Michael Heiser Probably Has "Sons of God" Wrong as Well

I finally got around to reading "The Unseen Realm" by Michael S. Heiser. I was prepared to like the book, because I too believe that there is an "unseen realm" and that in a way, it is under-emphasized in American Christianity. The business-model that has taken over our "Evangelical" churches has moved the focus to this world and this life, in a way that is out of balance. I don't even have an issue with God having some sort of celestial court. So I was primed like it. 

I hated it. He got almost everything wrong in the foundation that he built, and jumped to lots of conclusions based on his faulty premises. He got Psalm 82 wrong. He got Deuteronomy 32 wrong both for what he claims it says about "disinheriting the nations" and concerning what Elohim means in scripture. Click on that last link and I think you will see that scripture refers to humans in certain functions as "Elohim", not that he necessarily denies that, but if humans can be "Elohim" then we should be very careful about saying that the "sons of Elohim" are something other than human.

If he has "Elohim" wrong, the Hebrew word used for "God" or "gods", or even of lesser beings including humans who exercised divine authority on His behalf, then he probably has "Sons of God" wrong too. I say "probably" because this one is less certain than the others I listed because of the book of Job. 

Let's start from the New Testament and look back. Whatever the "Sons of God" may have been in the Old Testament, by the New Testament it is clear that human beings are the Sons of God, at least when their life is in the Son of God. Hebrews chapter one makes a distinction between the angels, and the Son. ...

For to which of the angels did He ever say: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You”? And again: “I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son”?

and a bit further down in the chapter...

13Yet to which of the angels did God ever say: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet” 14Are not the angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?…

These are meant to be rhetorical questions showing the superiority of Christ to the angels. Heiser cites the earlier verse but never addresses how it argues against one of his main points, that the other Divine Beings are also His "sons" and "heavenly family."  If he had, I anticipate that he would claim that Elohim are yet another class of spiritual beings above those serving in the job described by the word "angel". But this would undermine the intent of these passages demonstrating the superiority of Christ. It is ridiculous to make a big point of Christ being superior to the angels if there is another class of spiritual being which is also superior to them. It would leave the question of Christ's superiority open. The speculation about such a class of spirit beings diminishes anyway. All the talk of angels as "Sons of God" is definitely gone by the New Testament and is replaced by our being His sons and daughters in Christ. 

To find passages where the "Sons of God" may refer to angels, Heiser goes to the Old Testament. But in doing so, he uses texts where it is ambiguous as to whether the text is talking about humans or spiritual beings, such as Genesis chapter six. But perhaps his "strongest" such cite is Psalm 89:6. It also has a translation issue, because it is often translated "sons of the mighty", but Heiser has a fair point here that the word translated "mighty" is "elim" which is from the same root as "El". It could be fairly translated "gods" or "god-like ones".  If you look at verse six alone, it seems to use the "Sons of God" to refer to heavenly beings. But let's look at it in context, by including the prior verse with it...

5 And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O Lord: thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints.

6 For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord?

Verse six starts with the word "for", indicating we should look to the previous verse for context. Verse five mentions what the heavens will do, and also what the congregation of saints will do. It is a poetic way of saying that the heavens and the earth will praise God. Therefore, it is reasonable to understand verse six doing the same thing. Verse five describes what those on heaven and earth will do, and verse six gives a reason why those in each place will do it. Ergo, Psalm 89:6 isn't evidence that the "sons of God" or "sons of the gods" or "sons of the mighty", however one translates it,  are in heaven, but more evidence that they are on earth. This is confirmed by the way Psalm 29:1 uses the same phrase in a passage which only references things on earth.

 Heiser also relies on other places where the translation is disputed, including Deuteronomy 32 and Job. The Septuagint has "angels" in Job each place that the Masoretic text says "sons of God". Meanwhile, people are referred to as the "sons of the living God" and Israel is repeatedly referred to by God as "my son" in Exodus. 

Let me add here that his strongest proof that the "sons of God" were not humans comes from Job 38:6. Yet there we find that the language is different. Although it is often translated "when the sons of God shouted for joy" the text is really strange there and not like the other places "the sons of God" is used. The other places say "bene HA-Elohim" while here it just says "bene-Elohim". The "Ha" is missing. Maybe that is OK in Hebrew grammar because of the word "kal" before it, meaning, all, the whole, or every, but unless there is some kind of exception like that it would just read "every son-God shouted" and the meaning is obscure. I haven't figured this one out, in case you could not tell.  

Job is his clearest example in this class of scripture. If one accepts Heiser's case that the original text in these disputed places originally said "sons of God" in these places, and the setting in Job is not on earth, then it would seem that the New Testament and the Old Testament have a conflict over whether or not angles or non-human spirit beings can be "sons of God." 

To resolve the question perhaps we should use a tool that Heiser speaks highly of- seeking the Ancient Near Eastern context of the accounts. In the ANE, the "Sons of God" were applied very often to kings and rulers who were said to have received the kingship from heaven. There were whole pantheons of Gods who could mate with each other or with humans, leading to a diverse array of beings, some part human, and part divine. This wasn't the case by the time of Moses however. He has one God, with angels, and only humans are unambiguously referred to as "sons of God" until we get to the pagan ruler of Persia in Daniel. 

As an adherent of the tablet theory I think early Genesis was a very ancient document. The pantheon of gods and demigods came later. It seems like Israel was pulled out of that stream, because the writings of Moses, in agreement with the New Testament, consistently refer to human beings as children of the Almighty, with some passages being ambiguous. Job is an exception to this rule. Job seems to be an older book, older than even the writings of Moses, except for Genesis material which Moses got in the form of tablets from his ancestors. Job also seems to be culturally separate from the Israelites. The text says he was in the east, closer to Mesopotamia. 

Thus, it is possible that we are dealing with two streams of thought on "the sons of God". One is the view that Moses and the Israelites had gotten from their ancestors- once which is echoed in New Testament writings on the subject, and another stream of thought from their former homeland in Mesopotamia, as exhibited in Job and the Persian monarch in Daniel. Men didn't quit trying to invent their own religion after the scattering at Babel. They were still at it, distorting the original revealed cosmology. God called Abraham out of all of that, preserving his view of the universe even while "the old country" kept spinning new tales every generation, writing God and Kings in and out of the story as politics dictated. Those who made gods of their ancestors had to invent a new class of beings, and of course write them into the story by saying they were the son of this or that god. It is my view that this is where the elaborate classes of beings comes from, not the original view of creation recorded in Genesis, sustained by Moses, and confirmed by the apostles. 

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