:26:42
was a tough job like nobody knew that he's telling what he's doing this he's
2:26:54
manifesting he that has seen me finish
2:27:02
the verse has seen the father
2:27:09
while I was with them I kept them in or by your name which you have given so
2:27:16
like when they were in trouble Jesus said hold on guys why HWH it's absurd kept them by your
2:27:27
name means I was able to keep them by your power why because i made known to
2:27:40
them your name jesus didn't come and said hey fellows before I leave town I
2:27:45
just want you to know how ridiculous is that but it's easy because of this word
2:27:52
nama name we sort of either sort of
2:27:57
gloss over it or Jesus is being cryptic here because it just sounds odd you know
2:28:05
then that's normal but if you think in the Old Testament the name is another
2:28:11
way to refer to Yahweh themselves and that the name sometime this was embodied
2:28:17
didn't got something else going on right
2:28:23
around the clouds I actually alluded to this one last week hidden again this is
2:28:28
Daniel 7:13 where Daniel says I saw in the night visions and behold upon the
2:28:33
clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man a human bar an ocean and he
2:28:42
came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him so we talked again last week about how this titles always
2:28:48
used to be our way except for this verse if you weren't here last time here is
2:28:55
where it's used this is when Jesus is standing before Caiaphas the high priest
2:29:00
was on trial this is high stakes life or death and the high priest stood up and
2:29:08
said have you no answer to make Jesus is getting accused what is it that these
2:29:16
men testify against you but Jesus remained silent the high priest said to him I adjure you by the Living God tell
2:29:21
us if you are the Christ the son of God so Jesus said everyone
2:29:26
against me listening let me give you one
2:29:31
and he says I tell you from now on we
2:29:37
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
2:29:47
that's my handsome and Caiaphas knows instantly what he's saying
2:29:55
he knows he's just made himself to be the second Yahweh guy the cloud seven
2:30:03
because high priest tears his robes that's a symbol in the Old Testament everywhere for I am really important or
2:30:12
this is just awful awful circumstance it says he is uttering blasphemies humana
2:30:24
jesus knows there you go mr. high priest
2:30:31
is it clear that's pretty much the end
2:30:36
of the trial now hit a few points here
2:30:41
because I'm gonna tack on something that is probably worth going into at this
2:30:48
point but to this point New Testament writers again repurpose Old Testament
2:30:55
theology they repurpose Old Testament phrases and words that described Yahweh
2:31:01
in human form and they're going to use these things of Jesus here's the
2:31:07
question why would they do that if they didn't believe that Jesus was God it was
2:31:15
lashing that's precisely why they did do
2:31:20
so by identifying Jesus with the second Yahweh they make this point therefore
2:31:26
and here's something that you can take to witness friend or your Mormon friend
2:31:34
since they're doing this this tells you automatically that they're linking Jesus
2:31:41
not with just an angel or any angel or any of the other Elohim or any of this stuff they're linking him specifically
2:31:49
with the angel who is not any other ones
2:31:55
that and they're doing that because they're drawing an equation he is not
2:32:03
jesus is not a lesser divine being than Yahweh he is now they get human flesh
2:32:12
Hebrews 2 makes that point to which of the Angels does God say this or do this
2:32:19
or that the whole chapter is contrast Jesus and angels Jesus batteries
2:32:25
superior now quick excursus before we
2:32:32
wrap up tonight there's one other figure in the Old Testament that relates to the
2:32:40
question a Jewish Godhead and that is the figure
2:32:49
you're not familiar with wisdom specifically this character is the
2:32:55
backdrop to Jesus as the co-creator because Paul and John a little bit with
2:33:02
the word especially this one Paul and John have Jesus as being present at
2:33:08
creation being God's instrument to create everything else okay in the Old
2:33:13
Testament that is never said of the angel it's never said of the word it is
2:33:20
set of rules so we need to cover this Terry proverbs 8 is where you get it now in
2:33:29
verse one does not wisdom call does not understanding raise once when heights
2:33:38
beside the way at the crossroads she takes her stand if you read through the
2:33:43
whole chapter proverbs chapter 1 a couple of their chapters wisdom he's
2:33:48
cast as a person but specifically a woman why is that some of you have heard
2:33:55
me lecture on this before we'll try to be mercifully brief the reason that
2:34:03
wisdom is a woman is because the Hebrew word for wisdom is hokhmah which is
2:34:08
grammatically if you've studied fine line in Spanish German French whatever
2:34:15
you know that nouns are classified by
2:34:20
gender it's completely arbitrary for instance in German das mädchen
2:34:26
little girl is neuter okay why I don't
2:34:33
know a gender is a means that language uses to classify nouns so that they can
2:34:41
match them up English doesn't use
2:34:46
endings to identify these things so if you don't have a foreign language you probably never heard this but Hebrew is
2:34:53
like lots of other languages it uses gender to classify nouns hokhmah is
2:35:00
feminine that's why the pronouns her and she show up in the text because it's
2:35:05
proper it's literary proper has nothing to do with dialogue we got here the Lord
2:35:13
possessed at the beginning of his work the first of his acts of all we'll come back to this verse ages ago I was set up
2:35:20
wisdoms talking about herself before the beginning of the earth when there were no depths I was brought forth well there
2:35:26
were no Springs abounding with water before the mountains had been shaped before in the hills before this before that
2:35:32
Rock forward so you get the idea that wisdom is around let's just go back
2:35:37
wisdom is around at the beginning so God
2:35:43
has somebody there helper whatever co-creator in the Old Testament who is
2:35:52
wisdom well there are a lot of books wisdom of Solomon is one again Jewish writers are writing between the
2:35:58
Testaments and they're commenting on problem G so they say a lot of interesting things about this character
2:36:05
I tell you what wisdom is and how she came to be and I will hide no secrets
2:36:11
I will trace her course from the beginning of creation for wisdom the
2:36:18
fashioner of all things taught me she is a breath of the power of God and a pure
2:36:23
emanation of the glory of teapots and she shall come back to this
2:36:30
she is a reflection the Greek word is an opera gospel of eternal light and a
2:36:36
spotless we're of the working in image of coolness he likes by your wisdom you
2:36:46
you have formed humankind give me wisdom that sits by your throne
2:36:55
these are Jews to Jews writing this stuff with you as wisdom she knows your
2:37:01
works and was present when you made the world he's getting that from proverbs 8 send her forth from the holy heavens and
2:37:07
from the throne of your glory send her she must have a nice seat up in heaven
2:37:14
so it's kind of another book see rack in
2:37:20
the Assembly of the Most High there's the blind counsel from week one she opens her mouth I dwelt in the highest
2:37:27
heavens my throne was in a pillar of cloud and wait a minute she was in the pillar of cloud in the Old Testament
2:37:33
that would be God and here we have
2:37:39
wisdom and you get this sort of Godhead flavor okay the New Testament writers do
2:37:49
interesting things this is one it's hard to find but it's a little dramatic in
2:38:00
Luke 11 Jesus he's railing against the
2:38:05
scribes and Pharisees woe to you lawyers also preload people with burdens hard to
2:38:12
bury yourselves don't touch the finger so he starts going off on them you build
2:38:18
the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed your witnesses and consent with needs of your fathers for
2:38:24
they kill them with builder tools they close up therefore also the wisdom of
2:38:31
God said I will send them prophets and apostle's some of whom they will kill
2:38:37
and persecuted so Jesus is saying that
2:38:44
the wisdom of God said Russell's this puts the wisdom of God in the role of
2:38:51
God as we read in Ephesians 4 at other places that God sent
2:39:01
so that's odd Jesus is sort of linking wisdom God but Matthew 1ups that same
2:39:12
passage same scene Jesus is speaking and looking look at what changes therefore I
2:39:22
send you prophets and wise men it's from
2:39:28
Matthew puts Jesus in the role of wisdom who was in the role of God they're
2:39:36
mixing and matching it's of Godhead these are Jews quoting Jewish texts one
2:39:45
of them job identifying Jesus we looked
2:39:58
at this verse this is my favorite one my favorite wisdom because this is for a
2:40:05
text geek like me this is dramatic we read wisdom is a reflection of a
2:40:12
gossamer of eternal light spotless guess where this gets quoted just let me let
2:40:19
me just prep it by saying this this word is really where it occurs one time in
2:40:28
the Septuagint which is the translation in the Old Testament this is the verse
2:40:34
it only occurs two or three times in the entire Greek literary world
2:40:41
it's really rare so when the New Testament writer quotes it
2:40:48
he's getting it from here because this is going to be reflected around it so
2:40:56
it's a reference to anybody know anybody have an inkling where this is quote picking sort of pick it out out of the
2:41:02
ether radiance reflection long ago at
2:41:15
many times in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets Jews long ago
2:41:31
like many times in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us
2:41:37
binds whom he appointed the heir of all things through whom also he did the
2:41:44
world and wisdom is that has been that character test developer let's know it's
2:41:51
Jesus through whom also he created the world he is the radiance yep awesome
2:41:57
what's the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power he
2:42:04
quotes that past it's extremely rare to
2:42:11
you know if I guess what I'm gonna I
2:42:17
don't want I don't want to come off as a monster there are some times that I've
2:42:23
done in this in the past and I'm not saying this to the right usually when I
2:42:28
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 blah
2:42:35
but I have done things like this where
2:42:40
I'll say well you're gonna talk to me about the Greek can about Angels technomage okay do the math because
2:42:48
there is no other thing that this could possible occurred but the second person in Godhead in
2:42:56
Judaism you learned out what the Jehovah's wouldn't you know how much they love a little festival that's really where they want to go I don't
2:43:07
know what the writer of Hebrews could have done they could make it any more power so that when you get to Colossians
2:43:14
1 by him we're all things created first
2:43:19
Corinthians II there's one God the Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist in one Lord Jesus Christ
2:43:24
through whom we through him are all things hey you get this this is where they get
2:43:34
the theology of Jesus as co-creators the idea that Jesus is God in the flesh and
2:43:41
the co-creator of humanity and everything that is is Jewish this is not
2:43:47
a New Testament invention it's a Jewish concept that God had a co-creator an
2:43:56
agent of creation and the New Testament writers take Jewish stuff Old Testament
2:44:03
and even books in between but aren't in our Bibles they even go that far to make
2:44:10
the point now this is the prickly part
2:44:17
if you like church history you probably have come across this passage because
2:44:23
you say well you know if Jesus is this character what do we do with verse 22 the Lord possessed at the beginning of
2:44:31
his work the first of his acts of all the verb here is Tana in Hebrew it is used elsewhere before create see I told
2:44:43
you Jesus was great that's picking and choosing the lexicon because the verb is
2:44:53
not always used it's used for creating Genesis 14 it's
2:44:59
used to acquire possession as it's 33 it's used to produce or bring forth in
2:45:04
Genesis 4 I like Genesis 4 I think it's instructed Genesis 4:1 is when Eve gives
2:45:09
birth to ecology she she gets birth to
2:45:19
think it's Cain yeah okay it's the same
2:45:24
she says I have gotten a man I have enough here's the question did an Old
2:45:36
Testament person he anybody else to the Old Testament any woman did they
2:45:43
believed that that when she gave birth that was the moment with that thing that she just birthed came into existence
2:45:52
no because it's moving around I mean even though they don't have the moderns
2:45:58
the conveniences of modern science they know that there is new life inside and
2:46:04
when they bring it forth it's a it's giving birth it's not when the thing begins to be alive it's been alive
2:46:12
before that so it pre-existed the bringing forth this is the way the
2:46:20
Church Fathers propagated proverbs 8 when they wrote the Nicene Creed the
2:46:26
whole thing about Jesus being we've got and will not create whoever read the Nicene this was really important because
2:46:33
they're trying to argue that Jesus is not created we're trying to be consistent they're saying look just
2:46:40
because this verb is there it does not mean that that's when we had the beginning of his existence he existed
2:46:46
prior to this and God brought him forth that was we don't use words like me God
2:46:53
but that's what it meant it meant to bring forth as opposed to this is when
2:46:58
it starts living if you look at the Creed we believe in
2:47:05
one God the Father Almighty maker of all things visible and invisible invisible one more Jesus Christ the Son of God
2:47:11
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
2:47:18
God begotten not made that languages it
2:47:23
was important because of this this issue of this is our last slide
2:47:33
Jesus has only begot thought I'd say something about this because you will
2:47:38
get people like judo as witnesses or other people sort of Woollett if he's be gone that means he had a beginning
2:47:44
because the word begotten that's what it means not really begotten words like an wears
2:47:52
like firstborn begotten can just mean to be brought forth we've already existed but now you're
2:47:57
here on the scene first born it's actually a term of status how do we know
2:48:04
this is it just because is it true because Mike doesn't know Monogue an ace is the greek terms were
2:48:12
only begun until the late 19th early 20th century it was fought incorrectly
2:48:18
that it came from two Greek words Manas and get out only and get out was the
2:48:23
verb it means to be get later discoveries showed this was wrong it
2:48:28
actually comes from Manos only and get a kind Monogue anis means one of a current you
2:48:37
need it has nothing to do with when you
2:48:43
start to exist it's about we know that
2:48:50
from this verse Hebrews 11:17 where Isaac is called Abraham's Monogue anaise
2:49:00
question was Isaac Abraham's first son
2:49:12
Ishmael was that tells you right away the term does not do with Isaac is the
2:49:26
mono Ganesh because he's special issue week why is he he's one he's the son Sarah he
2:49:40
is the one through whom all the promises flow that's why he's modern means
2:49:46
there's nothing so when you see this in
2:49:52
the New Testament a lot of your more recent translations will have something like you need want to know something
2:49:59
something tries to get away from we got that's why so we'll stop there that's
2:50:05
the last slide any questions you know pretty quickly it's a lot of unfamiliar stuff but if
2:50:12
you take anything away tonight I want you to take away P it again is that
2:50:19
deeply Christian ideas like the Godhead the co-creator Jesus is conquering Jesus
2:50:28
is God and flesh that somehow their God had a number two person who was also him
2:50:35
these were Jewish ideas their Jewish
2:50:41
concept they get from their old pests that are reinforced between the
2:50:48
Testaments by writers that live before Jesus ever showed up so that when Jesus
2:50:54
does show up when you get the New Testament writers writing they are writing to an audience that understands
2:51:00
those ideas then they have to make a choice do I believe that Jesus the
2:51:06
fellow we just crucified do we believe that she is through there
2:51:13
saving words we believe that he rose from the dead we believe he was gone we believe that he was the second we
2:51:20
believe this that's where they got to go they're not sitting there thinking you
2:51:27
guys are just a bunch of polytheists we're not thinking that at all and I want to start the final week here we're
2:51:34
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
2:51:42
in Psalm 82 I want to sort of prep what
2:51:49
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
2:51:59
early earlier I think it was the second week when we went through Old Testament
2:52:05
passages that showed a sort of two ism or two person Godhead in the Old
2:52:13
Testament that was the easy one to see that Yahweh was two but yet 1:1 but yet
2:52:18
- we finished that night by taking a look at three Ness okay a Trinitarian
2:52:27
sort of concept from the Old Testament I made the comment that if you if you have
2:52:32
your your mind wrapped around the two and how the two is conveyed then you
2:52:38
will find yourself in certain passages seeing the same descriptions like the
2:52:44
name or the word or the angel or something like that you'll you'll see those descriptions applied to the Spirit
2:52:52
or the spirit part of the conversation and so you get you go from a - to a sort
2:52:57
of feeling like there's three different things going on and they're connected because the same description is applied
2:53:04
to two of the three or three of the three or something like that so just to
2:53:09
refresh your memory on that point we looked at this passage real quickly this
2:53:15
is Isaiah 63 and here we have the Lord in the passage we have the
2:53:20
Angell and then we had this statement they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit this was the recounting of the
2:53:28
wilderness wandering and so you have the rebellion and the grieving of the holy spirit but if you go to Psalm 78 which
2:53:37
is a recounting of the same itinerary the same events the very identical verbs
2:53:43
rebelled and grieved in Psalm 78 are directed at in verse 41 here God the
2:53:50
Holy One of Israel so again we knew from evening to that the angel and Yahweh
2:53:57
were sort of the same but yet different and then here we get the spirit that's brought into the conversation when you
2:54:04
look at both passages in tandem so you get this three neskowin on and then we
2:54:09
looked at Ezekiel eight we have the same thing going on here we have the these this description of Yahweh as you know
2:54:16
the God of Israel as a as a man sort of a glorified man and we have the spirit
2:54:22
lifting up the Prophet the Yahweh puts out the form of a hand and we saw in
2:54:28
other passages again that was the the visible Yahweh as opposed to the invisible Yahweh and the visible Yahweh
2:54:34
was usually the angel and again you start going through the same set of thought processes and you get to and
2:54:42
then here we have the spirit referred to in here so who lifts him up is it the embodied Yahweh that the
2:54:49
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
2:54:55
one half dozen of another and lower you know down in the passage the either the
2:55:01
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
2:55:08
one you know manifestation or the physical manifestation if that's the case you might actually have the spirit
2:55:15
spoken of in the same way as your normal number two guy the angel so we talked
2:55:21
about these things again and I'm not trying to be clever with a pun here but
2:55:27
like I said last time you have to sort of triangulate some things to get three in the Old Testament to is pretty easy
2:55:34
but three sort of enters the discussion a little bit now this sort of thing is
2:55:43
actually used I believe in the New Testament oftentimes you'll see
2:55:51
critics of trinitarianism or again this traditional Christian view of a God had
2:55:56
say give me the verse where it shows God is three and one you know I want to see
2:56:01
that verse you know and there are things you know you can sort of go to like the Great Commission baptize them in the
2:56:06
name of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit well if they weren't all equal why would you say that you know that
2:56:11
sort of thing and you can go to Acts where the Spirit is referred to with
2:56:19
personal pronouns you've not lied to God you know Peter says dad that's Ananias
2:56:24
and Sapphira you've lied to the spirit again sort of equating God in the spirit and those are legitimate okay those are
2:56:30
legitimate strategies for showing that the spirit was conceived of as God okay
2:56:36
well the New Testament writers adapt and use what we've been talking about now in
2:56:43
the Old Testament again you get the to the Tunis thing going on you have Yahweh and then this sort of second Yahweh
2:56:51
who's often visible Yahweh can be simultaneously God in heaven and God on
2:56:57
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
2:57:04
passages like Genesis 48 with Jacobs blessing where Jacob says may the God
2:57:09
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
2:57:15
together you can't tell them apart and that's that's deliberate you know we talked about that so you get this to
2:57:21
going on and then the spirit again sometimes is brought into the discussion
2:57:28
well that's the old in the cream color here the New Testament I just want to
2:57:34
suggest to you we spent again part of week two and part
2:57:39
of week three talking about how the New Testament uses the idea of the invisible
2:57:45
in the visible Yahweh and the second person that's embodied taking a lot of
2:57:50
that language and applying it to Jesus so again we saw the Tunis there and the strategy for showing father-son same
2:57:58
same but yet different the New Testament does something interesting as God and
2:58:07
Jesus are but aren't the same okay Jesus
2:58:13
is but isn't God He is God in in person in essence but yet he's not the father
2:58:19
as that goes on in the New Testament there are New Testament writers who do
2:58:24
the same thing between Jesus and the spirit that is the spirit is but isn't
2:58:32
Jesus and there are some there are certain passages like this I don't know
2:58:37
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
2:58:44
spirit of Jesus now that links the spirit in terms of identity to Jesus who
2:58:51
by identity is God therefore you must have three that are the same in identity
2:58:58
okay Romans 8:9 spirit of god has referred to as the spirit of christ and galatians 4
2:59:05
god sent the spirit of his son okay into the hearts of believers yeah we were
2:59:11
used to thinking of the holy spirit you know the way he's predominantly described in the Old Testament the
2:59:16
Spirit of God there are actually passages that identify the Spirit of God as the spirit of Jesus it says know when
2:59:26
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
2:59:34
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
2:59:42
this idea being in dwell by the spirit all these things sort of coordinate together
2:59:47
and and you get sort of a little bit extra glue here when the Spirit Himself
2:59:52
is referred to and identified with Jesus the Spirit of Christ the Spirit of Jesus not just God but of Jesus so you have
3:00:01
this same sort of three nasir and it builds off this to model so we've got
3:00:06
these two identified and these two identified and the central figure is
3:00:11
Jesus he is the glue that unites the the threesome together I mean you you come
3:00:16
out even if you don't have a verse that lists the three persons you come out with three different figures Co
3:00:24
identified with each other okay it's trinitarianism but from a just a
3:00:30
little bit of a different tack now if that's New Testament theology okay if we
3:00:39
have a Trinity and you have Jesus as part of a Trinity what about John 10:30
3:00:48
fours use of psalm 82 now I've set up
3:00:54
the question this way because I'm just going to tell you I have a different
3:00:59
view of Psalm 82 then practically anybody you're gonna read because I
3:01:05
think that Psalm 82 John's use of it in the Gospel of John he uses that and
3:01:13
Jesus quotes from it however you want to look at what's going on there and John the strategy behind it is to reinforce
3:01:21
Jesus status as God incarnate okay well what could be controversial about that
3:01:28
Mike it's sounds suspiciously like trinitarianism yeah it is what's
3:01:35
controversial about it is how you have to look at Psalm 82 to get there now
3:01:42
Psalm 82 we looked at in week 1 we have God again Elohim has taken his place in
3:01:50
the divine council in the midst of the gods also Elohim
3:01:56
he holds judgment so we talked about this passage where you have Elohim used twice once it's a singular individual
3:02:03
and we know that as a grammar and the other time it's plural we know that because of the preposition in the midst
3:02:09
of and so we have divine beings plural
3:02:14
in Psalm 82 and we talked about why that's not a problem for monotheism
3:02:19
because Elohim is actually a place of residence term it's not attached to one set of attributes because the biblical
3:02:26
writers use Elohim of you know angels and demons you know the deceased human
3:02:32
dead they can't be on an ontological par with God with the God of Israel but
3:02:37
they're all called Elohim so the term has to mean something other than a set
3:02:43
of attributes again this is history for those of you who've been here the four weeks you get down to verse six
3:02:50
this is the verse that John G Jesus is going to quote you John chapter 10
3:02:57
excuse me this is Psalm 89 just bring this in because the this council is in
3:03:02
heavens the heavens you get down here to verse six in Psalm 82 now I have the
3:03:07
right song the speaker who is God Yahweh says to the Elohim members of his
3:03:15
council I said you could also translate it I thought some of your English translations will have that that's
3:03:20
perfectly legitimate I said you are God's looking sons of the Most High all
3:03:26
of you nevertheless like men you will die you will fall like any prince we
3:03:31
talked a little bit about what's going on in the song the biblical Israelites
3:03:37
had let's just go back here had a view based on Deuteronomy 32 8 and 9 that
3:03:45
Yahweh punished humanity after the Babel
3:03:50
event by dispersing the nation's but not only just dispersing the nations
3:03:55
deuteronomy 32 8 9 says when the Most High divided up the nation's he divided them up according to the number of the
3:04:01
sons of God but Israel was Yahweh's portion Jacob was his
3:04:07
alotted inheritance deuteronomy 4 describes the same thing and it says that Yahweh took Israel as his own my
3:04:15
Israel didn't exist at the time of Babel but it's going to exist in the very next
3:04:20
chapter when God calls Abraham ok so God forsakes all the nations of the earth
3:04:26
says basically you're not going to obey me you know then our relationship is sort of put on ice right now and I'm
3:04:33
going to put you under the authority of other divine beings in my administration I'm not going to be your personal God
3:04:40
anymore I'm going to start over and create for myself a people that I'm
3:04:47
going to be in covenant with and that people was Israel and so Genesis 12 we get the call of Abraham and the rest as
3:04:54
they say is history and we talked about the sense in the Old Testament that this
3:04:59
leads to the idea of cosmic geography that Israel it belongs to Yahweh Yahweh
3:05:04
is Israel's God again the Covenant but outside of Israel that ground isn't holy
3:05:10
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
3:05:17
and basically at the beginning of the psalm God says you know we need to have
3:05:22
a meeting because you guys are not running things well you become corrupt
3:05:27
you know he starts really railing on them and it leads to this verse as a
3:05:32
punishment you know I said you're gods I mean you we all know who we're talking to here we all know who's in the room but you're
3:05:38
gonna die like men I'm going to strip you of your immortality now this gets picked up on later in the Old Testament
3:05:46
and the new as sort of part of the end times the eschaton when God essentially
3:05:56
carries this sentence out and gets rid of you know any you know the the heavens
3:06:04
and the earth are recreated and those who human and divine who are not
3:06:10
obedient to Yahweh lose their status they lose their position they're going to with so we don't want to rabbit trail
3:06:18
too far but it's a theme that gets picked up in the in the New Testament also through passages like Pentecost and
3:06:26
some things Paul says in the epistles there's this sense that once the church is created there's a progressive
3:06:33
recapturing of the nation's that were abandoned debt Babel that's the point of
3:06:39
the gospel to reclaim that which was lost to reclaim that which was cast
3:06:45
aside this is why when the kingdom of God begins the disciples are given the
3:06:52
ability and Jesus himself starts things off this way by casting out demons the
3:06:58
point was you have dominion over the powers that govern these places go out
3:07:05
and get them when Jesus sends out disciples for the first time does he send out 12 now he actually doesn't he
3:07:13
sends out 70 where's that number come from count the nation's back at Babel
3:07:20
guess what same number it's 70 there's
3:07:25
all sorts of little intertextual clues as to what's going on and I don't want to grab a trail too far ahead but
3:07:32
there's this idea again that there are other entities under Yahweh's authority
3:07:40
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
3:07:48
more or less just summarize that well this is worth pointing out the middle
3:07:53
one here Yahweh in this whole worldview is its superior to all other Elohim so
3:08:02
that means if Yahweh is superior and Jesus is identified with him therefore
3:08:07
Jesus must be superior - he's not just sort of an underling he is God
3:08:14
so if the New Testament writers have Jesus as part of a Trinity what's going
3:08:21
on because we can't have Jesus be less than God which brings us to Psalm 82 now
3:08:28
I have here a web address if you're interested if you're having trouble
3:08:34
sleeping okay at some point I gave an academic paper on this last year at a
3:08:40
scholarly Society meeting I put it here again if you wanted it's free but it's
3:08:48
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
3:08:54
future this is peer-reviewed okay when you go to an academic society and you
3:09:00
say hey I've got this view of this passage what do you think if they think
3:09:05
it's crazy they're gonna tell you it's a good place to sort of just go and put a bull's-eye on your chest and see what
3:09:12
happens and you know we did fine because you know it's it's just it's
3:09:18
just the text it's just the Bible but here's the key question does John's use of Psalm 82 weaken or strengthen his
3:09:26
claim to deity so here's John 1034 here's the quotation now what's what's
3:09:35
been going on Jesus has said what four verses earlier look at John 10:30 here's
3:09:42
why he's in trouble what it was he said what are they
3:09:47
annoyed at this time they annoy that I yeah I am
3:09:56
the father or one well I mean that just sets him off and you know you would
3:10:02
expect that okay so he's just claimed to be one with the father and they're a
3:10:10
little bit put out by that so they get into an arc and Jesus for some odd
3:10:17
reason decides okay we're you know I I have a good handle on the Old Testament
3:10:23
where do I want to go to sorta you know kind of demonstrate for these guys that
3:10:30
that I can say this oh I know Psalm 82
3:10:36
verse six it just seems like why what an odd choice but this is what he does jesus answered them is it not written in
3:10:43
your law I said you are gods if he called them gods to whom the Word of God
3:10:49
came and scripture cannot be broken do you say of him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world
3:10:54
you're blaspheming because I said I am a son of God he said what what's the
3:11:01
argument most people take what's called the
3:11:09
mortal view of this they believe that the Elohim of Psalm 82 are just people
3:11:18
so what that means is if you go back here the quotation I said Ye are gods
3:11:25
God the speaker would be talking to people so the argument is that Jesus
3:11:34
knows that he knows that there are no other Elohim out there they're just people so probably Jesus has in mind other
3:11:44
Jewish leaders or maybe just the Jews in general therefore John has Jesus using
3:11:50
psalm 82:6 to say in effect that he can call himself the son of god when every
3:11:55
other jew can - I ask you does that make any sense
3:12:01
does that make any sense how does that defend I and my father are one is
3:12:09
everybody else one with the Father - it just doesn't make any sense it frankly
3:12:17
it's a lame argument if that's what he so don't be upset because you know other
3:12:24
humans can do this - tada you know like like disc I guess I showed you guys now
3:12:32
go off and call yourself you know equal with God - leave me alone it just
3:12:37
doesn't make any sense but this is the dominant view of this passage now the
3:12:42
reason that it is is it's kind of understandable because people get nervous about having Elohim of Psalm 82
3:12:49
the plural ones be divine beings okay we talked about that in verse 1
3:12:55
Oh what about monotheism and all this stuff and again my answer to that is you haven't really thought well about what
3:13:01
Elohim means that's the first problem let's take it apart a little bit now
3:13:07
here's how the argument is made if the Elohim of Psalm 82 our Jewish elders
3:13:15
Exodus 20 to 6 through 8 usually gets thrown into the next so you turn
3:13:20
everyone to you have a description again these are just some references to you
3:13:27
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
3:13:36
a description of a dispute where the people who are in the dispute bring
3:13:42
their argument before Elohim and so people say aha here's an example where
3:13:48
you have Jewish leaders called Elohim go to the passage and look what you have is
3:13:57
you have Elohim really referring to God the singular God you do not you never
3:14:05
have in the entirety of the Old Testament you never have Jews or Jewish
3:14:10
elders called Elohim Exodus 18 is another passage this is when Jethro says
3:14:16
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
3:14:21
spend the whole day you know talking about should you be wearing this cloth is it mixed with that wanted let me just
3:14:27
you know give yourself a break get some help and Moses says you know it's a great idea so he appoints elders
3:14:35
they're never called Elohim in the passage all you gotta do is go read it they're never called that but it's
3:14:41
assumed that these guys judging matters of the law are these guys that's how the
3:14:49
arguments made well we know these guys existed in Israel these elders judge
3:14:55
guys that helped Moses decide matters of the law and you know eventually that
3:15:00
became the Sanhedrin like in the New Testament this group of people who helped with this so the assumption is
3:15:06
these guys must be what's referred to here in Exodus 22 after all it's four
3:15:12
chapters after Exodus 18 so you know these must be the gods that that Psalm 82 is talking about now think
3:15:19
about it you don't need to know Hebrew for this if you go back to Psalm 82
3:15:26
where's Psalm 82 in Psalm 89 where's the council it's in the heavens the last
3:15:34
time I checked okay no Jewish leadership ever like had meetings in the heavens
3:15:43
not only that but in Psalm 82 what is
3:15:48
the crime that they're being accused of the Elohim they have judged the nation's
3:15:55
badly okay at no time in the entire Old
3:16:00
Testament are Jews ever put over in a judgeship role a leadership role an
3:16:07
administrative role of all the other nations in fact they're forbidden from contact with the other nations it's
3:16:14
exactly the opposite situation so it just doesn't make sense on a number of
3:16:20
levels and people have realized this so they've gone to argument number two you're right argument number one is kind
3:16:27
of dumb this one's better maybe it's
3:16:33
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
3:16:42
bet that refers to the Jewish nation receiving the law at Sinai this you know
3:16:49
Psalm 82 does says doesn't it say in your law that those to whom the Word of God came well wait a minute what's
3:16:56
actually quoted is there anything in a sign I seen quoted no it's Psalm 82 so
3:17:05
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
3:17:13
long song just read the song there's no mention of Sinai and in the Sinai
3:17:18
accounts well maybe we'll go back and look at the Sinai account let's guess what Jews who never called Elohim there
3:17:23
either so again it it sort of like sounds like it might work but when you
3:17:29
really think about it it it just you know vaporizes okay it doesn't make any
3:17:35
sense but you can see why you know it's it's important because again you have
3:17:40
the that the problem is is again this feeling of I don't want multiple I will here what do I do with that I have to
3:17:46
make them people you know that's much more comfortable well it's not really a
3:17:52
problem but a lot of people think it is last resort Jews are called my son by
3:18:01
God in other words the nation is referred to as my son and this is when
3:18:07
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'm
3:18:12
you know let my people go let my son go into the wilderness to worship me so the
3:18:18
nation is referred to as God's Son yeah we understand why they're God's offspring and all that kind of stuff
3:18:24
this isn't a solution either because again sign it's not about Sinai nothing
3:18:31
in John 10 is about Sinai and again the Elohim of Psalm 82 are in in the heavens
3:18:37
so there's really no connection here but this is still important Jews are called
3:18:44
my son by God who else in the Old Testament is called the son of God
3:18:52
anybody it's pretty rare this is one there are
3:18:59
actually two other passages and it's the same person this cook is called God God looks at the person who that's my son
3:19:06
the king okay the king of Israel so now
3:19:13
think about that when Jesus is in this conversation with the Pharisees and he's
3:19:21
claiming in according to John 10:30 you know and my father won then he quotes
3:19:27
Psalm 82 and says hey you know you guys are upset but here you go psalm 82:6
3:19:32
why are you upset that i refer to myself as the son of God is Jesus claiming to
3:19:38
be the nation God is he claiming to be
3:19:45
the king no you know you there's one verse earlier in the gospel that uses
3:19:52
that language but he doesn't claim that in the passage so what what could he
3:19:59
possibly be thinking about why psalm 82:6
3:20:04
not corporate israel not the king who's left who are or is there anybody else
3:20:10
that's referred to as son of God or sons of God yeah Psalm 82 that's the only other
3:20:17
place okay you're gonna find this job
3:20:22
one and two we have sons of God but this is the only other place where they're Elohim and sons of the Most High are
3:20:27
connected so what is he claiming them he's claiming to be more than human
3:20:35
because the Elohim of Psalm 82 are not human that's where he's starting the
3:20:40
debate okay I've just said I and my father are one you guys are torqued
3:20:50
let's start with something simple doesn't your own Bible say that there
3:21:02
are Elohim there are sons of God that are not human if they know their Bible
3:21:12
that's true are you claiming to be more than human Jesus well like weren't you paying attention
3:21:17
four verses ago God isn't human is he I had the father are one can't you guys
3:21:23
even think this far okay it's just a starting point for it he takes the
3:21:30
quotation at face value and so do I divine beings it's from Psalm 82 and they're not
3:21:38
humans again cross reference here and reasons why to eliminate the other view
3:21:45
again these other human or non-human ZAR the ones over the nation's we'll just
3:21:50
skip through this so he says I said you're God's sons of the Most High if
3:21:56
you look at it go to look at Psalm 82 if yet if you're not turned there if you're still in John 10 put a finger in it just
3:22:04
walk through the passage who is the speaker the speaker is God God is
3:22:11
looking at a group of Elohim the heavenly host and he's upset
3:22:20
and he looks at them these non-human beings and says I said you're God's sons
3:22:26
of the Most High all of you nevertheless like humans you will die you're gonna die like any man and fall like any
3:22:33
prince God is the speaker accusing divine beings of messing up and says I'm going
3:22:41
to strip away your immortality so when Jesus inserts himself or uses this
3:22:47
passage he's claiming first of all to be more than man it's the only conclusion
3:22:53
you can draw that's step one I'm
3:22:58
establishing the point that there are sons of God who are not people that's
3:23:04
point number one now what does he do then or what's the effect here are the two views contrasted
3:23:12
here's the the human view and here's what I'm gonna argue for here the Word
3:23:19
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
3:23:28
that's the Word of God who's coming to the two the ones hearing at the Ohanyan
3:23:34
the Word of God is the utterance itself the pronouncement from God that you're
3:23:40
in trouble the effect is this Jesus
3:23:45
reminds his detractors that there are again non-human divine beings who get to call themselves this third if you link
3:23:54
this statement with John 10:30 and the verses that follow Jesus is claiming to
3:24:01
be divine if I'm not human what would I be okay if
3:24:09
I'm not human do the math fellas you know do the math Pharisees if I'm not human I'm divine so
3:24:17
he goes to Psalm 82 to to establish this point if you look at the passage look at
3:24:23
what he's doing he's just said I and my father or one they get mad at him the
3:24:31
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
3:24:37
just a you know a human being down here when he quotes psalm 82:6 if he's just
3:24:43
saying hey look guys calm down I'm just saying the same thing that you guys can
3:24:49
say we're all children of God if that's
3:24:54
what he's saying why would they be mad they know he's not saying that
3:25:02
isn't it written in your law I said you are gods so I and the father are one the
3:25:10
father is in me and I in him look at these two claims they're about
3:25:17
as dramatic as you can get especially this one if they know their old
3:25:23
testament the stuff we've been talking about for the last three weeks the father the father is in me remember the
3:25:29
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
3:25:35
saying I'm number two I'm the number two guy back in your Old Testament these are
3:25:43
dramatic statements and in between he quotes Psalm 82 and again his point is
3:25:50
look first we have to establish that there are divine beings there are nonhumans who are sons of God but I'm
3:25:57
more than that the father is in me and I in him now if they know Psalm 82 and
3:26:03
they do because they're not happy I mean they're this doesn't solve anything for
3:26:09
them they're still mad at him if they know Psalm 82 they know that not only by
3:26:16
virtue of this quotation is Jesus saying I'm more than human when he gets to this
3:26:23
he's saying not only am I more than human not only am I like in that Psalm
3:26:29
82 but the character in Psalm 82 that I really am is the lord of the council I
3:26:34
am Yahweh in flesh right here in front of you that's why he's using Psalm 82
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he's establishing his divine nature and also when he gets down here his
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authority I'm not only more than human I'm even more than anybody in heaven
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okay let's just up the ante a little bit instead of shrinking back and saying I'm
3:27:04
just like you guys don't be mad at me I mean he just goes the other direction
3:27:09
just doesn't about-face and gives it to him both barrels so another way of
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putting it his logic the problem is again for the Jews not for us but the problem is Jesus makes himself God so
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here's his chain of thinking other nonhumans are Elohim I'm justifying my claim by showing you that I'm more than
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human I also claimed in 10:30 to be the one with the father so we're Co identified in some way
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all this is provable by my works look back here for which of the works do you
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stone me and of course there they're going to deny that you know it's not that you're stoning it for blasphemy
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what's this point in bringing up the works if my claims aren't true how could
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I do what I do Weatherford's if I'm just like making it up here and I'm looking for the exits
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while I'm doing it if I'm just making it up here how am I able to do what you've
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seen me do it's your turn to talk it he has these
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moments with the Pharisees that he just boxes them in he just boxes them in so
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basically I have a biblical precedent and I work miracles what else would you
3:28:35
like you know I I have somewhere to hang this on the idea that I'm more more than
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than human they're sons of God are not just people I am more than a man not
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only that I'm one with a father the father's in me and I'm him and I work
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miracles any questions you know he's again he's
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boxing them in with this because they they know Psalm 82 they got nowhere to
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go they have nowhere to go because he's he's using scripture against them like
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you know like he normally does so by way of summary I want to get through the
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summary that way if you have any questions just generally we can take them the four weeks I've tried to get
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you and you know there's a lot more to it than this but the Old Testament has
3:29:31
again the categories that we think of that we attribute to that we associate
3:29:36
with Christianity Christianity is very Jewish in that respect this is why we
3:29:45
accept the Old Testament as well as the new one grows out of the other the
3:29:50
promises are made and won and fulfilled in the other okay you know all that but I want you to get to think about the
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fact that some of these ideas that are so intimately associated with Christianity they don't just come out of
3:30:04
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
3:30:12
earlier it's not like you know we have like a shift where there's like a there's a new plan there's a new
3:30:18
there's a new something or whatever you know that's the old this is the new and there's never the twain shall meet the
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twain meets a lot it's an awful lot even something as fundamental as this
3:30:31
Christians saw the second God had member incarnated as a man in Jesus we talked
3:30:37
about that last week God had thinking again was around long before the New Testament it's not late
3:30:43
it's not a late invention a lot of scholars like to say divine plurality is
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not a denial of monotheism hey there's a reason why a Jew who love God in the
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first century could be willing to be put to death rather than say Caesar is God
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and then in the next breath to say I'm gonna pray to Jesus and not feel it all
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like he violated monotheism one was a clear violation the other was of course
3:31:17
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
3:31:24
Old Testament that Caesar didn't fall into again we looked at Old Testament
3:31:30
trajectory's about some of the things other religions say the word in John 1:1
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is not any God he is the word and we looked at passages in the Old Testament
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where the word was Yahweh I mean it says it point-blank Jeremiah 1 is a great
3:31:47
passage to go to the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah saying Jeremiah
3:31:53
addresses the word as Yahweh and then in verse 9 the word of the Lord reached out
3:31:59
his hand and touched me I mean come on how much clearer can you get that's like
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reading something in the New Testament
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Yahweh also has no equal among the Elohim of his Council Jesus and other
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divine sons of God are not brotherly equals now this is really directed at
3:32:22
Mormonism this Mormons love Psalm 82 there are Mormons on the internet that
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you know like they're fans of mine because I you know I'm into Psalm 82 and
3:32:35
they like that you know and you have to sort of slap them on the wrist
3:32:40
occasionally and say look you guys are thinking this you can't possibly think
3:32:47
that right and get that from the data because Yahweh is an Elohim but no other
3:32:55
Elohim Yahweh he doesn't have equal brothers and if he doesn't have equal brothers neither does Jesus okay it's
3:33:03
it's it's it's not terribly complicated but again this is where this is the
3:33:10
parting of the ways between what we would call you know in evangelical Christianity an Orthodox view of
3:33:17
trinitarianism and something that would you know would be a part of Mormon theology Psalm 82 provides no
3:33:25
justification for humans being divine now this is a little word for again my
3:33:32
detractors out there in video land who love the human view my question to you
3:33:38
is why aren't you a Mormon because if you believe humans are Elohim you're but
3:33:45
that far away you're about that far away from embracing a cardinal idea in Mormon
3:33:55
theology Mormon theology teaches that Yahweh was once a man and you as
3:34:02
believers when you're glorified you will eventually become God just like Yahweh
3:34:09
is okay that is not what Psalm 82 says but if you're looking at Psalm 82 and
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you're somehow importing humanity into Elohim language you're about that close
3:34:23
you're about that close so I would encourage you to re-examine that idea
3:34:28
not only doesn't it make sense in John 10 but it's sort of drifts over into
3:34:35
that other territory so that was the last slide