I'm going to at least admit that with this post, rather than edifying one way or another, I'll simply be evaluating what I can sense of the internal logic of what the existence of a Divine Council of Elohim as Mike lays out a case for would mean as he interprets it in reference to the events of the Tower of Babel and the turf war that ensued thereafter.
I'll post this video because, while a lot of it deals with the Genesis 6 dialog it's him in his words separating out the Bnai Elohim as something other than human but also, furthermore, other than angelic. Instead he proposes lower case 'g' gods, of a similar basis as Yahweh as they are themselves of the Elohim group but of a lesser power than Yahweh himself:
MICHAEL HEISER - ANGELS COHABITING WITH WOMEN-GENESIS SIX HYBRIDIZATION - YouTube
The core structural points of the hypotheses outlined in this video seem to indicate:
1) throughout the biblical narrative there have been other minor deities.
2) these minor deities were the same who seduced those following Nimrod (possibly Gilgamesh?) into worshiping them and building the tower of Babel. This deals with a disparity in Deuteronomy 32:8 between dividing the world according to Israel (which did not exist yet) but in pre-English versions of the text per Michael translated into being divided among the sons of God.
3) turf war ensued which labeled the lines, particularly Israel/Jacob as the line of people that Yahweh (the most high) oversaw.
4) Psalms 82 was an address of judgment to these lower case g gods on their corruption in overseeing their followers in that they took worship for themselves rather than directing it to Yahweh.
5) These lower case g gods and the watchers are one and the same.
From these axioms a mechanical reference for the events of Numbers and Joshua make more intuitive sense. In so many ways the ethnic cleansing performed in Joshua could have at least been partly justified as much by polluted blood lines by the angel/human interpetation albeit territories, other non-Judaic or non-Christian religions become murkier affairs - all of which seem to be explained more crisply by a plurality of lesser Elohim in this spot rather than these affairs being strictly a direct result of the fallen angels. In the video Mike also brings up the story of a king who Elijah heals and who wants to pay Elijah but Elijah won't take any funds, at which point the king asks whether he can bring back dirt from Israel for his temple - implication being that he is trying to insert the authority of Yahweh in his region.
Now, I bring in something here that I think needs to be discussed more thoroughly. It was introduced in a cursory manner however it's generally been an unsatisfactorally answered mystery regarding everything from Yahweh to the lower case gods, or fallen angels if that is the case instead, that such entities find edfication in ritual sacrifice whether of animals or of human beings. In any place I try to find a connection on the sacrifice phenomena the best answer I can come up with, at least in a somewhat fuzzy but better than nothing form, is that sacrifice is an energy transfer back to that local deity, ie. for noncorporeal intelligence its like taking a shot of wheat-grass juice, its power and health so to speak given to their being.
The above would tell us a lot about why, if there is such a thing as a layer of Elohim between Yahweh and the angels, why such lesser Elohim would have a strategic propensity to become corrupt - ie. they may very well feel a nagging need for a fix and they would get that fix through creating a more direct covenant with the local people rather than transferring what they get back up to Yahweh. That however is just my fuzzy speculation and I'll leave it on the side.
Back on topic though what seems to happen is this - in Psalm 82, per the theory, the lesser gods are being judged for their misdeads. Territory after the tower of Babel is king. Add to this that such deities are empowered by the number of souls that die in them (in the case of Yahweh where Jesus was the sacrifice and natural death in Christ will suffice) or the animals sacrificed to them.
This has some fascinating implications with regard to modern events. For instance many people, for years, have likened abortion to blood sacrifice and it happens that in cultures of biblical times you had fertility deities on one side, child sacrifice deities such as Molok just barely down wind of them - much like you have Hollywood and NYC fashion avenue with Planned Parenthood just a few feet culturally down wind of it. The value of human sacrifice to lower case 'g' gods adds some very definite spice and twisted but methodical logic to the strength of such phenomena.
Another very dark epoch in 20th century history was the 3rd Reich and Nazism which some people know, some people don't, was fueled by a blend of theosophy and racism in the form of the Thule society. Goebbels and Himmler were very big occultists, the Indiana Jones movies have more than a fair amount of accuracy in retelling the Nazi thirst for occult knowledge and occult artifacts, some accounts even suggest that Nazi higher ups were using severed heads of enemies to commune with ascended masters (which makes their rather mysterious identity that much more interesting and might raise the question of whether they themselves might be something more interesting than fallen angels). Taking this and then reflecting it on the holocaust which was a mix of all kinds of people being sacrificed of all ethnicities, level of mental ability, but also taking special note of the Jewish people which were Yahweh's: was this be an attempt - particularly in the last case - by local deities or lower case 'g' gods to drink up Yahweh's power by the sacrifice of his people on their turf?
This territorial dispute theology with the hypothesis of a divine council seems like it would offer an explanation as well for persistently war-torn areas of the world, which would suggest that the deities of those areas would be fundamentally self-serving and using the people under their local authority in a despotic manner. This would also explain something about the United States, how under Yahweh who can have authority anywhere through believers, that we had the stamp of Yahweh's influence as we held the line as a Judao-Christian nation but how as time went on and as we faded first into secularism, then into multiculturalism, then into humanism, and then start to fade toward the final outcome which seems to be shaping up as a post-modern paganism, its really as if when any culture casts off Yahweh there is a god/goddess or series thereof who'll be more than happy to take us off his hands and use/abuse humanity to support their own power structures.
One of the things that blurs the territorial theory of lesser Elohim (plural) is the case Israel itself - it's still keynote in history, it's the geographic bowl of trembling, however it has been overrun many times over, most notably by Assyrians and Babylonians (Israel then Judah) in Kings and Chronicles, when the people left Yahweh - which poses sort of an intuitive challenge to the notion of biblical turf, ie. if Israel or the former land of Canaan was Yahweh's division and such a division was geographical, one would intuitively think that it would be a land where no other such gods would be able to wield their influence directly. If that geographic contingency goes in line with the blessings and curses with respect to whether the people uphold God's will (Yahweh) then the sorted history of the geographic territory of Israel makes sense albeit we run into a question of just how fixed these geographic delegations from the event of the Tower of Babel would really be. Yahweh's allowance of their punishment clears this up somewhat but it still seems like there are mechanics that are wanting of more clarification, ie. how much the lower case 'g' gods had their authority purely on lease in geographic Israel or to what extent geographic Israel is really relevant to Yahweh vs. the believers themselves which bring his authority into all places and to all ends of the earth.
Clearly I know that I'm chasing a particular train of dynamics here - caveats abound - and there may be many subtle holes in the internal logic of what I've posted above. Really this is my attempt to probe the ramifications of Michael's proposal, even if my attempt is very pop or high-level. The thing I can't speak to is what Heisler's hypothesis would mean in the context of end times events, what it would do to 'alien' extradimensional/gods/fallen angels theories of 2 Thes 2:11 or Revelations 9, and I would need to find more of Michael's lectures to see if it changes our understandings of end times events or our role in them significantly. Michael did state that his understanding that the believers would replace the lower case 'g' gods as territorial regents, that's the after end times but I'm still curious about before and during.
Overall I think he's presenting a very interesting hypthesis, especially if what he is saying more closely edifies the exact ways in which the words of the old testament are written. However like any hypothesis I like the idea of teasing out the implications of it as far as I possibly can to see what it explains better than other hypotheses (in this case it explains other religions and deities in a way where fallen angel theories seem a bit stretched, it also seems to explain a war-torn planet as well as Yahweh's strict orders on worship and genocide in Numbers and Joshua) and where it either is still missing certain things or where it might even run into hard/fast contradictions with other books.
Is it a heretical viewpoint? I think the only way we can really find out is to test it on its own internal logic to see how it meets, how it clashes, and whether it gives a better explanation to the bible as it stands without going against the bible. Clearly it doesn't edify Gnosticism, doesn't edify occult, doesn't edify salvation by other means than Jesus Christ, so as a hypothesis it stays within the lines of what is typically demanded of biblical salvation theology.
If anyone else has some thoughts they'd like to add to this, caveats they see that aren't mentioned above, or even extra pieces edifying this theory or its implications, feel free to add them. I'd love to get a sense of what people with significantly more biblical scholarship than myself would draw from this.
I'll post this video because, while a lot of it deals with the Genesis 6 dialog it's him in his words separating out the Bnai Elohim as something other than human but also, furthermore, other than angelic. Instead he proposes lower case 'g' gods, of a similar basis as Yahweh as they are themselves of the Elohim group but of a lesser power than Yahweh himself:
MICHAEL HEISER - ANGELS COHABITING WITH WOMEN-GENESIS SIX HYBRIDIZATION - YouTube
The core structural points of the hypotheses outlined in this video seem to indicate:
1) throughout the biblical narrative there have been other minor deities.
2) these minor deities were the same who seduced those following Nimrod (possibly Gilgamesh?) into worshiping them and building the tower of Babel. This deals with a disparity in Deuteronomy 32:8 between dividing the world according to Israel (which did not exist yet) but in pre-English versions of the text per Michael translated into being divided among the sons of God.
3) turf war ensued which labeled the lines, particularly Israel/Jacob as the line of people that Yahweh (the most high) oversaw.
4) Psalms 82 was an address of judgment to these lower case g gods on their corruption in overseeing their followers in that they took worship for themselves rather than directing it to Yahweh.
5) These lower case g gods and the watchers are one and the same.
From these axioms a mechanical reference for the events of Numbers and Joshua make more intuitive sense. In so many ways the ethnic cleansing performed in Joshua could have at least been partly justified as much by polluted blood lines by the angel/human interpetation albeit territories, other non-Judaic or non-Christian religions become murkier affairs - all of which seem to be explained more crisply by a plurality of lesser Elohim in this spot rather than these affairs being strictly a direct result of the fallen angels. In the video Mike also brings up the story of a king who Elijah heals and who wants to pay Elijah but Elijah won't take any funds, at which point the king asks whether he can bring back dirt from Israel for his temple - implication being that he is trying to insert the authority of Yahweh in his region.
Now, I bring in something here that I think needs to be discussed more thoroughly. It was introduced in a cursory manner however it's generally been an unsatisfactorally answered mystery regarding everything from Yahweh to the lower case gods, or fallen angels if that is the case instead, that such entities find edfication in ritual sacrifice whether of animals or of human beings. In any place I try to find a connection on the sacrifice phenomena the best answer I can come up with, at least in a somewhat fuzzy but better than nothing form, is that sacrifice is an energy transfer back to that local deity, ie. for noncorporeal intelligence its like taking a shot of wheat-grass juice, its power and health so to speak given to their being.
The above would tell us a lot about why, if there is such a thing as a layer of Elohim between Yahweh and the angels, why such lesser Elohim would have a strategic propensity to become corrupt - ie. they may very well feel a nagging need for a fix and they would get that fix through creating a more direct covenant with the local people rather than transferring what they get back up to Yahweh. That however is just my fuzzy speculation and I'll leave it on the side.
Back on topic though what seems to happen is this - in Psalm 82, per the theory, the lesser gods are being judged for their misdeads. Territory after the tower of Babel is king. Add to this that such deities are empowered by the number of souls that die in them (in the case of Yahweh where Jesus was the sacrifice and natural death in Christ will suffice) or the animals sacrificed to them.
This has some fascinating implications with regard to modern events. For instance many people, for years, have likened abortion to blood sacrifice and it happens that in cultures of biblical times you had fertility deities on one side, child sacrifice deities such as Molok just barely down wind of them - much like you have Hollywood and NYC fashion avenue with Planned Parenthood just a few feet culturally down wind of it. The value of human sacrifice to lower case 'g' gods adds some very definite spice and twisted but methodical logic to the strength of such phenomena.
Another very dark epoch in 20th century history was the 3rd Reich and Nazism which some people know, some people don't, was fueled by a blend of theosophy and racism in the form of the Thule society. Goebbels and Himmler were very big occultists, the Indiana Jones movies have more than a fair amount of accuracy in retelling the Nazi thirst for occult knowledge and occult artifacts, some accounts even suggest that Nazi higher ups were using severed heads of enemies to commune with ascended masters (which makes their rather mysterious identity that much more interesting and might raise the question of whether they themselves might be something more interesting than fallen angels). Taking this and then reflecting it on the holocaust which was a mix of all kinds of people being sacrificed of all ethnicities, level of mental ability, but also taking special note of the Jewish people which were Yahweh's: was this be an attempt - particularly in the last case - by local deities or lower case 'g' gods to drink up Yahweh's power by the sacrifice of his people on their turf?
This territorial dispute theology with the hypothesis of a divine council seems like it would offer an explanation as well for persistently war-torn areas of the world, which would suggest that the deities of those areas would be fundamentally self-serving and using the people under their local authority in a despotic manner. This would also explain something about the United States, how under Yahweh who can have authority anywhere through believers, that we had the stamp of Yahweh's influence as we held the line as a Judao-Christian nation but how as time went on and as we faded first into secularism, then into multiculturalism, then into humanism, and then start to fade toward the final outcome which seems to be shaping up as a post-modern paganism, its really as if when any culture casts off Yahweh there is a god/goddess or series thereof who'll be more than happy to take us off his hands and use/abuse humanity to support their own power structures.
One of the things that blurs the territorial theory of lesser Elohim (plural) is the case Israel itself - it's still keynote in history, it's the geographic bowl of trembling, however it has been overrun many times over, most notably by Assyrians and Babylonians (Israel then Judah) in Kings and Chronicles, when the people left Yahweh - which poses sort of an intuitive challenge to the notion of biblical turf, ie. if Israel or the former land of Canaan was Yahweh's division and such a division was geographical, one would intuitively think that it would be a land where no other such gods would be able to wield their influence directly. If that geographic contingency goes in line with the blessings and curses with respect to whether the people uphold God's will (Yahweh) then the sorted history of the geographic territory of Israel makes sense albeit we run into a question of just how fixed these geographic delegations from the event of the Tower of Babel would really be. Yahweh's allowance of their punishment clears this up somewhat but it still seems like there are mechanics that are wanting of more clarification, ie. how much the lower case 'g' gods had their authority purely on lease in geographic Israel or to what extent geographic Israel is really relevant to Yahweh vs. the believers themselves which bring his authority into all places and to all ends of the earth.
Clearly I know that I'm chasing a particular train of dynamics here - caveats abound - and there may be many subtle holes in the internal logic of what I've posted above. Really this is my attempt to probe the ramifications of Michael's proposal, even if my attempt is very pop or high-level. The thing I can't speak to is what Heisler's hypothesis would mean in the context of end times events, what it would do to 'alien' extradimensional/gods/fallen angels theories of 2 Thes 2:11 or Revelations 9, and I would need to find more of Michael's lectures to see if it changes our understandings of end times events or our role in them significantly. Michael did state that his understanding that the believers would replace the lower case 'g' gods as territorial regents, that's the after end times but I'm still curious about before and during.
Overall I think he's presenting a very interesting hypthesis, especially if what he is saying more closely edifies the exact ways in which the words of the old testament are written. However like any hypothesis I like the idea of teasing out the implications of it as far as I possibly can to see what it explains better than other hypotheses (in this case it explains other religions and deities in a way where fallen angel theories seem a bit stretched, it also seems to explain a war-torn planet as well as Yahweh's strict orders on worship and genocide in Numbers and Joshua) and where it either is still missing certain things or where it might even run into hard/fast contradictions with other books.
Is it a heretical viewpoint? I think the only way we can really find out is to test it on its own internal logic to see how it meets, how it clashes, and whether it gives a better explanation to the bible as it stands without going against the bible. Clearly it doesn't edify Gnosticism, doesn't edify occult, doesn't edify salvation by other means than Jesus Christ, so as a hypothesis it stays within the lines of what is typically demanded of biblical salvation theology.
If anyone else has some thoughts they'd like to add to this, caveats they see that aren't mentioned above, or even extra pieces edifying this theory or its implications, feel free to add them. I'd love to get a sense of what people with significantly more biblical scholarship than myself would draw from this.
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