Michael S. Heiser

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Michael S. Heiser is a scholar in Near-Eastern Semitic Languages, Koine Greek, and Sumerian, as well as ancient Near-Eastern religions, biblical studies, and Second Temple Jewish monotheism. He is also author of The Façade, a reasonably popular novel discussing the identity and theological implications of the UFO phenomena and the existence of extraterrestrial life.

He has also written Islam and Armageddon, a book comparing Christian, Muslim and Jewish eschatology (which, amongst other things, proposes Islam someday merging with Judaism), The Bible Code Myth (a refutation on the bible code phenomena which is mainly based on the Masoretic text), he has made numerous appearances on Coast to Coast AM (often with host George Noory).

Contents

[edit] Education and background

Michael S. Heiser was raised in Lebanon PA. He reports that he was always been fascinated with the paranormal (See: UFOs, Ghosts, ESP, Remote Viewing). He was introduced to Christianity by family friends.

He attended Lebanon High School and then Cedar Crest High, where he was presumably a very good student. He began pursuing his interest with theology, particularly the language, context, and overall message of the Bible. This ultimately led him into earning an M.A. in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the Hebrew Bible and Semitic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (with a minor in Classical studies), all the while supporting himself working at various odd jobs and teaching on the college level as an adjunct.

He can translate Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, Moabite, Ugaritic cuneiform, Ancient Hebrew, Alexandrian Greek, Aramaic, Akkadian and Sumerian.

For twelve years Heiser taught students at the college level, after which he works as Academic Editor for Logos Bible Software when not writing or studying.

[edit] The Divine Council

Perhaps the greatest, most provocative and important research of Heiser’s career concerns the study of passages in the Old Testament that allude to a recognition of a whole host of divinities in service to God (or, a pantheon).

Many scholars in the past have either explained these problem passages away as “Divine Majesty” (in which plurals are used to connote greatness, which Heiser claims cannot work for grammatical reasons), references to the Trinity (which Heiser accepts as a Christian but warns against using these Old Testament plurals in that context, given the type of interactions described in passages such as Psalms), or as examples of Judaism’s polytheistic/henotheistic roots (Heiser rejects these explanations, contending they do not disprove monotheism because H’Shem is consistently described as entirely separate and singular amongst the council, and because the Hebrew Bible reflects certain hypostases of Yahweh - other "persons" of Yahweh's own essence - and so a Jewish godhead).

Heiser also finds support in the double meaning of “nakash” (the "serpent" that Eve encounters in the biblical story of the Fall), which can alternately mean serpentine or "shining one," the noun form of nakash is analogous with the very name helil, which is a verb meaning "shining"). This closely resembles Talmudic and Kabbalistic lore and he agrees that the motivating factor for the initial rebellion was territorial, Helel being provoked by our sovereignty over earth.

According to Heiser’s research on passages like Deuteronomy 32:8-9, after the Tower of Babel incident, the Earth was divided into seventy sectors, each ruled by some of these divinities, (doled out to council members as a curse from God towards humanity for idolatry, it is assumed that these 70 are successionists who joined Helel), and that there is a strong possibility of the myths throughout the world being at least partially factual.

[edit] UFOs and conspiracies

Heiser sees some overlap with what many people offer in reports of alleged alien abduction there are similarities between the alien abduction scenario and the events of Genesis six which speaks of “the giants” (Heb. Nephilim) which were products of a kind of cohabitation between humans and enigmatic “B’nai Elohim” (Heb: "sons of god"). He insists that the root word behind "Nephilim" is Aramaic "naphil" which means "giant". For this reason, Heiser suspects sinister spiritual forces to be behind abduction reports, not aliens.

Heiser believes that abductions can be physically real (which does not rule out the demonic), but, contrary to the growing suspicion amongst Evangelical and Conspiracy theorist circles, there is no nephilim "breeding program" going on today. He also considers that some abductions may be human evil (government ops; see his review of Hugh Ross's Lights in the Sky & Little Green Men - which he considered a very good book, despite typical Christian contrivances which he pointed out, such as linking all genuine close encounters with occult activity, which he sees as blaming the victim)[1].

It is also possible that Heiser, along with Jane's Defence Weekly columnist Nick Cook is responsible for popularizing the theory of a German connection with UFO’s, particularly concerning the work of Viktor Schauberger (who, legend has it, developed a type of liquid-vortex implosion engine that created a powerful electro-magnetic force that could propel vertically). He also believes that through Operation Paperclip, German scientists have conducted anti-gravity tests on U.S. soil and that the Roswell Incident was an example of human experimentation (see Nick Redfern [2], who holds similar theories about Roswell, and who Heiser actually endorses in a review of his book Body Snatchers in the Desert).

On the topic of extraterrestrial life itself, Heiser considers it unlikely that the universe is populated, but is open to this idea as well. He has worked in explaining how extraterrestrial life, in the event such is discovered, can be reconciled with the Bible and Judaeo-Christian theology (going so far as to cite a little known Church dogma in effect up to the 1700’s that proclaimed the denial of the existence of alien worlds to be a denial of God’s omnipresence and thus heretical).

[edit] Zecharia Sitchin

The subject of UFO’s and ancient Mesopotamian literature fascinating him, he came across the works of Zecharia Sitchin on the Anunnaki. However upon reading Sitchin’s work, Heiser noticed that basically all of Sitchin's work consisted of unsubstantiated interpretations and taking words out of context, and occasionally words significantly altered or misinterpreted. Heiser's critique of Sitchin can be found at [3].

On his April 1st 2003 Coast to Coast AM interview with George Noory, Heiser offered an interesting alternative to Sitchin’s theory on Nibiru, which states that it is in fact the star Ursa Minor which was originally our North Star in the 1000’s BC. (this theory has gained much broader favor). He took this a step further and suggested in his June 24 2004 interview that the very name Nibiru (Akkadian for “gate”, “crossing” or “bridge”) and the Enuma Elish myth in which the serpentine creation goddess of Sumer (Tiamat) wages war against Earth until being defeated by the Akkadian god Marduk, could signify great disturbances in weather and agriculture due to a sudden pole shift in which the original Pole star at the time (Alpha Draconis in the constellation Draco (constellation), which could likely represent the serpentine Tiamat) is ousted by Ursa Minor (Marduk, or “Nibiru”).

[edit] Religious beliefs

Michael S. Heiser attends a reformed church and is solidly evangelical. He likes Old Earth Creationism, but says that the Old Testament can be interpreted as describing a six day creation event.

He has little trouble with including Catholic (including Eastern Orthodox and Anglican) and Rabbinical (including Hasidic and Kabbalist) texts for his work.

He believes, though strictly prohibited, communications with the dead is possible, and that not all after-death communications are satanic (citing the passage in 1st Samuel, where King Saul consults a necromancer to speak to Prophet Samuel, ending with Saul given a cold reception, a tongue lashing, and generally bad news from the deceased prophet), he also proposed that God may occasionally allow, or even actively sends the spirits of recently dead relatives to provide relief for the grieving. Most of these statements where revealed on his December 2004 interview with George Noory.

Though Zecharia Sitchin may have not taken the time to "disprove" or argue with Michael S. Heiser's beliefs, anoher person, Erik Parker, has tried to do so.

[edit] Current work

Michael S. Heiser is presently[when?] putting out a new book on the subject of the divine council and the nature of God (one can find PDF file previews on his site). In it he speaks of Christ manifest before he was born in numerous forms to various prophets and even Jacob and Moses in the Tanakh.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links