Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast
Welcome to a podcast that bridges the past and present in a transformative exploration of the Bible and faith. At Navigating An Ancient Faith, we delve into the original context of Scripture, mirroring the perspective of its first listeners. Our travels have taken us to Biblical lands, such as Israel, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Through insights from these travels, as well as engaging discussions around philosophy and mythology, we traverse the journey toward our own spiritual transformation. Join us on this journey from ancient faith to modern devotion.
Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast
Symbolism in the Psalms: The Divine Council
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Psalm 82 makes a veiled reference to an assembly of the gods. Is this just poetic imagery or is a deeper mystery at play? As it turns out, the Bible mentions a type of divine assembly throughout both the Old and New Testaments. So what are the origins of this assembly and how are we to understand these references today? Join us in this episode for a captivating exploration of the Divine Council.
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Introduction to God's assembly
DavidHello, welcome, everyone. Thanks for listening to the Navigating An Ancient Faith podcast. My name is David. With me as always, my co-host, J.R. How's it going?
J.R.How you doing? Yeah, doing good. Good, good. Everything's rolling along. College football's about to start. So yeah, we gotta wrap this up so we can get to the game, right?
DavidThat's right. We, we got a game to watch tonight. Yeah. College football always signals fall, but in Florida beginning of September is just a false hope of fall.
J.R.Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm okay. So, yeah, I'm in Tennessee.
DavidSeveral, several weeks away.
J.R.Yeah, but, but it's getting, it's cool in the morning. Like, I wake up and it's not 85 degrees out. So, it's heading this way.
DavidYeah, okay, okay.
J.R.Uh, yeah. So, I'm a little bit ahead of you.
DavidAnd it'll eventually head this way. So. Yeah, that's right. You'll get it before we will.
J.R.No, it's, it's middle of the college football season before we get nice, cool nights there in Florida. So.
DavidYeah. So, the calendar in September in, in Florida, that's always a, just a kind of a cruel joke because college football starts. It's September. You think your headed to fall and No, you still have a good six to eight weeks of very hot weather.
J.R.90 degrees at night.
DavidYes But it's it's coming. It means it's coming. So
J.R.Oh, yeah. Yeah All right, man. I'm excited about this episode. I was talking to you earlier about this is one of the episodes I've been most looking forward to.
DavidYeah, you've been really anxious to get to this one so.
J.R.Yeah and I think I said it last week, we kind of talked about maybe we should have started with this episode, but it is what it is. I mean, there's a reason for this and no, I'm, I'm excited to jump into this one.
DavidYeah, it's, hard to tell where to start because so many of these concepts we've been talking about build on each other. And I found myself thinking, should I have started with this and then introduce this? But then I would have had to kind of introduce something else later. So, you know, Yeah, eventually you just had to jump into it, but hopefully if you've listened to the series so far, you're starting to track and you're starting to see how things build on each other. We started out talking about the mountain of God and and what the significance of the mountain of God, right? Represented and then last episode we talked about ancient smack talk and that was that was fun. Fun with that and I found myself even the past week reading some of the Psalms and, you know, more things just jump out of the page. I'm like, Oh, there it is. There's another reference to, uh, to a god, you know, to Yam, the sea god or something like that, that we didn't even get to, but it's there.
J.R.I've been doing the same thing.
DavidYeah, are you?
J.R.Yeah. It changes the way you read scripture and kind of like when you were saying, we should have started with this. One thing that's difficult about this is I want it to be, I want to start out with arithmetic and then work my way up to algebra and then get to geometry and trigonometry. I want to see this linear hierarchy of knowledge where, you know, kind of like math where it starts out simple and gets more complex. And so much of this just, there is a little bit of that, but so much of it just kind of ties together all at once. And it's almost like you just got to jump in at some point, and start to see the patterns and then you'll see other ideas emerge out of that. And so, you know, I'd like to have a what, a seven-week course on something like this, but it's not really designed for that, is it?
DavidNo, it's, yeah, this is more introducing the idea, and hopefully if it sparks something in you, you do a little more research, you go back and listen to them again, go back and do some reading in the Psalms yourself, and hopefully some of these ideas start to click, so. Yeah, it's not meant to be a I would say a seminary level course, but I'll be honest, they don't teach this stuff in seminary. So no, well actually a little bit they do. So let me introduce this I guess by telling a little Seminary story. And, uh, this is something we'll get into today, and then we'll introduce our topic, which is The Divine Counsel. We're sitting here talking for five minutes, we never told...
J.R.Yeah, as if everybody knows. Yeah.
DavidWhat are they talking about? We'll get to that eventually. But I, actually you, reminded me of a story that I'll tell from my seminary days. But I was sitting in a class, and I remember that the professor was talking about something. And he gets to this idea of, and we talked about this a couple episodes ago about how this idea of elohim means gods. And you'll see that word, you know, throughout the Old Testament and sometimes even in the New. It'll reference the gods, and so we were studying a passage of Scripture where it referenced the gods, and the professor paused and he said, "By the way..." he goes, "This is one of those references that shows that the writers of the Bible believed that there were multiple gods." And then he said, but let's get back to what we're talking about. I wanted to stop and go. "Oh, wait. Yeah back up." Like what did you just say, you know? <Right> And that was the little teaser I remember that from a long time ago, but you know, no one else ever talked about it again. But I I remember that stuck with me because I thought now that's something that I've never heard, you know.
J.R.Yeah, you should have stayed after class that day.
DavidI know, he just kind of lobbed it out there and left it there just to kind of mess with us, probably, but
J.R.Yeah. To see who would stay after. Yeah, just get the explanation right?
DavidGet the extra credit, yeah. Who whose brain did I just scramble throwing that out there? You know?
J.R.Yeah, yeah, you're right.
DavidSo today we're going to talk about the Divine Counsel. And this is an idea that is introduced in one of the Psalms specifically, but it's in some ways it's never really spelled out in the Bible. I don't know what you would say to this, and yet it's all through the Bible, right?
J.R.Right. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, the the verses that we're gonna go over, and especially in Psalm 82, is about the best, oh, the best basis. And then once you see that, you see references to it all through the Psalms, all through the Old Testament. <Yeah.> And even into the New Testament some. And it just kind of, it does, it kind of gives you an idea of the way the ancients viewed the idea of gods, or, you know, God, Elohim, and gods, plural, you know. <Right.> Which is also elohim. We'll get into that.
DavidAnd also plural, yeah.
J.R.Yeah, that's right. <Yeah.> Yeah, to make things more confusing.
DavidYeah, so several of the Psalms reference an idea of an assembly. And some clearly is referencing an assembly of Israel. But then others seem to reference an assembly of the gods, and that's what we're gonna look at at Psalm 82. But we're really gonna talk about what's the meaning of this symbolism when it talks about the divine council or a divine assembly.
J.R.Well, it's the Trinity, right? The Assembly. It's God the Father son, and Holy Spirit.
DavidIn some cases, but it's more than that, too.
J.R.Okay. Well, I'm throwing you that softball so you can...
DavidOh, you wanted me... You wanted me to go, no, I thought we were on the same page here.
J.R.Yeah, yeah. No, no. Well, it's just that I've read it before, and there are times that I hear something like... The divine council and in, in the back of my mind, I'm assuming it's like, well, they're talking about the Trinity.
DavidYes. Yes. That's a common explanation for some of these is it's just the Trinity. It's, you're right. God talking basically, uh, to himself, but it's the son and the Holy spirit with him.
J.R.Right. And Psalm 82 gives is problematic with that interpretation.
DavidRight. And there are clearly references where that doesn't fit.
Psalm 82: The Divine Council
DavidSo, <Right.> Yeah. So let's, let's jump into Psalm 82.
J.R.Okay. You want me to read it?
DavidYeah. Well, yeah. We might just go verse or two at a time, but yeah, just start reading and let's stop whenever you feel like we need to stop and talk about things.
J.R.Okay. Psalm 82, verse one says, "God has taken his place in the divine council. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality of the wicked? He says." And he goes on for a couple verses there and kind of verbally scolds this council that we're talking about. And then in verse six, he says, "I said, you are gods, son of the most high, all of you. Nevertheless, like men you shall die and fall like any prince." And then verse eight says, "Arise, O God, and judge the earth." So let's, let's pause there for a second.
DavidYeah, because you already threw out several ideas that we need to talk about. This is a short chapter, but there's a lot packed into it. Right. There's a lot packed into it. Sure. So, I guess what's interesting is you were reading that, just going back to verse 1 then, because I'm reading a slightly different version, where yours said God presides in the Divine Council, right?
J.R.Right.
DavidMy version actually says the Great Assembly. So, it's that same idea. Okay, yeah. And he renders judgment among the gods. Now the other thing that's interesting in my version, I don't know about the version you're reading, is gods is in quote. So among the quote gods, unquote.
J.R.Well, see, I think mine, mine says the divine counsel, and then it kind of has parentheses, you know, in the midst of the gods. Yeah. You know, it kind of, it kind of clarifies that a little bit. But you're right, different translations will translate this particular verse kind of radically different ways sometimes.
DavidRight, because people aren't quite sure what to do with it, right?
J.R.Yeah, exactly.
DavidBecause on the surface it says, God is standing in the divine council or the great assembly, and he's rendering judgment among the gods. <Right.> And so, what does that mean, right? Where do we want to go first?
J.R.Yeah, right off the bat, both of those Hebrew words are the word Elohim. And if you had asked me a year or so ago, what does Elohim mean in the Bible, I would have just said, well, that's God. That's one of the names of God, right? <Right.> But this verse literally says in Hebrew, "God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods." It's Elohim has taken his place in the midst of elohim. Would be the Hebrew reading of it. <Right.> And so it's using the same word twice. So what does that mean?
DavidWell, first of all, Elohim is, we've talked some of this, but let's revisit. Elohim is kind of a generic word for God, right? It's not, it doesn't say Yahweh.
J.R.Uppercase G and lowercase g.
DavidRight, right. Right. So in some places in the Old Testament, Elohim is clearly a reference to what we would say Yahweh God, right? <Right.> Because there are places where it says Yahweh, sometimes it even says, you know, Yahweh Elohim. So, there are clearly some places where, this generic word for god, is referring to God, Yahweh. But there are other places, like this, where clearly every instance of Elohim does not mean Yahweh God. <Right.> God does not preside in the assembly and renders judgment among himself.
J.R.Yeah, I mean, he crawls them over the carpet a little bit here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where it kind of breaks from this idea that this is the Trinity, well, the Divine Council is.
DavidRight. <Yeah.> So the first thing we start to see is, you know, this word elohim is a generic word for God. It can refer to Yahweh, but it can also refer to other gods. Now, I guess we've also talked previously a little bit about this idea of the presence of other gods. So what does that mean? Right. We talked about how it's not saying that they're rival creator gods. That's not what we're saying. We are saying that there are other divine beings and this word elohim, and we could, you know, in our parlance we would say little g gods, right? <Right.> We would say that just refers to other spiritual beings. But they are very real. These things aren't just made up. They're not like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. That the Old Testament treats them as very real things, that there are other spiritual beings that are referred to as gods.
J.R.Right, and not merely myths of other religions or things like that, right?
DavidRight, right, because there's a lot of these instances where it wouldn't even make sense. Again, let's go back to verse 1. God presides in the Great Assembly. He renders judgment among the Easter bunnies. That doesn't even make sense, right? Right. If you're trying to say, well, they, those weren't real. Well, then why does it say it like this? Why is God judging?
J.R.Man made, those were man made ideas Man made objects of worship where they got off track. Right. But you're exactly right. No, no, no. These are, these are very real things that God is in the midst of.
DavidRight. Yeah. So that's one of the big things to start with, is this is a picture of God, presiding and rendering judgment among other gods. Now, the whole idea that we're going to talk about today is this idea of the divine council or a great assembly. Now, the other thing that you'll read when you come across this idea of a divine council or a great assembly is it's referring to and I've read this a couple weeks ago it's referring to just the leadership of Israel, because the 70 elders of Israel is called a council, or an assembly. Right?
J.R.Right, yeah, that's right.
DavidAnd so the other thing, people will try to say is, well, this is just a reference that God is kind of, presiding over Israel's leadership at the time. But again, there's too many places where that idea doesn't make sense. Sometimes it is talking about the assembly of Israel. But there are other places like this one where it's clearly not talking about the assembly of Israel. I don't know if you've run into that, but I've seen that a couple places.
J.R.Well, you know, I immediately go to the idea of Job, the opening verses of Job, where Satan walks into the divine council. And everybody reads those verses and thinks, wait, this is weird. I mean, is he in heaven? Satan in heaven? You know, he can just ask for an audience of God at any time and walk into this divine council. And it's sort of this problematic idea, this problematic concept for modern Christians of when you simply believe in a place called heaven and a place called hell and God and the angels are up there in heaven and the devil and his demons are in hell. And it's sort of like you have those simple kind of binary explanations of things that you read the opening verses of Job and you're like, well, what's going on here? You know, I, I didn't think that one was allowed in the presence of another, right? <Yeah.> But it does, this helps us kind of flesh out what's going on in Job also, that there is this divine council. Uh, that God does, present the divine counsel with different ideas and implies that he takes their suggestions into consideration. So that's what we're gonna kind of get into this: What is this divine counsel? Where did it come from? Yeah, is there any other place in the Bible that refers to it other than you know kind of vague references in Job or something like that. Where can we get a clearer idea of what that means?
DavidYeah, like we said at the beginning there's really not a place that says, Okay, here's what the divine counsel is. And for some, that means that, well, it's not really a thing. What it actually means is that, in the ancient world, they understood it so much that it needed no explanation right? <Right.> So, if, I, I use this example, where if I was talking to you about football, college football, and I said, now, remember, J.R., football is where two teams line up and they have a pigskin. And one plays offense, and one plays defense. You'd be like, why are you, why are you telling me this, right?
J.R.Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
DavidI just throw the term football out there, and you, you know, everyone knows what that is. And it's kind of like that, that this idea of a divine counsel was so ingrained in the ancient mind that no one bothered to really sit down and explain it, even though for us, it would have been nice if they would have, right?
J.R.Right, it goes without saying, but over time we've kind of lost that translation of what they mean. <Yeah.> You know, so to speak. Yeah.
DavidSo you have to piece it together, and then we'll actually get into some extra biblical material that actually does a better job explaining. But I guess let's, I don't know, let's start with this idea, back to Psalm 82. The picture then is God presiding in the Divine Council, and he's rendering judgment among the gods, because clearly they have acted in a manner less than divine, right? They are favoring the wicked. They are preying on the weak and the fatherless.
Deuteronomy 32: The 70 Nations
DavidSo what's going on here that God needs to step in and intervene and judge these lower gods, right?
J.R.Right.
DavidAnd I guess the place to turn to that, I guess one place to start is Deuteronomy chapter 32. Okay. So let me turn to that real quick. I think I have that one up. So Deuteronomy chapter 32. Let me read verse 8 and 9. And remember, these are the books of Moses, so this is Moses giving his speech to the people of Israel. Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 8 says, "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided all mankind, He set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. For the Lord's portion is His people, Jacob his allotted inheritance." Now, doesn't sound like much going on there, but there's a couple of things we need to pay attention to. So, when the Most High, that's God, gave the nations their inheritance, and nations is plural, He divided all mankind. He set up boundaries for the people. Now, it says, according to the number of the sons of Israel. But I have a footnote, again, in my version, I don't know what your version says, you may not have it up, but my version says, the Dead Sea Scrolls actually render this as the sons of God.
J.R.That's right. That's big.
DavidYeah, so that's a big difference. So this initially could be read as, okay, he allotted the nations according to the sons of Israel, right? But the Dead Sea Scroll versions actually say, according to the number of the sons of God.
J.R.Right, which changes things dramatically.
DavidRight, it changes things dramatically. And if you think about it, why is God dividing up the nations, all of the nations, according to the sons of Israel? And remember, this is Moses talking, so...
J.R.Right. And it's not just Moses talking, it's Moses talking in the past tense.
DavidIn the past tense, yeah.
J.R.He's speaking of the past, when the Most High gave nations their inheritance. You know, he's speaking, you know, back at the foundations of the world, perhaps, maybe. <Right.> But certainly before the nation of Israel had been formed.
DavidRight, right. So, one of the concepts, this introduces one of the concepts of the Divine Council, which is this idea that when God created the world and different people groups started to form, that there's this idea that God set the boundaries. And then, this idea of the Divine Council is, God assigned, basically, lesser gods to lead each individual people group or nation. He gave them saying, okay, you're going to watch over this group over here. You're going to watch over this group. Now, immediately start to think, well, okay, does that mean that they became the god of that people? Okay, well, that wasn't the original intention, but that's what happened, right? So, this is the idea that, when God started to lay all this out, what this verse is talking about, if you read it especially as the sons of God, then God was assigning lesser deities, you might say angels, spirits, to be head of certain groups and nations.
J.R.Right. Right. That's right. And so, like, a legitimate question I've had, I've thought before, as sort of just a, we'll say, a modern Western Christian, is why did God, why did the Creator of the universe, connect Himself to the Israelites? And not, you know, the Egyptians or just some other people group. Was it, was it arbitrary? Was it random? And this answer is here in Deuteronomy is that he divided up the territories, right? And that he, he actually kind of divide them up, to different elohim, to different, gods to rule and to sort of correspond in the spiritual world, what's happening in the physical world. <Right. Right.> And, and so it kind of goes back to that idea and traditionally, you know, it kind of goes, you know, it goes back to Numbers 11 when Moses was, if you remember, Moses was sort of overwhelmed with dealing with every little issue that the people were having. He was overwhelmed by all that. And so he appointed 70 elders to handle the caseload, let's say, right. <Right.> And that's kind of where we get to this idea of the traditional 70 nations. Because, when Israel was appointed 70 elders, that sort of translates to this idea of, okay, there's 70 territories that were divided up and, and each one was given a, an elohim to, rule over is not the right word. What would it be to?
DavidJust like be guardian of, like, you know, we might say today we have a guardian angel.
J.R.Yeah, yeah. That's a better way to look at it.
DavidSo, yeah, but there's this idea of kind of a guardian spirit over a certain people.
J.R.Right, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And, and so the traditional idea is 70, that, that it was divided up to 70 nations. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or if it could be something else. I don't know.
DavidNo. Well, so 70 is definitely one of those numbers that mean something, because you see it in the Old Testament and you see it again in the New Testament. Again, from our standpoint, sometimes we can get bogged down with, you know, well, were there exactly 70 nations? Well, that's not the point. The point was that 70 was the number needed to form an assembly or a council, right? Okay. And so 70 becomes the divine council. Now, it's the same reason, it's interesting, because once you understand that, it's the same reason why Israel has 70 elders. Because what they're doing is they're mirroring the divine counsel on earth.
J.R.Yes, that's what I was going to ask, which came first, the chicken or the egg type thing. Yes, and you're saying the divine counsel came first.
DavidThe divine counsel came first.
J.R.Yes. And Israel was mapped off of that. <Right, right.> Okay. Yeah. Well, it's just interesting that the counter argument to what we're saying is that no, the, the godly council is merely the 70 elders of the house of Israel. And what we're saying is no, the divine council, it was actually the pattern that Israel got their 70 elders. And, if you're going against that idea, you would look at it and say, well, no, we're talking about Israel because it's too coincidental that they also have 70 leaders, yeah, to form their council. But, but the way you're explaining it makes perfect sense why one flows into the other.
DavidRight. You can see this number 70 and making up the Assembly of Israel and then say, well, that's obviously then every reference to an assembly or the 70 is Israel's leadership, unless you understand that Israel's leadership was patterned after a divine model.
J.R.Yeah, that's right.
DavidOf leading.
Does God need help ruling?
DavidAnd so it, man, the problem is each one of these verses brings up like any number of questions that we could start talking about, but yeah, one of the ones that just came to me is I think it'll raise a question of why does God need help ruling?
J.R.Right? That's exactly right.
DavidYeah. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because I have some thoughts, but
J.R.It's sort of the same what immediately pops in my head it's the same reason why does God need our help in this global good versus evil battle that we find ourselves in biblically, you know, right? Why does God need any of our help? Why does he need us to do anything? You know, why can't he just snap his fingers? The unsatisfactory answer is that that's simply what he wants. He wants us to join him in his plan in history. And he wants us to engage with him in that. He doesn't want this to be simply, a snap of the finger moment where he makes everything evil right. For, for whatever reason he wants us to join him in, in, in the mission that he has for us. And we kind of intuitively understand that as Christians. And, I would assume that he had that same plan for the divine counsel. Not that he needed their advice or that somebody would come up with something, a better idea than he had. But he wants to engage in the spiritual realm. He wants the same type of engagement from the other created spiritual beings, that he wants from us.
DavidRight. Right. I think that's right. And you see this pattern even in Genesis 1 with Adam, like Adam, he gives Adam and Eve jobs, right? Right. I mean, God could have done it Himself. I think of, you know, I think of having kids. You tell your kid to do something. You could do it easier and faster yourself. <Right.> But there's something about having your kid do it, right? <Right.> That actually, you know, you would know better than I do. But, you know, you actually take delight in seeing your kid kind of fumble through doing something and getting it right. When you could have done it, you know, In half the time.
J.R.Sure, sure. In half the time, right? Yeah. Yeah. They, they take twice the amount of time, but there's something, yeah, you're right. Seeing them learn and seeing them grow and uh, yeah. The next time they do it, they'll be a little bit quicker, hopefully. <Yeah.> And yeah, you just kind of see the growth and the maturity coming out. So yeah, it, it, it has something to do with the calling out of our maturity and maybe it had something to do with the Divine Council, the calling up the spiritual maturity of the beings that were involved in, in this whole process.
DavidYeah, I think clearly God has a preference for working with his creation to bring about his plan. And that starts in the Garden of Eden. It continues with the, the children of Israel. It continues with, you know, God becoming flesh and working with fallen human beings. It comes with partnering with the church. And now, once you understand that, there shouldn't be a big leap to say, God has a counsel because he wants to include lesser spiritual beings in on his plan of what he's doing.
J.R.Yeah, well said. That's exactly right. Yes. It's the same pattern we see all through the Bible.
DavidYeah, it's the same pattern you see all through the Bible. So, actually, shouldn't be a surprise at all that God has a counsel that he works with to carry out his plan.
J.R.Yeah, yeah, that's right. It still goes back to the problem. What's, what's the deal with all these other gods? Where they come from? What's their story? You know, and we're not talking... I mean, I guess this is a good time to say we're not talking specifically about angels, right?
DavidYeah, well, that gets into different spiritual beings, which there are definitely different spiritual beings. <Right.> But yes, these are, and you know, this is where some people can kind of go crazy with this whole detailed hierarchy, kind of like a... Lord of the Rings nerd, like, arranging all the different species and all that. And, you know, you can get carried away with that, but the Bible definitely talks about different spiritual beings. So, yeah, on one sense, you know, all angels, and the other sense, no, they're slightly different than some of the angels you see. And you know, Paul calls them thrones, and dominions, and powers, and authorities. Those are all actually classes of spiritual beings.
J.R.Yeah, yeah, and what we think of traditionally as angels is typically messengers, spiritual beings that are delivering a message.
DavidYeah, that are messengers, yeah.
J.R.Right, yeah, that's right.
DavidYeah, so, I guess, let's get to this question then. Okay, so, what happened that God goes from this divine counsel to all of a sudden these gods are off running their own countries doing their own thing that God has to step into the council and basically call them on the carpet. Like, <right> what happened? Now, oh goodness, so where where do we understand what happened there? We can look to Revelation. You can look to do we bring up the 1 Enoch instance?
J.R.Yeah, I think we'll take a path and dive into it. <Okay.> Because like we were saying, it's like we want this nice stair step of this builds on this, builds on this, but there's several concepts that are all kind of just thrown into these verses, and it's almost like we have to explore them all separately, but then bring them all together, hopefully at the end.
DavidYeah, yeah. So there's several ideas that we'll bring together real quick, and then I guess we can choose to run down a path. But, the Book of Revelation talks about the idea of angels falling and rebelling against God. <Right.> Genesis chapter 6 talks about an idea that I know you want to get into, but we can't, is the idea of the Nephilim, the sons of God, marrying the daughters of men, right?
J.R.And that's another podcast. I can't wait for that one either.
DavidSo who are these sons of God? So it's another one of these things that it's alluded to a couple of times. It's not really spelled out, but the story behind it then is you start to pull all these things together, is God gave authority to these gods to help protect and lead these nations in his name, and what happened is they rebelled. Okay? <Right.> And they began, we can say one of their biggest things they, they messed up is they began accepting worship for themselves. <Right.> Instead of for Yahweh. And that's really interesting to me because that gets at this idea of foreign deities. We've already talked about Baal last episode, right? <Right.> We've talked about Zeus. <Right.> And you can go on and on, uh, Marduk. You can talk about all these different deities, and again, we have a tendency to say, well, those things aren't real. Well, okay, I understand where you're coming from if you're gonna say they're not real. They're not real creator gods. But in the other sense, they are the earthly manifestations of these spirits that accepted worship for themselves, rather than giving glory to Yahweh.
J.R.Yeah. And when you see it that way, it's actually helpful because now you don't look back at the ancient people and say, well, you know, these backwards, simple people believed that there was a god in the sun and there was a god in the moon and there was somebody living up there, you know. And it helps explain that there was, something going on in the spiritual realm that manifested itself in the physical realm that people latched onto and wanted to worship. And it's the problem of worship It's not the fact that the problem isn't whether these beings existed or not. God never said, Hey, why are you making up these fake gods and, you know, making up these lies and confusing people? It's the worship of those gods that God had a problem with. So it's almost like there's an implication that, look, I realize that these things exist in some form or another, but your worship doesn't need to go to them. It needs to go to Yahweh. And that was where things got off track, right? For this divine council.
DavidRight. You almost get a picture of, these spirits were almost ambassadors for God over these different peoples, and God calls a divine council and says, okay, how are things in this country and that, you know and I know the whole God knows everything, but you know, we know that's true. But you almost get that picture of that's what it was set up to do. And all of a sudden these guardians of these different people groups start accepting worship for themselves. You know, the people in Greece start calling him Zeus, and the god, whoever that is, the spirit, starts thinking to himself, Well, maybe, you know, maybe I am Zeus.
J.R.They got a point there. You know, I'm pretty great.
DavidThat's a pretty nice temple they built for me, you know. <Yeah.> And all of a sudden, worship is no longer being directed to Yahweh, or that guardian spirit is no longer kind of helping those people along to get this revelation from the Creator God, Yahweh. He's accepting worship for himself, and all of a sudden, you have these ancient people in Greece worshiping Zeus.
J.R.Yeah, and there's a corollary for us today, that we were created to point others to the image of God, but just like this Divine Council, that was their purpose, was to point the nations toward Yahweh. But instead they took the accolades on themselves, you know, they sort of... started accepting their own divinity, and the worship from humans, right? <Right.> And we, there's a, there's a corollary today that we sort of see the same thing. It's a temptation for us, maybe in the church as church leaders or something like that. There's a temptation to our goal is to point others to God. And sometimes we let others, others praise of us get in the way of that. And that kind of clouds our vision and creates a fog that sometimes we've seen people fall prey to. <Yeah, yeah.> and so, sort of that understanding of what happens in the spiritual realm also happens in the physical realm. And we, we see that play out all the time.
DavidYeah, we see that play out all the time.
J.R.Among leaders and things like that, right?
DavidAnd, and I think that's a good point, and I think you brought this up last episode, is this idea of, look, this is the definition of idolatry, right? <Right.> This is the very definition of idolatry, and we don't make up gods today, necessarily. Look, let's be honest, we have plenty of idols that divert our worship of God to a thing. And it could be politics, and it could be, you know, any of the isms, right? <Right.> Any of the ideologies. We talked about that last week. Any of the ideologies that really divert our worship from God to a certain ideology. And look, it's really no different than, like I said, the Canaanites worshiping Baal or the Greeks worshiping Zeus. The way you see people just giving their whole selves to an ideology. There's really not that much of a difference.
J.R.Yeah, sure, you can see the parallel there.
DavidYeah, yeah. So, I guess, I'm trying to think of where to go next, because...
The context according to Enoch
DavidAlright, let's open this can of worms, and then we'll jump back to how Jesus referenced Psalm 82, because that's interesting, too. But, so... It raises the next question. We've thrown a lot of concepts out there, and people may be listening. You may have heard this before, you may be tracking with us, but my guess is there's people who are thinking, man, where are these two getting all this, right? Well, we're, we're not just making it up. There's people who've gone before, and look, some of the early church fathers wrote about this. This is not a new idea. But I want to bring up this idea of 1 Enoch because there is a book that has been preserved by the Church that actually lays out this whole idea pretty clearly. It tells the whole story, right? That all the things that we've been referencing, this book kind of brings it all together. And it's the book of 1 Enoch.
J.R.All right. When you say the book of 1 Enoch, the first thing I think of is, well, this is not a biblical book, so why is it valid?
DavidRight, right. And that's going to be, that's going to be a hurdle to get over. <Right.> And I guess we kind of got to talk about that before we get into what the whole book of 1 Enoch talks about. But we talked about this in previous episodes, that there are books of the Bible, right, that are held to be inspired and held up highly by the Church. There are other groups of writings that are not in the Bible, but actually shed a lot of light on what's going on. And there are extra-biblical writings that actually the early Church preserved and taught from. <Right.> And that's kind of different than how we're taught today. I like how you said it several weeks ago.
J.R.That if it's not the inspired Word of God then it must be flawed in some way, right?
DavidRight, right You said something to that effect if it's if it's not inspired Word of God then it's flawed, and it's not factual, and therefore we should kind of toss it aside. And look, I mean, we both heard that. We've both been in church circles where that's kind of the general idea. That you don't read those things. If it's not in the Bible, there's a reason it's not, you don't read it.
J.R.Well, I think, yeah, and I think what's happened is things like, the Gospel of Thomas, or, what's the other more recent one? These are Gnostic Gospels that have been discovered, that were written hundreds of years after Christ, and those are clearly, that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about extra biblical. <Right.> Those are simply Gnostic Gospels that were almost like cult like, and, you know... they're interesting for archaeologists and things to find. But, I think what we do is we sort of say, we hear the modern discovery of something like the Gospel of Thomas, and we tend to say, oh yeah, that's not in the Bible, I need to stay away from it. And then you hear somebody refer to the Book of Enoch, and you're like, oh, I don't like that either, that's not in the Bible either. But It's important to differentiate between those things. We're not talking about Gnostic Gospels, we're talking about extra-biblical books that the gospels actually point to and quote. <Right, right.> You know, Jude quotes the book of Enoch. There's other places in the Bible where Jesus actually quotes, other extra-biblical books. And we got into that, in our discussion of Colossians, we talked about sort of the missing letter of Corinthians and the other letters Paul refers to this missing letter. And so there are obviously things out there that the gospels refer to that they're pointing to. And Enoch is one of those books. This is not a modern discovery of an alternative gospel. Don't get those two things confused. <Right.> And so, uh, yeah, go ahead. The Book of Enoch, it's, it's referred to all through the Bible, so it's considered an extra biblical book.
DavidYeah, I'll interject real quick, and then we'll pick that back up, because I'm actually reading through some of the apocryphal New Testament books. And once you start reading through these, there's a clear distinction between a letter from Clement of Rome or from Ignatius of Antioch, who, that have some really interesting ideas in them. There's even, the Acts of John, the Acts of Peter, and, and by some accounts, you know, there, there's actually a lot of good information there. Because it makes sense that if someone was a disciple of Peter or Paul or John, and we know they had disciples. Right? That they would have passed on stories to them that may not have been recorded in the Bible. <Right.> And then those second generation disciples start writing letters, and this is what you start to see. You start to see someone like Clement of Rome saying, This is what Peter passed on to me. And, you know, I'm reading this, and I'm thinking, well, this isn't in the Bible. Well, you know, it makes sense that it wouldn't be.
J.R.Well, while it's not considered necessarily quote unquote gospel, It is helpful to help us understand the way the original gospel writers thought by listening to what their students said and, uh, you know, to hear those stories. So it kind of clarifies, and that's exactly what the book of Enoch does, is it clarifies some of these difficult things that we, <Yeah.> are referenced in the Old Testament, but isn't completely spelled out for us.
DavidRight, right. And so there are a lot of these books that are of interest, and there are some, like you said, are just clearly, like, out of bounds. In fact, no one really takes them seriously. In fact, the early church fathers said, you know, look, don't read this stuff. They actually taught against it. One of the ones I read was The Infancy Narratives of Jesus, I think. And it's clearly Gnostic, but it's all the stories from Jesus's childhood. And I mean, it's actually quite entertaining to read, because, some little kid, you know, pushes him and Jesus strikes him dead, right? And Joseph
J.R.That does sound like an interesting read.
DavidOh yeah, it's fascinating. And Joseph enrolls him in classes to get a teacher. And Jesus knows more than the teacher, and the teacher kind of insults Jesus. And so, like, Jesus strikes him dead, right? And Joseph has to go get another teacher. And no one wants to be the teacher because, hey man, if I don't give this kid an A, you know, that's I know what happened to the last teacher. And so it's almost kind of humorous, you know? Jesus is this kind of, this petulant little spoiled brat that, you know? And so clearly that's not the kind of stuff we're talking about. I just thought that was an example of something that's clearly, like, out of bounds, right? I read it, but, you know, I'm not gonna start teaching on it next week. It's clearly out of bounds. So anyway, yeah, this book of Enoch, then. Enoch is one of those books that actually for a long time was held in high regard, right? We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essene community there, we know that the book of Enoch was one of the more copied books that they held in their possession. And there's a couple other things about Enoch and then we'll get into what it actually starts talking about. Is for the first couple hundred years, it actually was considered you know, on the fringe of being in Scripture. It's actually part of the Ethiopian Bible. 1 Enoch. Yeah, it's part of the Ethiopian Bible. Well, it's interesting because one of the reasons why 1 Enoch was ultimately excluded is because they never, they actually don't know how old it is or who wrote it.
J.R.Right, right.
DavidSo it's not clearly that it was written, you know, 2nd century BC by this guy, and he was trying to pass himself off as Enoch. Like, it goes back way further than that. They just, they don't know. So on the safe side, they said, well, let's keep it kind of as this extra biblical book to study from, but not teach in the liturgical services from. <Right.> And so it kind of took on that light. The other interesting thing about 1 Enoch is that when you read through it, and I remember thinking this when I read through it I just read through it again, too is man, there's a lot of places where you're thinking, well, he's talking about Jesus in here. <Yeah.> Do you remember <yes> places where you'd say, well, he's talking about Jesus. This is so clearly and yet we know that it's at least we know it's among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was before the time of Christ, right? Well one thing. Okay, one more interesting thing Is that so it was preserved in Jewish literature until about the first or second century, where the Jews started realizing that a lot of these references sounded an awful lot like Jesus.
J.R.Oh, wow. Okay, so this is becoming problematic.
DavidAnd this became problematic, and they chose to exclude Enoch from basically, you know, the Hebrew scriptures.
J.R.Oh, wow. Okay. That's interesting.
DavidYeah. Now that's fascinating.
J.R.Yeah. Well, I was going to say that it was Jewish tradition and Orthodox tradition that the book of Enoch was actually carried on the Ark by Noah. Is that right? Have you heard that?
DavidInteresting. No, I haven't heard that.
J.R.And this is just anecdotal, you know, tradition. But yeah, yeah, but speaking of the age of it, how old it is, it's more ancient than almost every book of the Bible.
DavidYeah, yeah, we know it goes back further than a lot of the other books of the Old Testament. Right. We just don't know where it originated from.
J.R.Yeah, but no, that's interesting that it was pulled because of that. What I understood was that Enoch was basically not in canonized scripture, because scripture was intended for the human relationship to God and how humans can find God, so to speak, right? And the book of Enoch was more about fallen angels and the, the spiritual realm and the angelic realm, that the Council of Nicaea, kind of, there's arguments about including it and not including it. One of the arguments is, well, this is basically about the spiritual realm. It has very little to do with humans relationship to God. And so that's why it was excluded. But the Jewish explanation is also really interesting. But in any case, we can kind of see why Enoch is not to simply just be disregarded as, well, this is just some, crazy story that has nothing to do with the Bible. That's not it at all. It's referenced by other places in the Bible. But it also kind of gives a little bit of explanation of why it's not in your King James Bible, also.
DavidRight, right. And it falls under the category in the Eastern Church. They have books that are part of the canon of Scripture, but they also have books, a category of books, which I kind of like the idea of, books that you should study. But it's clear, like, this is not the Bible, right? But you should study this.
J.R.Yeah, I like that idea, also, because we don't really have an equivalent of that in the Evangelical Church. Right, in the Protestant church. That's right.
DavidWe don't really have that idea, so we just stay away from all of it. But that's where Enoch fell in terms of that tradition, is this is a book you should study, but we realize it's not in the Holy Scriptures, okay?
J.R.Right. Okay, so what does Enoch say that helps clarify this?
DavidYeah, so hopefully you've gotten the idea that, look, we're not saying this should have been in the Bible or anything like that, but so what does Enoch say? Yeah, so Enoch is a... Vision. It's the Old Testament character of Enoch. And I think he is the great grandfather of Noah?
J.R.Uh, yes. That's right.
DavidEnoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah. Yeah.
J.R.Right. Father of Methuselah.
DavidYeah. Yeah, so looking at my notes, and, that's who Enoch is. Now this is another interesting tie-in, because there's something unique about Enoch is, it says, "and God took him." It's, I think it's one of only two references where someone didn't die, it says God took them. Right. Right?
J.R.Him and Elisha, is that right?
DavidYeah, I think that's right. <Yeah.> So there's something unique about Enoch going on here. Well, so this book of Enoch basically, is a vision that Enoch has when he is called before the Divine Counsel. So, the book of, the 1 Enoch, I should say, because there are second, third, and fourth, and they get kind of increasingly, like, no one, you know, 4 Enoch, no one really takes that one too seriously. But, the book of 1st Enoch is actually the account of Enoch when he is called before the Divine Council. <Right.> And it ties back to this idea that, you know, God took Enoch, so he never really died, and God wanted to bring Enoch into this council of angels and spirits. <Okay.> And it was to deal with the problem of the Fallen Spirits, right? So it's from 1 Enoch where we learn that the Fallen Spirits who, and it ties back to Genesis chapter 6, like the Nephilim, the sons of God, took for themselves wives from the daughters of men, right? That all that took place on Mount Hermon. <Right.> So Enoch spells that out very clearly. It was Mount Hermon where all this went down. <Right.> And in fact, Mount Hermon becomes the mountain of assembly for the fallen spirits. <Yes.> And so there again, you see that parallel to the mountain of God and the divine assembly. It's almost like they form their own divine assembly contra God.
J.R.Right. Yes. And over and over in the Old Testament, you see references to Mount Hermon that make sense through the lens of what Enoch said. <Right. Right.> It's not just a random mountain, you know. It's, contrasted to the mountain of God, Mount Sinai. <Yeah.> It's, it's referenced in, I was telling you earlier in Joshua 11, that's where the final battle to take the Promised Land. It happened at the base of Mount Herman, which is this imagery of, Hey, this is where the fallen angels are, and, and, and it's all tied together. So yes, that's all understanding that lens is all seen through the book of 1 Enoch.
DavidRight, right, right. And again, we don't have time to get into all this because it's a, it's a fascinating book, it's a lengthy book. But Enoch basically becomes a go-between, between the fallen spirits and the Divine Assembly. <Right.> Which, I mean, that's kind of crazy.
J.R.Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's right off the bat.
DavidYeah, it's all laid out. So, you know, the fallen spirits call Enoch and say, hey, cut a deal for us. Because, and that kind of goes back to then to Psalm 82, where God is judging the gods, right? <Right.> And so they realize they're being judged. They say to Enoch, hey, intercede on our behalf. Cut a deal for us. So Enoch ends up going between almost the two assemblies. You can think of that way. Well, and, to get to the punchline of the whole story is God basically says, look, Enoch, I appreciate you doing this, but no, you know, they will be judged. There's no, there's no more deals to be cut. <Right.> And then it gets into a bunch of other stuff. But that's the book that lays all of this out, this idea of a fallen assembly, the mountain of assembly being Mount Hermon. Them calling on Enoch to appeal to them before God because they realized they rebelled, they accepted worship for themselves, and now they're about to be judged. And God says, nope, uh, you will be judged, you know? You will ultimately perish in the end. There's no forgiving, any of this. And so it's the judging of the fallen spirits, and also 1 Enoch ties into the flood and Noah. So Enoch communicates a lot of this to Noah and says, here's why this flood is about to happen.
J.R.Oh, okay, that's interesting.
DavidYeah, yeah, so that's the book of 1 Enoch. So when we talk about you know, where do we get these concepts? They're kind of hinted at, and there's references alluded to, we've already talked about several of them. But it's really spelled out in 1 Enoch, and you brought up one thing that I want to circle back to, and we'll kind of wrap up the whole Enoch side of this, is that these concepts are actually referenced in the New Testament. And Jude, you, I think you said this, you're correct, that Jude actually quotes Enoch directly. <Right.> From the book 1 Enoch. But Paul, John, and even Jesus say things that if you don't have the book of 1 Enoch, it's not clear what they're talking about. <Yes.> But armed with what's in the book of Enoch, what they're saying makes sense.
J.R.Makes perfect sense.
DavidAnd so it's very clear that this was a book held in high regard in the Dead Sea community. And Jesus and Paul and Peter, they were familiar with this book. <Right.> So much so that they made references to it. And again, it was such common knowledge they didn't even see the need to really spell it out. Hey, here's what I'm talking about, right?
J.R.Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
DavidSo, that's where we're getting
The context according to Jesus
Davidall this. Alright, so let's wrap all this up now, armed with all that background. Let's go back to Psalm 82, and then I want to pick up on how Jesus actually references this psalm, Psalm 82. So, Psalm 82, now, hopefully this makes a lot more sense. That God presides in the Great Assembly. He renders judgment among the gods, right? <Right.> Okay, that starts to make sense now with this background of everything we've talked about and 1 Enoch. And he says, how long will you defend the unjust and really do a poor job of what you're supposed to do? Psalm 82:5 says, "The gods know nothing, they understand nothing, they walk about in darkness, all the foundations of the earth are shaken." So basically, they're beyond hope, right? There is no deal to be cut through Enoch. You could think of it in that, in that time. And then Psalm 82:6 says, "I said you are gods, you are the sons of the Most High." In other words, he conferred this on them, right? "But you will die like mortals." You will fall like every other ruler. So that's God's judgment on them. <Right.> And then, "Rise up, O God, judge the earth." Okay, so now that Psalm 82 makes a bit more sense in that context. But this verse 6 that I just read, "I said you are gods, you are the sons of the Most High, but you will die like mere mortals." Jesus actually quotes that psalm.
J.R.Oh, okay.
DavidSo, do you have John chapter 10 up?
J.R.Uh, yes, I do. All right. John 10, verse, we'll start in verse 33. It says, "The Jews answered him, 'Is it not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy? Because you being a man make yourself God?' Jesus answered them, 'Is it not written in your law? 'I said, you are gods.' And if he called them gods to whom the word of God came and scripture cannot be broken.'" And so it's kind of this, yeah, kind of, he's going back and you're right, he's quoting Psalm 82.
DavidYeah, I've read this several times, and I'm trying to figure out, all right, what is the point of Jesus quoting this, right? <Right.> Because it's, it's a bit of an odd defense in what Jesus is claiming. So to back up a little bit, John 10:33, my version says, "We are not stoning you for any good work, but for blasphemy." So they're picking up stones, they're ready to kill him because of blasphemy, because Jesus has basically alluded to this idea that he is the Son of God, right? <Right.> And so Jesus's answer to them, "Is it not written in your law? 'I have said you are gods'?". Okay, he's quoting that psalm we just read, right? "If he called them gods, to whom the Word of God came, what about the one whom the Father set apart for his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy?" Because he said, I am God's son. So actually, he is using Psalm 82 as basically saying, look, doesn't your own scripture say, there are other gods? Really, that's what Jesus is saying. <Right.> So they're saying, well, you're going around claiming you're God. And Jesus said, well, look, what are you going to do with Psalm 82 then?
J.R.Yeah, he counters that by saying, yeah, because there are other gods.
DavidRight, exactly. Now, oftentimes when Jesus or someone in the New Testament quotes a single verse, they're actually referencing the entire passage, right? So Jesus isn't just, you know, picking out a verse because he looked in his index and he said, oh, wait, here's in my index, it says, Psalm 82 says
J.R.He's essentially delivering the punchline to that whole idea in, in Psalm 82.
DavidHe just shortcuts right to that one verse. And of course, they would know what Psalm 82 is talking about. <Right.> That there are an assembly of other gods. <Right.> So, Jesus first is saying, so why is it a stretch, for you to accept the fact that there, look, there are other gods. There are fallen angels. There's a divine assembly, right? <Right.> So, the second thing he's saying is, then why is it so hard for you, because I'm doing good works, to accept that I might be the Son of God, who I'm claiming to be?
J.R.Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're right, it's just one of those that you can kind of fumble through and not really understand the verses in context, but once you have that lens that you can see it through from Psalm 82, that makes perfect sense.
DavidYeah, once you understand the full context of Psalm 82, then yeah, Jesus is saying... Look, I thought your Old Testament, you wouldn't call it the Old Testament, look, doesn't your scripture talk about all this? <Sure, sure.> Fallen spiritual beings, spiritual beings that are aligned with God, the divine assembly versus, you know, the mountain of assembly on Hermon. Like, all that is wrapped up in that psalm, and all Jesus has to do is quote that one verse. Doesn't your own scripture say, you know, there are gods, and it would all come flooding back, and they would be like, Okay. Yeah.
J.R.Good point. That's pretty solid. Yeah.
DavidYeah. So if there are gods and they're doing good works, then maybe they are sent by God. So maybe this guy's, you know, not out of line by going around healing people and doing good works and saying he's the son of God. Maybe we need to have a little more than what we're throwing at him, you know?
J.R.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly
DavidBasically how that goes down. So I just thought that was interesting because, again, something I've read a lot, I've only recently really probably understood it to my satisfaction of what Jesus was really saying there.
J.R.No, that's interesting, because he does, he kind of sidesteps this idea of calling himself God, or claiming to be God's son, <Yeah.> by pointing to Psalm, 82 saying, yeah, this should be common knowledge to all of you. <Yeah, yeah.> Yeah, no, that's interesting.
DavidAnd it's not a stretch from your belief system, either.
J.R.Yeah, exactly.
DavidRight, you know? <Right.> And it's kind of like, in that way, I think it's kind of relevant for us today.
J.R.Yes, no, I was about to say that.
DavidBecause, you know, I think, again, we were raised with this idea, well, no, there's not other gods, and it almost speaks to us in the same way. Well, you know, look, then what do you think all these other verses in the Bible are referencing? This is not out of line with your belief system. I think that's the same words for us today, right?
J.R.Right, right. Well, this is a little bit of a rabbit trail, but I just think we've talked about this before, that modern evangelical churches have kind of shied away from the idea of the supernatural in the Bible. You know, while at the same time, they obviously are, you know, recognize Jesus's, coming back from the dead and raising Lazarus and the virgin birth, you know. So, one part of the evangelical church completely embraces the idea of miracles and the supernatural. But then there's also this kind of underlying belief going on that, yeah, the angels and the spiritual battles that's a little bit too far, you know? <Yeah.> And, and you mentioned earlier that evangelicals in the early 1900s wrote about this stuff all the time. This is not anything new. This is not something that moderns have come up with, you know, as an alternative or as an addition to the Old Testament. Evangelicals in the early, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, they were talking openly about this stuff. And I think what happened is here's a little bit of the rabbit trail is I think what happened is kind of the charismatic movement came along in the sixties, you know, the, uh, what is it, the California charismatic movement? And the evangelical wing of the Protestant church kind of reacted by downplaying some of these fringe ideas that came out of the charismatic movement, meaning speaking in tongues and prophecy and the, the filling of the Holy spirit and the handling of snakes and, those types of things that are, that we attach to the charismatic movement. And the result is, is that my church experience has simply avoided all of this language, in the name of focusing on the gospel. And while focusing on the gospel is extremely important, and probably the most important aspect of the Bible, what I'm realizing is that we can have a more complete understanding of the gospel when we understand what many of the New Testament writers are referring to, and particularly Jesus in this instance. That to have a better understanding, a more complete understanding, you kind of have to tie in this, what we might modern evangelical churches might call a little bit, a little bit too mystical for us. It's, it's a little bit too out there for us to embrace and speak from the pulpit. But without it, some of these things just are, are difficult to understand, even in the New Testament, even quotes from Jesus. And so I, I just think that's kind of where we've gotten away from that a little bit. And what you and I are trying to kind of embrace and bring back a little bit in, kind of this whole Navigating An Ancient Faith, what we're trying to do is to bring some of that back into our understanding.
DavidYeah. No, I think that's exactly right, and I, it echoes my sentiments as well, that I think with Navigating An Ancient Faith, one thing we're trying to do is bring people along on our own journey to recapture, some of this mystery that was really absent, I think, from my faith growing up, I'll say that. And I think you're right. The way I've said it is, I think most Protestants are, you know, certainly believe in God. We believe in evil. We believe in the Holy Spirit. We believe in the power of prayer. Anything beyond that that's a little kind of, mystical, spooky. You know, we've seen how that kind of goes off the rails and gets abused elsewhere. And so, yeah, we just kind of avoid all that.
J.R.Yeah, yeah, I think that's what it is. Is, we see it as a foot in the door of kind of running down, oh, something almost cultish, you know. It just opens the door for that, and let's just avoid it altogether. And I don't think, that's the proper response either, you know. That we can, if you kind of go into that area cautiously, and use the scriptures to interpret the scriptures, what you find out is, man, a lot of this stuff makes sense. And early church leaders, they understood it this way. <Yeah.> but we've lost that here, oh, the past maybe hundred years.
DavidYeah, yeah. Yeah, and there's other forces where this is like you said, getting on a rabbit trail, but there's other forces because you know, 19th-century, German philosophy, basically was downplaying all the literalness of Scripture and demythologizing it all. And in an effort to defend the Bible, I think Protestants, you know, understandably so at certain point, defended the historicity and the factfulness of the Bible. But in a strange way, we almost demythologized it along with them.
J.R.Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Right. So, yeah, in an attempt to compete on scientific grounds.
DavidYeah, exactly.
J.R.Right. Yeah.
DavidYeah. It's a good way to say it. Yeah, that's a whole, that's a whole
J.R.Alright, get back on track. Get us back on track here.
Psalm 103: You mighty ones who do His bidding
DavidWhat are we, hour two here? No, not that bad. Alright, so let's, let's hit a couple more psalms, then we can wrap this up, because we really talked about the bulk of all this. But, just to say that, uh, Psalm 82 is not an isolated psalm, and with this backdrop, hopefully it makes a little more sense. Psalm 103, this is a psalm of David. Real quick, I'm just gonna read the last three verses of Psalm 103. "Praise the Lord, you angels of His, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word. Praise the Lord, all you heavenly hosts, you servants of His who do His will. Praise the Lord, all His works everywhere in His dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul." Now again, we talked about this, for these last couple episodes. You say, oh, that's nice poetic language. But think about what it's saying here. "Praise the Lord, you angels, you mighty ones. Praise the Lord, you heavenly hosts" okay? So that's different from the angels, right?
J.R.Yeah, it's, different categories that he's, that they're explaining, yeah.
David"Praise the Lord, you servants of his. Praise the works all everywhere in his dominion." That's everything in his range, right? And so, again, this is a, a reoccurring theme in the Psalms, but we're seeing different spirits, different angels, different spiritual beings called on to praise God. And again, give glory to Yahweh, as opposed to the fallen angels, who diverted worship for themselves, right?
J.R.Right, right. And it's just another reference of this entire spiritual realm that we're talking about. <Yeah.> That sort of goes untalked about a little bit.
Psalm 148: Praise Him sun, moon, and stars
DavidSo, let's do another one real quick. Psalm 148.
J.R.Okay. Psalm 148 says, "Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens. Praise Him in the heights. Praise Him all His angels. Praise Him all His hosts. Praise Him sun and moon and praise Him all you shining stars. Praise Him you highest heavens and you waters above the heavens." Okay, so this sounds like a typical psalm, right? <Yeah.> Everything should praise God. <Right.> What's this telling us?
DavidWell, same thing as the previous one when it talks about, "Praise him you angels, all you heavenly hosts." It's easy to think that these are just different words for the same thing. But, right, they're actually used in different contexts. So there's differences here. But this one's interesting. We talked a little bit about this, the last episode. Verse 3 says, "Praise him sun, moon, praise him stars." Why is he asking the sun and the moon and the stars?
J.R.Yeah, yeah, that's right.
DavidTo praise him, right? <Right, right.> And again, we go back to the ancient mindset that they would have believed, look, they thought that they knew that there was the sun and the moon and stars, but they also believed that there were spirits associated with those things.
J.R.Right. Yeah, that's right.
DavidSo when it says, "Praise Him, Sun, Moon, and Stars," that's not just poetic language. That's calling on the deity or the spirits or the elohim of those, heavenly bodies, let's say, to give their praise to Yahweh by doing what they do. You know, keeping the moon, keeping the planet on the path, rising every morning, that type of thing. And it's always fascinating to me because, you know, more and more I... you ask the question, well, is it talking about the literal sun, or is it talking about maybe the spirit behind the sun?
J.R.Right, right. Well I feel like we have to say this every episode. <Yeah.> But we have to read the Scriptures, and especially the Old Testament, as the ancients intended it to be understood. And ancient writing is written through the lens of good versus evil, you know, and how everything, everything, spiritual, physical, human, non human, how all that plays a part in that narrative. You know, I was thinking earlier, if you go to the list of Kings in the Old Testament, you know, it would say this King did evil in the sight of the Lord, and this King did evil in the sight of the Lord. And at about one in 10, it would come along and say, this person did good in the sight of the Lord. And that's an interesting way of framing it because, you know, imagine going through, oh, listen, imagine going through the United States presidents, and listing them off that way, in that simplistic matter. You know, that Grover Cleveland did evil in the sight of the Lord and Howard Taft did good, you know what I mean?
DavidYeah, don't mess with Howard Taft now.
J.R.Yeah. But it's just such a simplistic binary it seems like a binary way to, describe someone, right? <Right.> That these are complex people. These are complex times that they were living in. And, yeah, I realized how you could, there are some presidents, that you could chalk up and say, now that dude is evil. You know, maybe you think that, but not to get political, but yeah, you, the idea that you can go to every King or every president and simply throw them in this category, it seems a little simplistic, right? To put complex people firmly into one of those camps. <Right.> But when you think about the underlying narrative of good versus evil, you can more easily see that certain kings align themselves with one of those categories more so than the other. And the reason I'm saying all this is, is when you read through the Old Testament, you understand that the ancients had this narrative of everything spiritual, human, physical, all that is seen through that lens of good versus evil. Then you can kind of more easily see that, you know, the sun, the moon, they play a role in this. Nature plays a role in this. And it is in one of those camps of either you did evil in the sight of God or you do good in the sight of God. And so what it's calling for is nature, and the spirit of nature to also praise him because you're in the good camp, right? <Right. Yeah.> You're part of that narrative. And it's a little bit deep to run down and to see through this. And again, as moderns, we read through it and we sort of just say, well, that's just poetic language and nothing more. And it's like, no, no, no. It's just the way they saw the overall narrative of good versus evil all through the Bible and, and the spiritual realm and the physical realm, running parallel to each other.
DavidYeah. And there's a reason why in the Old Testament, it warns the Israelites not to worship the sun and the moon.
J.R.Yeah, sure.
DavidAnd that idea, you know, you'd think, well, it's kind of harmless, unless you understand it in the way that you just said. Look, the spirits behind those are either aligned with God or against God, so don't align yourself with, or, or don't, how do I say this? Give your worship to Yahweh and not to these things because they're just obeying the commands of Yahweh. And so, you know, don't divert worship to these things that have very real spirits behind them.
J.R.Right. And they're good in their nature, but don't worship that good. <Right, right.> Let them point you to Yahweh. Yeah.
DavidThere's other accounts in the Old Testament where, stars fought each other. I mean, this language is in there, and you see that same language in Revelation. And we always think, well, Revelation, you know, there's some crazy stuff going on there. But the language is all through the Bible. That's what we're really getting at.
J.R.Right. One of the verses you have that I really like is Judges 5, verse 20. And it says, "From the heavens the stars fought. From their courses they fought against Sisera." And you remember, you remember Sisera, right, from Sunday School? He's the one who got the spike run through his head by Deborah. You remember that?
DavidOh, yeah. Okay.
J.R.Oh, yeah So as a middle schooler man, I was all over that.
DavidIt was the best story. Yeah
J.R.And sadly, you know i'm sitting there thinking yeah, I think I was probably second or third grade when my my teacher told me that story and of course I loved it. But looking back i'm like, yeah, that seems a little extreme, right?
DavidYeah But yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.
J.R.Yeah. No, it's that interesting idea that the stars fought while battles were being fought out on Earth, right? The stars here represent the spiritual realm as opposed to the physical realm. And so when Deborah was taking care of Sisera in the physical realm, there was this corresponding battle going on in the spiritual realm.
DavidInteresting, yeah.
J.R.And yeah, it just ties that together in such an interesting way, you know.
DavidYeah. So this is going down on Earth, and stars are fighting in heaven.
J.R.Right, you know, and again...
DavidAnd that makes sense when you understand that there are spirits and angels and deities associated with those different planets and stars.
J.R.Yes, and the oversimplification is that, did these people think that stars were up there? I mean, what did they see in the heavens? Did they see comets that were crashing into each other? And it's like, no, no, no. It's the spirits, you know, and when you see it through that lens of good and evil, and this cosmic battle, those types of images start to make sense. And all they're really saying is that there's a corresponding spiritual realm that actually parallels the physical realm.
DavidRight. Yeah.
Psalm 89: The assembly of the Holy Ones
J.R.Okay, what's next?
DavidUh, one more. Let's go to Psalm 89:5, and this kind of ties it together. Psalm 89:5 just says, again, same language we're used to hearing now, "The heavens praise your wonders, Lord, your faithfulness too." But then it says, "In the assembly of the Holy Ones." So, there's that reference to the assembly again, right? "The heavens praise your wonders in the assembly of the Holy Ones." Again, easy to read past that real quick. Some of your commentaries might say, well, that's talking about, you know, the assembly of Israel. But why would the heavens, right, be praising Yahweh in Israel's assembly, right? You know, <yeah, yeah> like now that we've kind of tried to flesh out in this brief amount of time this idea of a divine council this makes sense. The heavens are praising Yahweh in God's divine assembly, right? <Right. Right.> And so, hopefully, all of that starts to make a little more sense. In fact, verse 7 says, "In the council of the holy ones, God is greatly feared. He is more awesome than all who surround him." So, it's really kind of playing out this idea of the assembly surrounding God, the divine council.
J.R.Yeah, that's right.
Have we lost this worldview?
J.R.And just to say it again, it's difficult to untangle all of this in, you know, one or two hour episode, but it is one of those things that the more you point out, the more you read these things and it becomes obvious. And so you and I have both said that on our own, we've just picked up the Bible and read a passage and, and you see these things, you see these things pop out more and more obvious. Than before we kind of had this idea of, of a spiritual realm and the divine council and all these kind of supernatural things going on in the spiritual realm, paralleling the physical realm, right? The seen and the unseen. And once you see that, and once you see that pattern and narrative repeated, you see it all over the place. You can't unsee it. <Right.> You know, and it does, it changes the way, the way we read. <Yeah.> And the question, I guess, you know, maybe I'll throw this out to you, is how come we've gotten away from this? And I, I touched on it a little bit more with the charismatic movement, you know, things like that. But overall, why do you think we've gotten away from this?
DavidSo, yeah, we've gotten away from it. I could give you the long philosophical answer, but I do think, let me give you, let me start with summarizing the long philosophical answer, and then I'll boil it down to something, me personally, I would say. Is that, look, we have to recognize that since the 1500s, since the Enlightenment, there has been a movement toward elevating science and rationality over everything else, right? <Right.> And sometimes, we're such a product of our environment that it's hard to actually step away and see what has shaped us. But I'm becoming more and more aware that us moderns today, even in the church, are so shaped by this scientific rationalism that, you know, this idea, even the idea of a divine assembly, you go, Oh, come on. We know that's not the case, you know. We've landed men on the moon. We know what the moon is made of. And there were no spirits there, right? And, and, so I find even myself kind of wrestling with some of the resistance to understanding the ancient mindset, I guess, because I'm starting to realize how steeped I am in it. And I think everyone today who grew up in, you know, especially in the West, I think is so influenced by this that we don't even recognize it. But to personalize it a little bit, then I'll get your thoughts, is that probably, I don't know, 5 or 10 years ago, I started this journey of really feeling like that if I truly believed everything that I was reading and studying the Bible, my faith. I started reading different traditions. I started reading, monastics, and I was missing something in my own faith that I was reading, in monastic communities, in the early church fathers, right? I mean, they held this stuff to be true. They believed in mystery. They believed in, a, a spiritual realm that paralleled the physical world. And for me personally, it's part of my own journey to say I'm trying to figure that out and I'm trying to recapture it. And for me, that's why it's important to wrestle with some of the things that we've been talking about during this series. I don't know, that's, that's the personal side of it for me, but what would you, what's your thoughts on that?
J.R.Well, no, I think that's extremely well said. That's kind of summarizes what we're trying to do and that we don't claim to have all the answers. We just simply want to kind of bring you guys along with us on what we're going through our journey. And it's not to say that, the Protestant denomination that you were brought up in is wrong or anything like that. It's simply saying that there's a lot more out there and a different way of thinking that actually helps frame what, you were taught in church all growing up. And helps actually helps give that a little bit more depth and, you know, so the, I guess the question is how do we incorporate this, what this ancient idea into modern everyday life? And I just think, you know, for me, I think it just helps to realize that there's more to the world than what we see. You know, we have a tendency of going through life and thinking that as long as I'm not hurting other people, then I'm doing fine, right? The realization that there's a spiritual world that is bound to our physical reality reminds us that there's a lot more going on than simply trying to be good or trying to get through your day or, you know, there's a battle going on. And one way or another, we're going to choose a side of this battle. And, and it really does come down to that. And if you start seeing things through that lens, it, not only does it help you understand, Old Testament Scripture and New Testament Scripture sometimes, but it helps you actually go through your day and realize that there's a lot more than simply trying to get through your day and let's, let's not be rude to people. Let's try to help out and, you know, leave the penny in the jar at the gas station and, you know. There's a whole lot more going on. And it's just really easy to get caught up in the busyness of your world and just to ignore all that. But there is, there is a parallel world that reflects the physical world and, and they all tie together, and to kind of move forward understanding that.
DavidYeah, those are good thoughts. If we believe that there is a parallel spiritual world, then I think it kind of ups the stakes for things that are easily dismissed, even something like prayer. <Right.> Even something like being tempted to sit there and watch Netflix instead of listening to a good, encouraging podcast. <Yeah, yeah, yeah.> You know, you start to see these things as spiritual battles. The stakes are a little higher than I've usually give credit for. Let's put it that way, so.
J.R.Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not to over dramatize it. <No, yeah.> You're exactly right, though. We talked about this before in the ascent that how do we come down? How do we come off of that? And one of the things we talked about is, Let's not waste as much time. Let's not flip through your Instagram feed as much. Let's not just get stuck, go down the YouTube rabbit hole as often. And again, I don't want to dramatize and say this spiritual battle going on there. But there really is an aspect of that. It does elevate those simple, where I had a tendency of saying, Ah, yeah, I try not to do that, but it's not the end of the world, you know. And I'm starting to realize, no, no, no, there's spiritual implications going on with all of that, with everything we do. <Yeah.> And, and if you just relegate that to, oh, no, that's no big deal, and I'll try to get to church as much as I can, and I'll try to say my prayers and read scriptures, we'll relegate that to Sunday and during the week I'm just too busy. If you kind of lived your life like that, you're not really understanding, this concept of the spiritual world actually entering into your physical world and everything you do from the smallest thing to the largest thing. And you're right, the stakes are higher than we realize.
DavidYeah, yeah. Yeah. Do you think the stars are fighting in heaven when you get on Instagram, uh, or maybe being a little overdramatic?
J.R.Yeah, it's one of those blue dwarfs. Yeah, they're going at each other.
DavidThey're minor ones, but they're there.
J.R.Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DavidThey're duking it out, yeah.
J.R.Yeah, they're not supernova, but yeah, something's going on up there. Yeah.
DavidOh, yeah. Well, again, to wrap things up, thanks for journeying with us. I think, like you said, J.R., you know, we certainly don't have it figured out. And if you have any thoughts, listening to this going, man, these guys are way off base. Hey, tell us, because we're, we're figuring out along the way. I'm not
J.R.Yeah. I want to know.
DavidWe're reading a lot of the same stuff, processing a lot of the same things, and I'm sure that some of what we're, processing right now is, you know, a little off base. But that's okay, because it's further down the road than we were, uh, five years ago, at least for me, I'll speak personally. But we'd love for you to give your thoughts, interact with us, Navigating An Ancient Faith, we're on Facebook, there's a website, of course, the podcast. Uh, give us a like or a thumbs up, get the word out. We're just, we're, we're starting out, this is season one. So we're still trying to get the word out. We'd love more participation.
J.R.Yeah, join us on the journey, right?
DavidYeah, yeah. Join us on that journey, if this is awakening something in you.
J.R.Yeah, that's right.
DavidAlright, next time we are going to talk about... Alright, here's a good teaser too, Ascending the Mountain we've talked about the mountain of God. So we're talking about ascending the mountain and descending to hell.
J.R.Oh, okay. That got dark real quick.
DavidYeah, yeah. That turned the tables. But again, it's all in the Psalms. We'll talk about it next episode.
J.R.Alright, I can't wait. That'll be fun.
DavidThanks, everyone.
J.R.We'll see y'all.
