Divine Council Worldview: Comparing Translations with Mike Chu - Episode 069

Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today I have with me again my good friend Mike Chu. Hi Mike!

Mike Chu: Hey Carey good to be back on again.

Carey Griffel: How are you doing?

Mike Chu: Good. Good. I'm now officially also a podcast host, just like you. I've always just been a podcast guest, but this time now I'm actually a host, which is crazy.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. I am super excited for the Divine Council Worldview podcast . Do you want to tell a little bit about that?

Mike Chu: So the Divine Council Worldview podcast or DCW podcasts. It's a project from the Michael S. Heiser Foundation formerly known as Miqlat. Miqlat was Dr. Heiser's non profit organization that he had created. He used [00:01:00] this organization originally for book projects, translation projects, supporting missionaries. And so, after his passing, Drena has, you know, taken over the reins and she is essentially the CEO of this non profit.

And so one of the major projects that we have been working on was creating a podcast that would be under you know, officially sanctioned by Dr. Heiser's own non profit organization. And so, Dr. Johnson and I, Ronn and I, have been working on it for the last couple of months. And so we're so glad and relieved that we were finally able to talk about it and to have it finally released down into the wild.

And so, yeah, it's been a good couple of months working with Ronn and I hope folks like , give it a listen.

Carey Griffel: So it will be a weekly release from here on out, right?

Mike Chu: Yes, it will be a weekly release, and the way that we are going about with this podcast is that both Ronn and I are, you know, we've known [00:02:00] Mike through different, you know, means and also for a different number of years, right?

Dr. Johnson has known Mike ever since they both started their seminary career, their theological careers, and so they were conversation partners for decades. And for me, like, Dr. Heiser was a mentor and inspired me to actually go into theological education and learning. And so, this combination of both me and Dr. Johnson, it's just basically two guys who love theology and who love the scriptures and are just going to be going through the scriptures, you know, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and just discussing things that draw our attention, especially about the divine council worldview verses and ideas that flow from the text.

And we'll be discussing it. And we both come from two different backgrounds, and yet you're going to see us engage with each other with our particular vantage points or spins on understanding the Scripture, or [00:03:00] how we would relay that to other people. And so, it's been a really good couple of months of just being able to chat and talk with Ronn and just go through, currently, we're doing the Book of Genesis. That's going to be our initial study.

Carey Griffel: It's a good place to start.

Mike Chu: Yeah, and one of the crazy things was part of the reason we decided to do that was we both realized Dr. Heiser had never actually done a study through the Book of Genesis. You know, he had done Leviticus, he had done the Book of Acts, he's done even Revelation, but he had never actually gone back to going through the Book of Genesis completely.

Even though he referred to the works and the materials repeatedly, he never actually had time to go through the actual book itself. And so, that's going to be our first tackle and, you know, hopefully it's something that honors both Mike's work, his legacy, and really helps others understand the scripture, especially Genesis, through a divine council perspective.

Carey Griffel: That's [00:04:00] awesome. So if people have listened to my show for very long, they know that I do talk about the Divine Council myself quite a bit. I've talked about all of the different falls, I've talked about all of these different unique aspects of the Divine Council that we now are beginning to understand even better throughout Christendom. It's not something that truly has been lost through time, but some of our traditions have lost this thread, I think. And so now, people are getting very excited about learning the Bible in context, learning a bit more about how people in the biblical eras really understood the relationship of God with not just people, but also his spiritual creations, right?

So the other gods and angels and all of these other things that we're not super familiar with because we are humans here on earth. So I talk about that and today I want to get into [00:05:00] a little bit more about this Divine Council worldview idea from the perspective of different translations and how that brings this story to us, or maybe kind of hides it from us in some cases.

Mike Chu: Yeah, that'll be exciting to do.

Carey Griffel: So today we're going to be going through some of these, I want to say, famous passages that people are now starting to look at a little more closely. And we want to do some comparisons in translations. And because this is Genesis Marks the Spot, and Genesis is a good place to begin, let's go to Genesis chapter 6.

This is one of those verses that you get to it and you go, wait, what? What is the Bible talking about? I remember having that question when I was little. It was like, what in the world is this talking about, Mom? And she's like, I don't know. Let's just read it and move on.

And growing up, I grew up with the King James Version. And [00:06:00] in the King James Version it says, in Genesis 6 4 it says, There were giants in the earth in those days. And also after that, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, And they bear children to them. The same became mighty men which were of old. Men of renown.

So here we have the introduction of giants into our text. But in a lot of our translations, we're now starting to read the word Nephilim here. So, what is the change? Is this some nefarious plot to change the Bible from the word giants to the word Nephilim? I've heard that. I've heard people actually say that.

Mike Chu: And a lot of the debate comes down to what is Nephilim and what you see in the English translations, especially the more modern ones, because they don't know exactly the history of the word or what the word is supposed to mean exactly in Hebrew. [00:07:00] And so, more often than not, translators, when they hit a word that they're not sure of the definition, they will more likely transliterate it.

So they transliterated the Hebrew word Nephilim into the English. And so that's what we're seeing here. It's not some sort of special word. It actually did mean something to the original writer and the original audience. It's just that, unfortunately, that has gotten muddied over the centuries or even millennia that have gone by.

Carey Griffel: In Young's literal translation, it reads, The fallen ones were in the earth in those days. And so this is a really old idea here, or at least an older translation.

Mike Chu: Yes. And let me just draw that up from, so this is in Genesis six, verse four. So the reason why people think it might be from Fallen is because the assumption is, is that's from the Hebrew word Nafal, which means to fall. It's the [00:08:00] verb to fall. And so, they're assuming that this must be its related word. But, this isn't exactly a shut and sealed case.

Dr. Heiser in his book, Unseen Realm, he pointed out that one other possible, you know, source of the word is just as much as how English translators will transliterate the word Nephilim into the English, just basically just I'm gonna try to pronounce it out and spell it out like this, there actually is a possibility that this word also was transliterated from another language into the Hebrew Bible. And that language itself was Aramaic and that the Aramaic word that sounds like Nephilim means giants and when we consider certain other factors, right, most people don't realize that the Book of Genesis probably started reaching its final form in its final presentation during or after the exile in Babylon.

And one of the most, you know, common [00:09:00] languages of the day during the Empire of Babylon was Aramaic. And so there is this interesting kind of connection that seems to be happening that they're taking a word that existed in the Aramaic language that meant giants, pretty much. And it's kind of funny. It's transliterated into Hebrew. And then for us English folks who don't understand what this word is, then we're transliterating even that into English. And so it's like one transliteration after another transliteration.

But I am a little bit more convinced personally that it is coming from the Aramaic because "to fall" would try to imply some other things about whoever the Nephilim are. And if it is coming from Aramaic, and if the Book of Genesis was compiled around the time of the exile, and they're exposed to Aramaic. Aramaic became the most popular language that was spoken during the time of Christ. This was actually one of the reasons why all these vowel markers in the written Hebrew started appearing because[00:10:00] within one generation of being in Babylon, the younger generation pretty much had forgotten how to speak Hebrew fluently.

And so for people to even read the scriptures, they needed the assistance of knowing like, okay, how do I pronounce this syllable? How do I pronounce this? Is it an A sound, an O sound, an E sound? And so you have the scribes like Ezra who would innovate and add in, I'm going to add in these vowel markers. I'm going to add in these little things to help give us a clue as a reader how you're supposed to say it.

Carey Griffel: Because there's a lot of words in Hebrew that look alike on the surface, but they're not pronounced alike because of the vowels. And so once you're losing a little bit of that context of the Hebrew that was there originally, then they started inserting not every vowel, but only some vowels.

Mike Chu: And if folks in the audience are just kind of baffled by like, how can you even do that? I would just challenge them, you know, just take their [00:11:00] own name, for example. Write it on a piece of paper, but then remove all the vowels. And then show that, you know, version without any of the vowels to a family member. Or to someone that you know, a friend, and ask them, what does this say and more than likely, they'll be able to piece together your name almost instantaneously. And the reason for that is because our brains are actually wired in a way that we can actually come to these very quick pattern conclusions really fast, but that's because we're familiar with English. The moment we start going into a different language, then it starts getting wild. It's like, I don't know what this is because our familiarity is much lower.

Carey Griffel: And that's a good practice because if you wrote your name like that and you're showing it to someone, then they already have you in mind when you're showing it to them.

So they already have kind of this mental association where they might leap to what your name is, whereas if they saw that in another context, they might [00:12:00] associate with a different word because of a different context. And so, reading the Bible, they understood what was going on in the stories, in the context of everything.

But occasionally, when you have some of these loan words, and words that they're just not used very often, and things like that, they needed to insert some vowels in order to distinguish one word from another word. And also, it's my understanding that that's why we can say that this is Nephilim that is associated with giants rather than fallen ones because of associated words that have vowels in them.

We know how to pronounce this word because of that in particular, but it's, it's hard to get into all of that with a podcast and people who haven't really delved deep into the study of the language, but you can see a little bit how difficult this becomes and why you need to look at different texts in different languages in order to [00:13:00] really uncover the original meaning of the text.

Mike Chu: And, you know, here's my suspicion. I, haven't looked too deeply back into it. I think I did once, but I can't remember all the details. But I, I'm pretty sure that the KJV translators, they were referencing and they were looking back at the Septuagint.

And so, because in the Septuagint, it does use the Greek word for giants. And so, they were probably also referencing back to early Greek manuscripts of Genesis, of the translation of Genesis to Greek and saw the word giants. And so then they saw Nephilim in this place of where the word giants was in Greek. And they just made that kind of mental connection.

Now that became unpopular over the years as we got more and more Hebrew manuscripts. And people start understanding Hebrew more that they weren't sure, like, how is this mental leap happening? How am I going from Nephilim, that looks like the word Nafal, to all of a sudden to the word, I [00:14:00] think in Greek is gigantos.

Like, how are we even making that jump? And so, that's probably why it became less popular. But, if we factor in Aramaic, which was one of the other popular languages of that day, , then we start seeing there is like a missing connection, a bridge that's actually helping to understand. Ah, maybe this is what's happening and that once it got into the Greek, well, if you can understand Aramaic and you knew that the Aramaic word for Nephilim meant giants, and you're translating it, you would then naturally go to the corresponding word in Greek that best matched it. So anyhow, that's my own personal suspicion. I'm pretty sure I also read that somewhere, but I can't remember the exact citation.

So I'll just claim that it's just my own crazy thought. And if people want to argue, that's fine. It's not a hill I'm going to die on.

Carey Griffel: But I do think it's the case that if we look at that Greek translation, they were at least closer to that original context than we are, [00:15:00] and there were reasons that they came to the conclusion of translating it as Giants. Because if you look at this word and trace this word or similar words in the Hebrew Bible, it is connected to those giant clans in the land and all of that kind of thing.

Mike Chu: Yes. And I think, you know, folks in the audience need to realize, like, well, if they had the Septuagint, how come they didn't, like, part of this is that the Septuagint for a long time became less and less popular among scholars.

They just assumed, like, that this is just some sort of crazy translation. They made it all up or something like that. Because, because they couldn't explain , how come there are differences? Why some books are shorter or longer, depending on which version you were looking at. And so there was this attempt to try to explain away or kind of diminish the importance of the Septuagint.

And, you know, there was a theory even back in those days that maybe the Septuagint is based off of a family of scrolls, a scribal tradition that was different from the Masoretics. But no one could prove it. And then in the [00:16:00] 1940s, then we get the whole entire Dead Sea Scroll discovery. And people start realizing that there is some sort of connection that's happening here where the Septuagint is closer to what they were discovering in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And thus, alluding to the possibility that the scribal family, the textual family that the Septuagint was based off on, that maybe they were drawing on other scrolls that were different from the MTs, the Masoretics, that might even be older. And so that's why now Septuagint research has regained in prominence and people are just like diving into that field of research because this is crazy. When we discover new things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, it just changes everything we knew about writing and biblical history.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. And so talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls gets right into the next verse we actually want to talk about, which is in Deuteronomy 32 verse 8.

And depending on your translation, you're going to notice [00:17:00] something very different in this verse. And if you're familiar with the Divine Council worldview discussion and all of this, this verse is going to be very familiar to you already. But we want to talk about some of the translations that do have one version of this , and then other translations which have the other wording that we have in Deuteronomy 32. 8.

Just because it's a nice standard to start with, let's go with the King James Version, which says, When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

And most versions of my text that I have pulled up here in front of me do say sons of Israel there at the end. But some versions have a little footnote there.

Mike Chu: Yes, some of them are willing to be at least honest that there is an actual textual variant. [00:18:00] That it's not a closed and shut case that it's the sons of Israel.

Carey Griffel: For the versions that I have pulled up, the difference that I see is in the ESV. The English standard version says Sons of God, as does the RSV, which I believe that the ESV is kind of a daughter of the RSV. So that makes a little bit of sense there.

Mike Chu: Yes. The other translations I have here, for example, Christian Standard Bible, they will translate it as people of Israel. New Living Translation, interestingly, the way they handle that, the translators, they say, to the number in his heavenly court.

And an even more obscure translation that most people probably have never heard of called The Voice. It's not Gwen Stefani's Bible translation, just in case people are wondering. The way it translates it is, he established the boundaries of the peoples as the number of the sons [00:19:00] of God. And funny enough, they don't have a footnote. They just, they just presented like that and they just move on.

They're not even going to say, Hey, it could also be translated sons of Israel because in their mind, no. And if people are wondering, you know, I actually had to study a little bit of this in school, this whole entire contention of what this verse is supposed to say at the end, sons of Israel versus sons of God, came down to essentially a major discovery within the Dead Sea Scrolls of this very verse, and that it was the first time that there was solid textual evidence that it was actually supposed to be translated sons of God, or Bene Elohim, the literally the sons of Elohim of God.

And so that was always kind of a problem because folks would look at the Septuagint again, and they would notice [00:20:00] angels, or I'm trying to remember how the Septuagint would put it. Let me bring up the English translation here of the Septuagint. The Lexham English version of the Septuagint says, He set up boundaries for the nations according to the number of the angels of God, the angeloi.

And so people thought, like, well, that's odd. Why is it angels? And so there was always this debate. Why is it angels of God? This is no where even close to sons of Israel. Right? It doesn't even have the word sons. It's saying messengers of God. Like, why is it using that? And so this was, again, part of the reason why people thought, oh, the Septuagint's not reliable. They were just crazy, crazy nuts translators.

And then they discovered this little remnant, this text that was discovered amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls that mentions sons of God. And now, you know, it took decades and decades of debate amongst scholars, but the consensus that's [00:21:00] growing is that it originally was supposed to be sons of God, not sons of Israel.

And you can tell, looking at the English translations, where do translators land when it comes to that question? Should it be translated, sons of God or sons of Israel? Do you go with the majority of the textual evidence, because there's a lot of Masoretic Hebrew texts that say sons of Israel, or do you go with a text that clearly is way before the time of Christ and even seems to have an allusion that the Septuagint is in support of this too. Do you go with something that's, at least from discovery, much earlier and possibly from a different scribal tradition? Is that more closer to the original? And so that's ultimately the question and debate that divides the translators.

Carey Griffel: Well, and I notice in the N. E. T., the New English Translation, it says, According to the [00:22:00] number of the heavenly assembly. The N. E. T. is more, it's not really a word for word translation, so it's more of a, we're trying to get the idea across to you, translation. The NET online does have really good translation notes. Some of them make me feel like they're kind of double minded sometimes in when you look at the translation and when you see what they're actually saying about the translation.

But as far as versions that have footnotes in this so that you can kind of see under the text and you can see the different variations of the text and the conversation that goes on with the translators, I see that the NIV has a footnote. It says Sons of Israel, but it has a footnote. The ESV says Sons of God, but it also has a footnote. The CSB has footnote. The NASB, the LSB. So , there's a lot of translations that they're trying to give you this information and trying to [00:23:00] help you understand, yes, there's some manuscript variant here and that's why we chose this over that.

Mike Chu: And maybe this might be a helpful tip or maybe not a helpful tip because I'm geeky that way. But one of the things I remember, you know, sometimes I would do, especially when a new translation came out, I would go and pick up that book, but instead of merely going to a book of Bible, I will look at the actual introduction notes, the preface, the letter that essentially the translation committee... and I know that will probably scare some folks because they probably have never realized most of our English translations, the popular ones, have been done by committee, by a group of translators. It isn't done by one dude or one lady. It's a whole entire, you know, team of people working on translating the scriptures.

And so often what happens is that you'll have one guy or one woman, you know, dedicated to translate the book of Genesis, translate the book of Exodus and so on and so forth.[00:24:00] And then they would provide it amongst committee and the committee would basically argue back and forth. You know, why do you translate it this way? Should it be translated this way? Can we come to a consensus? Can we come to a compromise? And so that's often what happens. And it's interesting, the ESV's own notes in the beginning from the translation committee states that they essentially prioritized the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, that if they saw something that was really well regarded by the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint, they would give that more weight in their translation decisions.

Versus a translation like the Christian Standard Bible, that in their notes, they made it clear they prioritize the Masoretic text in the Hebrew Bible a little more, even though they'll understand there's the Dead Sea Scrolls, there's the Septuagint, but we place more value or more weight into consideration with this tradition.

And [00:25:00] so, you know, it's not to say it's right or wrong, but it is something good, I think, for the audience to realize that translators are human beings too. And they are at the very least in the beginning notes that I, I'm pretty sure most of us never read them, but they are providing, Hey, this is where I am coming from. This is my pre understanding. These are my assumptions that I am carrying into my translation work. And so, you know, take that into account.

And it is funny. I remember reading one of the footnotes in the NIV about the Deuteronomy 32. 8, and maybe I'm reading into it, but in the note, it almost seems like they're like, yes, we know the Septuagint says this differently. Yes, we know that the Dead Sea Scrolls say this differently, but we still like the MT, and it's like, okay, that's fine. You guys know that. You're admitting it. You prefer this family of manuscripts more. And you value it a little bit more, I get it. And so as long as [00:26:00] they're clear, you as the reader can make an evaluation of whether you agree or don't agree. But at least know why you agree or don't agree.

Carey Griffel: I love that you brought that up because this is kind of what I think. A lot of times we go to our text and we go to our translations. And we want to assume, sometimes, some nefarious motives on the part of some translators of some translations. And while it's true that every translator is going to come to the text with theological presuppositions, and some theological bent and bias, and we might say, Oh, you don't take the supernatural seriously, and these other people do take the supernatural seriously.

Well, I want to also bring up the idea that that's not the only thing that might be going on in the translation. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But part of what I would say is, there's two different ways you can look at this. You can either say we [00:27:00] prefer the oldest manuscripts, of which we have fewer of those, or we can prefer the fact that the majority text reads a certain way, which means that we have more manuscripts in Christian history that reads a certain way.

And I don't think you can say that one is necessarily better than the other. It's, it's a different perspective and both of those ideas are trying to understand the text in as high of a manner as you possibly can, right?

And so if you understand that Christian history has had all of these texts for this long and , you know, it's really common that we talk about, in apologetic circles, how many manuscripts we have of the Bible, right? And that's one of the big points that we want to make about the Bible, that we have so many manuscripts. And so if you're going to make the point that we have so many manuscripts and that the Word of God [00:28:00] is preserved, then you might want to lean towards choosing the manuscript variant that is in most of those manuscripts.

So, that is just, in my opinion, sometimes people can be doing this because they're trying to honor that idea. And that's why they would go with one translation over another.

Mike Chu: And also, let me just clarify as well for the audience, right? These variations, these variants that often happen, right? There are going to be folks that will try to make a bigger deal about them.

As though, like, oh, it's like mind and world shattering for you. But the reality is the actual narrative in the meta story of the scriptures doesn't change really much whether you go with one variant or not Is it sons of God or sons of Israel? But does that affect your salvation like or how we understand that the people of the world come to a saving knowledge and really being redeemed by the one [00:29:00] creator God? Does that change that? Is it sons of God or sons of Israel, but does it change who Jesus Christ is? And like, it may change a little detail, it may change a little bit of how you view him a bit, but does it change what he did on the cross? Does it change his resurrection?

And those are the kind of things I would always want to point people back to, that in the end, these are debates and discussions, but these are not things that would ultimately affect a person's destiny of where they are headed towards. Right? And so that's, what I would always bring up, don't make something into something that's as foundational or as fundamental as the cross and the resurrection.

Right? We may have a seminar one day in the new heavens and earth about like, you know, what was up with these scribes? Why couldn't they come to an agreement? You know, we could maybe have that. But, you know, I think for the majority of our time, we will be enjoying the love and fellowship of the Triune God. And so, I think that will be a little bit more important. So, yes, anyways, that's my [00:30:00] two cents.

Carey Griffel: Well, and I'm personally of the opinion that these variants are actually not as variant as we think that they are, either. Because for the ancient person, there would have been that idea of the mirroring of heaven and earth.

So the Sons of God would be mirroring the Sons of Israel in some sense, like , the decisions that the Sanhedrin, for instance, if it's talking about the Sanhedrin or the people that went into Egypt, either way, they would be reflective of heavenly beings and in partnership with those, like, so God has his council in the sky, right? He has his heavenly council, but he also has people that he counsels with. And so those are supposed to be reflective of each other. And if we are all on the same page of doing God's will and you know, having the same goals and trying to promote God's will on earth and in heaven, [00:31:00] like there's actually less variant here than we might say today. Because today we separate those two things as if they're completely different, not connected at all. Whereas I think the ancient person would have seen that intimate connection. So. It would be like six of one and half a dozen of the other.

Mike Chu: It could be very much that, you know, part of the challenge for us as moderns is that, yes, we do have a very clear, distinctive, like boundary line marker in our view, in our perspectives of the physical and unseen realms and forgetting that an ancient Near Eastern person had a much more porous point of view. Things crossed over a lot more fluidly than we will ever have been more comfortable with as moderns. And so there is some validity to what you're saying, Carey, that it was not static, if anything.

And so I'm almost like, as you're saying this, I was like, thinking is like, this is like the ultimate version [00:32:00] of the amplified Bible. Like, if folks have never heard of that translation, like, you know, you need to make some tea and sit down one day and just read it, because it's, it's way longer than your typical translation because the translator philosophy in that one is, I will pop out every possible meaning of every word.

It's like the most elaborate and just like verbose translation I have ever read. It's as though they just, like, I'm not taking a risk. I'm giving you every possible meaning in the dictionary for this one word, and I'm gonna try to make it into a sentence which makes it a very difficult read sometimes.

I wouldn't recommend it as a normal, like, you know, daily devotional bible , but some folks love it. I know certain Bible teachers have used it because, you know, they had never learned Greek or Hebrew. And so they'll use that as a way to shortcut or at least get to some of the maybe the nuances of the text that are harder to find if you're just relying on a regular English translation.

Carey Griffel: So, but there are [00:33:00] definitely different biases in different translations, right. And a lot of times people are very certain that certain words are associated with certain things because of the way that they read their translations. For instance, I've talked a lot about the word Elohim here on my podcast. And so, a lot of people think that Elohim can refer to humans. And in a sense, I would say, yes, it can, but there's a qualifier there.

But part of the reason why people think that Elohim can refer to humans is because of our translations, the way that our translations translate the word Elohim. And sometimes that's obscured. The first place we can look at this is in Psalm 82 . In the first verse of Psalm 82, the King James version says, God standeth in the congregation of [00:34:00] the mighty, he judgeth among the gods.

So here we have kind of a parallel statement, because Hebrew loves parallelisms. God standing in his congregation of the mighty, and we wonder who is the mighty. The next line in the King James version says, he judgeth among the gods.

We have many other translations here that really are trying to wrestle with what it's saying. The NIV says God presides in the Great Assembly and he renders judgment among the gods and they put gods in quotes there. So that's an interesting choice.

Mike Chu: Scare quotes. Yeah. One could almost say, oh no.

Carey Griffel: Oh no. Why does it say gods here? We don't want people to think ,he's really judging among gods. So I think, here's where we can kind of see a lot of this bias of translators trying [00:35:00] to manage our reading of the text and our understanding of it.

Mike Chu: Yes, for example here in the translations I'm looking at, the ESV says God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. The Voice translation, interestingly, they have a certain methodology on how they translate the names of God or references to God. And so in their version in verse one, they would say, the true God stands to preside over the heavenly council. He pronounces judgment on the so called gods.

The New Living Translation simply says God presides over heaven's court. He pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings.

Carey Griffel: The N E T is so interesting to me. Like it's not a word for word translation, and yet sometimes it will translate [00:36:00] things in a way that it almost sounds like a word for word translation.

In this verse, it says, God stands in the assembly of El. In the midst of the gods, he renders judgment.

Mike Chu: Yes. And if folks are trying to understand why it would do that, is that that actually is more accurate to the Hebrew. In the Hebrew, the more often used word to describe the Hebrew version of that is the word assembly. And so, you got assembly. And there is essentially a genitive, and the genitive description, the assembly of El. It's not Elohim, it's El, so the assembly of God.

And so it's kind of a debate, an interesting kind of debate of whether, well, should it be translated the assembly of the gods? Or the assembly of God, like El, of like some sort of presiding over head god.

And then you get into the debates about , is this drawing from ancient or eastern sources? Are we talking about, you know, two, [00:37:00] three different gods here? You know, so we get into these interesting debates, what sometimes these debators forget, and sometimes the NET sort of forgets this too... Ultimately, you get down to the point when these are compiled together into the Hebrew scriptures, who's the final compilers?

Who are the final ones who are trying to make sense of the text together as a coherent text? They're monotheistic Jews. And so you, like, in some sense, I always kind of wonder, it's like, we do kind of need to factor them in. Because ultimately this is actually what we have in the end of both the MT and the Septuagint. And even the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is not a difference amongst them. They are agreeing ultimately, we believe in actually one creator God. And so the way that they approach in organizing the text is to give that priority sense of meaning. Right? And so as much as folks want to try [00:38:00] to like, Hey, we got to get down to the earliest version of the story, and even it's Canaanite origins, like, well, that's nice. But don't you think that the Israelite compilers and editors were not aware of this stuff? But they still brought this in because they had a reason of maybe even repurposing the text to point at the God that for them is actually the one true Creator God.

So anyways, that's my little two cents of my little beef about it because, you know, ultimately it's like, there are multiple contexts and multiple audiences possibly. But when we finally get to the received text that we have, who's the primary reader in the end of this particular received text?

Carey Griffel: Right. And they could have edited things out if they saw a problem.

Mike Chu: Oh, yeah, we'll get into that.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because we do have places where things are changed in order to get their point across, right? Because different authors are going to have different focuses, different ideas. [00:39:00] And this is one of those passages where some people will go to it and they say, a-ha! We see this evolution of religion. It used to be that the Israelites were polytheists, and they believed in a higher creator, El, and in fact, you can also argue this from Deuteronomy 32, or at least some people try to, that there was previous understanding of them worshiping other deities and that Yahweh was a lower deity, he was not the creator deity, you know, all of these kinds of ideas. They use these kinds of passages to show that. But again, like you said, it's not like the compilers wouldn't have known that these kinds of things were going on, yet they retain this kind of language.

One thing I like in the LSB, which I've was talking about recently, it says, God takes his stand in the congregation of God. And the footnote there, it actually points out that it's El. And they make the distinction that this is the [00:40:00] one true God. And I think that's a fair way of looking at this word El. God was referred to by many names, by many terms. And the term El was always unique for the Creator God.

Mike Chu: I think sometimes, you know, when people look at translations, they think they're equal equivalents, right? Or not even equivalents. They wouldn't even use the word equivalent. They would use equal. Elohim equals Theos and Theos equal God. And the reality is, is actually like, these are the best words in different languages, from different cultures that are the best approximation, the best equivalent to going from one culture to another, right?

Because we're talking about a Semitic culture, and then you're going into a Greco Roman culture that is just explicitly just pagan and also very philosophical then when you get into the word theos, you got problems. [00:41:00] If you start really getting into the etymology of how was Theos used, was it always used to describe a name of a personal god?

And then you get, then you get into the weeds. I've had one professor point out before that translators, sometimes, most of the time translators are great translators, but they make terrible theologians. And the theologians likewise also can make terrible translators.

It is the rare thing when you have a person that's trained in both good theology and good translation, and they can merge the two together. It is a really difficult task. And so, I think that's something we have to recognize whenever we read these English translations, there's a reason why it took years. It took years to make these because you have people going back and forth. Some more theological in their interpretation, some more, I'm going to be just faithful to what the grammar says. And so, you got these two different, you know, values kind of duking it out, [00:42:00] ultimately, to what we find in the final text versions of these.

Carey Griffel: It's very difficult because in every single word in each language, that word has a different range of meaning than the word that you're going to use to translate it. It's just the way languages work. And so this word Elohim is the same. The word El can be used in different contexts for different people. And just because it's showing up here doesn't mean we necessarily have to map that onto the Canaanite deity, El. Like, there's going to be overlap in meaning of the word and the term and the name or whatever, but it's not an exact correspondence here. Just because the name El shows up doesn't mean they're necessarily referring to any other deity.

Mike Chu: Yeah, some folks, you know, sort of neglect to point out that other ancient Near Eastern cultures and Mesopotamian cultures, they may share similar, almost same [00:43:00] stories. But they'll change out the name of the primary deity that the story is about with their favorite one, right?

Sometimes it'll be El, sometimes it'll be Baal, sometimes it'll be Marduk. And, you know, depending on the culture and the people that the story is found amongst. And so we have to factor that in as well. So just to make the assumption, Canaanite El is the same as the El of the Israelites. That's one version, and that's one view, and that is one assumption.

And of course, you know, when people present their assumptions, they like to assume that everyone agrees with them. And we know that isn't the case. We know this, that won't happen. That's why we have discussions and debates.

Carey Griffel: The other thing to notice here is the word at the end. Most translations do translate it as gods because it is this word Elohim.

The NASB, the version of from 1995 at [00:44:00] least, uses rulers instead of gods. And so the LSB also has a footnote that says, oh, it could be rulers, kind of hearkening back to that NASB, I think, and this is where we kind of have people saying, Oh, well, you know, we kind of would prefer this to be about humans, so we'll change this from gods to humans.

And there's a whole stream of thought here. And part of this has to do with how other verses are also translated as far as the use of the word Elohim, especially when we go to Exodus, for instance.

Mike Chu: And for the audience what chapter in Exodus so they can take a look at more particularly?

Carey Griffel: We are going to be looking at, well, there's several chapters in Exodus you can find this kind of idea in. The first one you should look at, and we're really probably not going to go there specifically, but Exodus 18 gives a bit of context for what's [00:45:00] going on. That's the story of Moses setting up the judges. And the idea there is that the judges are going to be judging the people, so it's like they're an intermediary, right?

But the way that they're judging the people are supposed to be reflective of God judging the people. So if you're bringing your case before the judges, you're bringing your case before the gods. So that's kind of this context of, again, it's the mirroring of heaven and earth. But when we get into some of these translations starting in Exodus 21, verse 6, we have an actual story of somebody bringing a case before God.

But in some of these translations, it will say judges instead. In the King James version, it says, then his master shall bring him unto the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or unto the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear [00:46:00] through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.

So this is about marking a servant for being a servant, right? And in the King James version, the masters bringing him to the judges.

Mike Chu: And I think, you know, there's a little bit of license of why the King James translators did it that way, because in the Hebrew itself, the word is just simply Elohim, there are no articles before it, it's just Elohim.

And so you have a sense of freedom in translation, especially when you're going into English, of, you could translate it as present him to God, present him to gods, and, you know, like, if you're going with that equivalent of like, well, Elohim can mean God or gods, then, you know, I could see for the King James translators, they had a little interesting dilemma. We're not exactly sure is this talking about God, like the Creator God, or is this talking about gods as in like pagan [00:47:00] gods or just divine beings? Like they didn't even have that kind of framework probably in their minds. And so they went with some other solution that leaned more towards human versus divine.

Carey Griffel: And the reason why they're thinking that is probably because they know that in the context of what's going on, like, boots on the ground, in the context of the judges and the judges making decisions and all of this. So, there were people involved in what was going on here, right?

Like, if you were going to be doing some sort of legal proceeding, you're gonna be going before the judges. And so there are people involved here, but are the people actually in view or is God in view? That's the question. Is it referencing the judges or is it referencing God? And many of these translations decide, well, it's talking about the judges, the human[00:48:00] judges who are judging things.

Mike Chu: And what's interesting is that, you know, again, it's like, kind of like an interesting question. It's like, well, we know that, for example, the King James translators reference back to the Septuagint to see like, okay, well, what does the Septuagint say, like, what do the Greek texts of the Old Testament say?

And it says, Theo, the genitive of God. It's singular. And so, it's interesting, in the English translation of the Septuagint here I have, it says, Then his master will bring him to the place of God's judgment. And so, you got this sense of like, okay, so the translators of the Septuagint, when they hit that verse in Exodus, they made the decision hundreds of years ago of like, huh, Elohim, this is talking about singular God.

And thus they translated it with the word Theo for that to indicate that sense. So I do find it funny that the King James translators [00:49:00] must have been aware of this. That's my suspicion that they were aware of this, but they went with the translation choice of let's just go and say, this is about human beings, human judges.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. You have a similar verse in Exodus 22:9, which I don't have to read that, but it's the same kind of thing that's going on. In some of our translations, we read judges, in some we read God. And so when you have all of these translations and they're making these interpretive choices for you, it kind of obscures what the text says and then people say well look the judges are referred to as Elohim! But the question is, are they actually being referred to as Elohim?

Because in the context of what's going on, they're supposed to be judging in God's will. Like, bringing someone before the judges was supposed to be the same as bringing them before God. [00:50:00] So, is it actually trying to say it's always and ever, only ever, the judges? The judges are the ones making the decisions? We're just gonna say God's not even involved here? That doesn't really make any sense. It makes much more sense to translate it as bringing people before God, because even though the people were bringing them before judges, it doesn't mean the judges were the same as God. They were acting in the sense of the way that God would act if He was standing there.

At least that was the hope. That was what they were supposed to be doing. It's that mirroring of heaven and earth. So, are judges being called God? No. God is still being called God. The judges are acting as God. And you have that same kind of idea when you have Moses and Pharaoh and Moses being like God. You know, it's, it's like, you can shove these ideas and say, well, it's just referring to humans, [00:51:00] but that's not doing justice to the actual idea of what was going on.

Mike Chu: And for the audience, they can see then, then how do you determine, right? Like, is it just going to be based on, you know, do you prioritize the Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls?

Like, is that the only resources that we have? But what's really cool about this Exodus passage is that there is a parallel later on, and the parallel of it actually shows up in Deuteronomy. Chapter 15. And so the very fact of what you're hearing, Carey and I talking about of like, Oh, what is it? What exactly is going on here with this verse?

Well, guess what? The editors and translators and workers of the Hebrew scriptures, they had the same problems. They had the same questions. And so you see their innovation and how they ultimately answer that question for themselves was when you get to Deuteronomy 15 verses 12 to 18, this is a parallel [00:52:00] passage.

This is describing the same kind of issue that's going on in the Exodus passage, but the Deuteronomist editors, maybe it was Moses, maybe it was later on also a bunch of other editors who are working and finalizing this book. They made a choice to not use the word Elohim when they're talking about the slave having his ear being pierced. There is no mention of the slave or the servant being presented before God or before people. It was just, just do the deed, pierce the ear. There is no mention of Elohim. But what is more interesting is that this passage in Deuteronomy uses the name Yahweh or Yahweh Elohim, Yahweh your God throughout this passage.

So implicitly they're trying to clarify in the Deuteronomy version of this, this is all being done before Yahweh, not just any Elohim or any bunch of Elohims, like gods. We're [00:53:00] talking specifically in the context in Deuteronomy, you're doing this before Yahweh your God.

Carey Griffel: So that's, it's so interesting. You have all of these places where the translators are making these decisions for probably multiple reasons that they're doing this. And I don't think that they're really trying to obscure the idea that God's involved in all of the decisions that are going on with the people of Israel.

But that's kind of what it ends up being, like the idea that we're just, it doesn't matter what God says, we're just going to make our decisions when really the text is trying to be, I think, very clear in that the decisions that are going on need to be reflective of the decisions that God is making himself, like, that's why the judges have authority at all. Like, it's not because they are Elohim themselves. It's because they are representatives of God. I think that's just such an important point, and I, I [00:54:00] find it odd that the people who insist that Elohim are just the judges and that they are also humans, it seems like they're missing something there.

Mike Chu: I think, you know, if folks tend to want to go to the simplest or just the solution that provides the widest balm, right? To all of the possible wrinkles and issues. It's like taking an iron to iron out one little, crease , in a page. It's a little excessive.

And so I think , there's a bit of, you know, a desire out of good of wanting to be helpful. And, you know, it can be misconstrued or interpreted as attempting to protect people from their own Bibles. And then, you know, it just kind of gets, you know, spins out of control sometimes with some folks feeling this need of, I have to safeguard you against the Scriptures, which, you know, I know Dr. Heiser, he was never into doing that.

Carey Griffel: Right. Yeah, I agree. So as far as seeing Elohim in the form of a human, I guess we might say, [00:55:00] we could turn to first Samuel 28.

And this is the so called Witch of Endor passage with Saul. And in 1 Samuel 28 verse 13, so Saul is coming to this necromancer, and he wants her to give him a vision because he's been trying to get this vision and he just can't do it anywhere else, so he'll come to this woman to try and get it.

And we come to verse 13 in 1 Samuel 28, and it says in the King James Version, And the king said to her, Be not afraid, for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.

So it's really interesting, the King James here is using the plural of the term Elohim. That's why we have the word gods. And most every other translations,at leasta the ones I have in front of me, they're not going with that plural word there. They're [00:56:00] choosing to do it in a singular way. The New King James Version changes it to, I saw a spirit. And it gives a little footnote there for Elohim. The NIV says a ghostly figure. And their footnote says, Spirits or Gods. And then we have some other versions that just say God or Divine Being.

Mike Chu: So, in the translations I'm seeing, ESV uses the word, I see a god coming up out of the earth. The Voice says a Divine Being rising out of the ground. The Lexham English Bible says, I see a god coming up from the ground. Christian Standard Bible says, I see a spirit form, that's interesting, a spirit form coming up out of the earth. And the New Living Translation uses, I see a god coming up out of the earth.

Carey Griffel: And the [00:57:00] NET says, I have seen one like a God coming up.

Mike Chu: Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting choice.

Carey Griffel: Yeah, that's kind of another interpretive option because, or at least an interpretive choice, from the translators because we don't have that word, like. It's not using a comparative term there in the original language.

Mike Chu: Yeah, it's not, and the actual words themselves coming out of the ground, it essentially, like if I were to translate it roughly, it would be I see gods rising up or, you know, coming up from so you have this interesting dilemma, right?

Because there is no article in front of the word Elohim. It's just Elohim. And so the debate right amongst translators is, should this be translated singular or plural? And I think there are good arguments for both that could be made. Because there is no article, you can't [00:58:00] specify clearly that it's meant to be plural or singular. You don't have the help of the article with that. And also, there's the other issue of, is this describing a whole scene? Is she talking about one being? Is she talking about multiple? Now, the way I personally would have, and have approached this before, is that I can see the possible translation, I see gods rising out of the ground.

I personally would not translate it that way, because I would also look at the next set of verses, where Saul, talking with this medium, is trying to get specifics, well, what do you see? and what does, does it look like? And so it all of a sudden, it does then get specific talking about a singular being. And so if I'm factoring that in, in that she's describing, then, later, a singular being, a singular Elohim, then it makes sense to go back into this verse and translate it in the singular a god or a spirit or a Divine being in the singular because you're [00:59:00] trying to be faithful to then what comes up with the next set of verses.

But I also have heard arguments from folks that say you can translate it as gods or divine beings You and that she then focuses on one divine being. It all depends on how you imagine this scene playing out. It really is kind of dependent on what is the mental picture that appears in your mind as you read this. Do you see a whole entire bunch of spirits appearing? And she's then focusing on one, or do you see just one spirit rising up and she's describing that one spirit that she saw? And so it really does kind of reveal what are your presumptions, what are your assumptions in the text?

Carey Griffel: The next verse, Samuel addresses her and in the King James version it says, what form is he of? Or what is his form in the New King James Version. NIV says, what does he look like? So that [01:00:00] indicates that what she said was an individual instead of a group, because this is Saul's response to her. So he's not saying, what does one of them look like? Or , how about that one over there? What does he look like? Like, so it indicates to me , and I think to most translators that she was using it in a singular form, and somehow he knew that, even though apparently he couldn't see it himself.

Mike Chu: Yes, and in the Hebrew text itself, it does have the markers to indicate that he's using a singular pronoun, his. What is his form, his appearance, in the Hebrew. So, the personal pronoun is being used that way for whatever this Elohim is, basically indicating that the Elohim probably should be translated as a singular, right?

So, again, this is probably why it's important to read the entire passage, to read the next set of verses, because the context will help inform how you [01:01:00] translate certain verses and certain words. If you're just looking at it in isolation by itself, then you're just left hopeless of like, well, I guess it's just, you know, like Russian roulette, choose what you like.

And the reality is in verse 14, you have that individual singular pronoun that indicates a little bit about what's going on in the story. And that's why I personally would translate it as singular divine being or god or a spirit.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. And so this is another one of those disputed ideas where people think, Oh, well, Is it really Samuel who actually shows up, or is it a demon?

And, there's no indication in the text that I can see that we should be thinking of this as anything but Samuel. It's his exact description they both seem to know that it's Samuel. He's responding as if he is Samuel, he knows what Samuel would know. And, well, you could think, oh. You know, demons might know what a person knows, [01:02:00] but every indication that we have in the text is that this is genuinely Samuel.

So if you want to say that it's a deceptive demon, simply on the idea that this is a necromancer who's bringing him up, and a necromancer isn't supposed to be able to do this... the assumption is that if this witch from Endor is doing this, then whatever she's bringing up is something that's deceptive, is something that's wicked, is you know, a demon, so to speak.

You have to go with that assumption that whatever she's bringing up is going to be that. However, my counter to that would be that it's genuinely a description of Samuel and God can use other people, so just because she's a necromancer doesn't mean that God can't very well use what she's doing in order to give his message to Saul, and things actually happen afterwards that are proven right.

So all of that [01:03:00] together, I can't really myself go to this direction that it is a demon. It seems very much that it's genuinely Samuel.

Mike Chu: I'll admit, this is a little personal little gripe that I have whenever people do try to say that Samuel or whoever this being is, it cannot be Samuel, it has to be a demon because there are several presumptions, like you mentioned, Carey, that are happening here. There are these unspoken assumptions in the reading of the text, right? We always do this. We always bring in certain worldview assumptions that we are not even cognizant of, like, not even conscious of on a, you know, immediate thought levels, not in the forethought, right?

So oftentimes when I hear this explanation, there must be a demon. It cannot be Samuel. There are things that are being assumed. Necromancy or just the raising of a spirit or communication with the other side with, you know, the spiritual world is completely impossible for human beings. That's one of the primary assumptions.

Second assumption is that, [01:04:00] why would God ever allow this kind of practice to happen? You know, like he obviously would never let this happen. Third is that these practices are just not real. She was a fraud and this is part of the deception. Or fourthly, demons will never want to actually tell the truth.

Yet, ironically, I always bring up the question of like, well, what was that spirit that was in the slave girl that was chasing after Paul and Silas, constantly telling everyone, these are the true servants of God, you should listen to them. It's like, was that a lie? That's technically not a lie. And so, there's these certain assumptions, I think people don't realize they bring to the text.

And let's just first realize that there are certain assumptions. Now, what are my assumptions? My assumption is when I read the text, and it's based off of reading earlier in the text, of even Samuel's birth. There's a big deal made about his cloak. That's a detail that most people don't even realize is emphasized. It's mentioned several times. It's [01:05:00] mentioned that the cloak is, is always on Samuel, and specifically that the cloak that he is wearing is was made by his mom. Once a year, she would visit him and basically try to approximate and guess, right? Like, this is amazing. She gave her son to the Lord to be serving in the tabernacle.

And so she would see him once a year. Because she still loves him. She's his only son and so she would make a new cloak trying to guess. Okay, how big would he be now? He's now 10. Like what size would he be and I'll try to craft and weave this cloak to fit him appropriately and then he's like 15 it's like, oh my gosh, he might have hit a growth spurt I'm gonna have to make it larger. Like can you imagine her trying to guess and so by the time that we see Samuel as an adult, the cloak that he's wearing is probably the last piece of clothing that he has from his mom before she died.

And so then there's a, there's a reason why there's a narrative focus on the moment when Samuel says the bad news to Saul of the kingdom is being taken away from [01:06:00] you, Saul, because you're not loyal to Yahweh, and Saul tries to grab Samuel, but grabs his cloak, the same cloak that his mom made, and ripped it.

So , there's that narrative detail that it's ripped. And then Samuel takes that opportunity to say, just like you ripped my cloak, by the way, the kingdom is going to be ripped from your hands. And when we get to this incident, finally, of really what I think is Samuel's last appearance in the book named after him, when Saul asks the medium, what does he look like?

An old man is coming up and he is wrapped in a robe. Why would we need to know that detail as the audience? Unless this was a theme that was brought up over and over again in the narrative. These little indications to help us recognize who is Samuel. He's the dude that wears that cloak, that robe.

And so that's why, personally, I find the whole idea of the demon or the evil spirit [01:07:00] explanation not satisfying because it doesn't have the narrative punch that it would have if it was not Samuel. The last thing that Saul saw of Samuel and did to Samuel was ripping his own cloak. And here she is, she's mentioning the robe that Samuel's wrapped in.

Yeah. The same robe that I ripped. And so like there was supposed to be that narrative punch. And I think that sometimes we get so obsessed with trying to get the scriptures to meet up with our theological convictions that we miss out on the beauty of the story and the narrator is bringing up a detail that he had purposely brought up before. So that there was actually a payoff to all this of like ha ha We have Samuel in that famous cloak, appearing finally one last time before Saul. He's delivering the final judgment of what God is going to do to Saul of like, Hey, the kingdom is going to be ripped [01:08:00] out from your hands. This is how. Your death is coming.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. It's all of these little narrative things that I think it's easy for us to overlook when we're just trying to cherry pick the text apart and look at it with our theological presuppositions. There certainly are presuppositions when you read it in a narrative fashion like this, but to me that makes it this cohesive whole.

Like, if the original reader would have been reading it like this and would have gone, Aha! Aha! That's Samuel! Like, that should be what our reaction would be as well when we're reading it. We should be thinking, the same kind of thoughts and making these correlations as well. And not, hmm, well maybe that wasn't really Samuel.

If, if the reader was supposed to guess that maybe it wasn't Samuel, there, I would expect there would be some detail here. Whereas all of the detail points to the idea that it's Samuel.

Mike Chu: The [01:09:00] Hebrew does use other words to describe certain spiritual beings that have an evil kind of aura or evil connotation to them.

There is words such as Shadim and the word Elohim often is very neutral because it can be used to describe God himself, the creator God. It can be used to describe gods of Egypt. It can be used to describe, you know, the sons of God. So it can be used in a variety of ways. So it's a very neutral term.

There is no reading into and a carry of evil intent when you read the word Elohim like you would when you read the word shedim. And so you have to take that into factor. And when people try to claim that it must be a demon, like, really the onus is on them to then prove to scholarship that the word Elohim, whenever you see it, you should automatically think a negative connotation.

And the truth is, it doesn't. It doesn't carry that. Otherwise, then we hit problems that when, how do we then justify translating the word Elohim when it's [01:10:00] connected to Yahweh in a good manner, right? We don't want to do that, obviously. So we're left with this interesting thing where people make up a very interesting theological story about this figure Samuel here in this chapter, but it isn't ironically based on the text.

It's based on certain theological presumptions of how the spiritual world interacts with the physical world. And, in some sense a stubbornness to not allow that to be maybe modified or adjusted or challenged at the very least.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. So here is where we get this broad concept of, as Dr. Heiser put it, Elohim as a term of residence rather than an ontological term. So an ontological term would be something that ,this defines who you are, like, your ontology is your actual mode of being, like a cat has a different ontology than a dog, that kind of thing. So ontology is what you are specifically.[01:11:00]

So it's like this categorical term of who you are. Well, that's not what Elohim is. So when we see the term Elohim, it doesn't come with some set of attributes like, you know, the set of attributes that God has. The omnipotence and the fact that he's not created and all of these other things that are aspects of God, they can't be imported into the word Elohim.

So when we see the term Elohim being used in reference to other deities, in reference to other spirits, we can't just assume that it's talking about a set of attributes or what something is. Rather, what we see here is that it is a place of residence term, which means that Samuel had died, so he belonged in the Unseen Realm, so he could then be called an Elohim, because of that aspect of, now he belongs not in the physical realm, but he's being [01:12:00] manifest here in the physical realm, so we're going to call him an Elohim.

So, in this sense, a human can be an Elohim, when that's their place of residence. And, actually I have a little chart that people have liked to see before, that tries to show how Elohim is used in the different ways and in different aspects and shows how you have the physical realm and the spiritual realm and, and it also goes through the three different falls that Dr. Heiser calls for. So if you're interested in checking out that chart, you can always hit me up and I'll probably have it up on my site. I know I have it in my Facebook group and all of that. So if you're interested in seeing that, that might be helpful because it is really confusing to us because the Hebrew terms just are not the same as our terms. They don't map on exactly to the way that we talk about things. So it gets really confusing.

Mike Chu: if folks are unfamiliar with that concept of like location, right? The closest approximation in our Western modern [01:13:00] culture, I would say, is if a person were to say, I am Nepalese, not saying that, you know, that all of a sudden, like Nepalese in of themselves are a particular type of creature, right? Versus those who are American, really, it's actually more of a term to reference, I was born in Nepal. Or I consider my citizenship or where I come from, my location that I originated from, or at least residing in Nepal. If a person moves to Nepal, gives up their citizenships and then take on citizenship in Nepal, they probably would refer to themselves as Nepalese. Because of that, my location, where I identify location wise. And so, we have that little thing of like, you have Samuel, who was a physical human being, who died, and yet his spirit is now residing in the unseen realm in the realm of the gods or the divine beings.

That's part of the reason why scholarship translates often the word [01:14:00] Elohim, they use the term divine beings and people get worked up over it because it's like, how is this an exact word for word translation? And what they're actually cleverly trying to do is indicate there's divine beings, there's human beings, and they're trying to show a differentiation of like, where do you reside?

Well, we reside in the human realm. And, the gods or the spirits that God has created, they reside in the divine realm. And so thus divine beings, human beings. And then when human beings die and our spirits are broken away or separated from our physical bodies, we end up being in the divine realm.

That's just where we hang out for the time being. And so there is that interesting thing this can lead easily into the discussion about why resurrection is important, why the reunification of heaven and earth and including the spirits of human beings who have died with their resurrected bodies become important because we were not created originally as just disembodied beings.

And it's really [01:15:00] interesting that the way that this medium, this witch described Samuel, this divine being is in very physical terms. That apparently he has the version of the Divine Realm's version of clothes, which is odd if you think about it. And it's almost kind of indicating, , they're supposed to be a physicality eventually to us again.

And so , there's this interesting allusion to it. I find it fascinating, but it's kind of funny when you think about it. It's like, so what exactly is the, like, is it still ripped?

Carey Griffel: Right? Yeah, it could be. And maybe that's why it's so obvious.

Mike Chu: I don't know. It would be funny that he met his mom and his mom was like, Hey, I was waiting for you.

I made it. I

Carey Griffel: fixed your cloak for you. Yeah, it could be too.

Mike Chu: I made a new one.

Carey Griffel: Oh, it's funny. Well, we're running out of time, but I want to at least touch a little bit on a verse in first Corinthians.

Mike Chu: Yes.

Carey Griffel: Because this is really also a very essential verse to look at [01:16:00] when we're talking about all of this kind of thing.

In first Corinthians eight, five. This has some interesting translations. The King James Version says, For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, as there be gods many, and lords many.

So that's a bit of a tongue twister for me. The New King James Version is a little bit clearer to read. For even if there are so called gods, Whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, ... and this term so called, it's hyphenated like it's one word. And to us, that brings certain ideas to mind. If something is so called, then it's a bit sarcastic, I guess?

Mike Chu: What's fascinating about that word is that when you look at the other appearance of that particular word, it's a participle. It's a verbal adjective. [01:17:00] It's a verb that's being used as an adjective. That's the way I would kind of simply describe it. The adding of the so and the hyphen is a translation choice. Because the other time that that word in its particular form appears again is in Ephesians 2 11. And here in the ESV, the ESV in first corinthians 8 5, it also uses so called with , like that, that sense of so called gods.

But here in Ephesians 2, 11, that same word, when it appears again, it says, you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision. And so, you see already here, based on which passage, and maybe even a different translator from the committee, that the word, at least the commonality, is the word called.

But so is [01:18:00] actually a variation. It's a flourish that was added by the translator of 1 Corinthians 8. 5. And what's so funny is that a lot of the modern English translations do put in the so hyphen to kind of add in this little bias or just like, you know, kind of pushing the reader towards a particular interpretation that the translator himself or herself holds to.

And so I don't personally think that that's being really honest, , to be frank. And what's kind of funny is Carey and I had talked about this, and then we're looking at some more, even more newer translations. And our best guess, at least my personal best guess, is that these translators had been called out on it.

And so, just to be consistent, they had gone back and added in the SO DASH in their new versions of Ephesians 2. 11, to just make it as though, like, oh, it's consistent all the way through. And trying to obscure the fact that, like, [01:19:00] no, that is, in the end, a translation choice. That is a translation flourish that was done by the translators.

Because if I was translating this , from the Greek myself, I personally would not have thought of putting so dash in front of called I would have tried to translate it as close to what I could approximate from the Greek and the idea of putting in so dash is not something that would have come to my mind immediately.

And so there, there is a purposing and agenda for why they added this there. Is it a bad agenda? Depends. I think it depends on how you view it, that there's almost like maybe a pastoral sense of care of like, I don't want to confuse people, but I do think that it does try to shadily kind of hide something about the text, the technicalities or the complicatedness or the questions that may arise if you translate the text a little bit more plainly.

Carey Griffel: Yeah, when I'm looking at all of my [01:20:00] translations here in front of me, most of them do, in this first Corinthians verse, it puts so called gods. And that's just so interesting. You do have some versions that just outright say that they are called gods, because that's really what we should be reading this as with the Greek.

But man, this whole idea that we need to put so called in here is, it's fascinating to me. And it's interesting, so, you know, you have the same word in Ephesians 2. 11, as you said, And there are a few versions that put in the so called in that place. You have the NASB and the LSB. So they're trying to have that consistency.

The NET also has so called there. But most other translations just say called. This is what they're called. So it's very interesting. And it's a bit frustrating because I know that a lot of big apologists will go to [01:21:00] this verse and say, look, The gods aren't real because of this verse in 1 Corinthians. Now, let's forget what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, and how he's very straightforward with the fact that you are participants in something real there.

But, you know, so if you pull out this verse by itself, you can make it sound like, Oh, Paul didn't really believe in those gods, they didn't really exist. But it's these translation choices that make it sound like that. And if you read the whole dang letter, That's really not what Paul is saying at all, but you can't really come to that conclusion when you read all of the chapters.

Mike Chu: And I know that, you know, for some folks this may seem like a daunting challenge, right, but I would still say it anyways. Read at least the whole book. At least read a couple of the chapters before and chapters after, if you don't have the time to read the entire, like, Book of Corinthians, for example, [01:22:00] because, the danger of what we just talked about, Carey, is that this is what happens when we prioritize proof texting, where we want to find the one whack em sock em verse to defend our position. Like, we don't even want to have an entire, like, sentence sometimes, even to be present in our defense of an idea. Which is so contrary to how the early church ever did anything when they did apologetics. Eastern Christian fathers, when I was reading them for some of my classes, they would quote chapters and chapters of the text before they even get to their argument.

And, and you would just wonder, like, why are you doing that? And they, they're doing it because they know most people don't have the text. And so they're quoting the entire text that a verse that they want to use comes from because they want to show to their audience, I'm not making this up. I am drawing this [01:23:00] contextually from the entire letter.

Or at least the entire couple of chapters from the letter, so that I'm not just making it up in my mind. They were really concerned about showing that they had a true sense of context, but in our modern sense, and maybe because of our postmodern culture at times, we really devalue what comes before, what comes after, and we just want to take what is and then pour into what is our personal bias into just that is.

And that's dangerous, because if you try to dismiss 1st Corinthians 8, 5, then you hit a weird conundrum once you hit chapter 10, and he starts talking about demons, and then it will just sound like he's just pulling this out of the air, and then it has no cohesion, and that's frustrating. Because when a person writes a letter, and they write a work of literature, there is a sense of purpose in that work, [01:24:00] and to do something like this divorces it and really just, I personally find it frustrating because it dishonors the intent of the writers.

Carey Griffel: Yeah, yeah. And when we want to be faithful readers of the text and draw out the meaning of the text from what the writer actually was putting forth, Then we do this great damage to it when we proof text it and try and turn all of these things into something that it's answering our questions instead of what the actual text is talking about.

But I know you have to get going, so we'll going to go ahead and wrap up, but I want you to plug the podcast again, and yeah, I'm so excited about the new Divine Council Worldview podcast.

Mike Chu: Thanks, Carey. Yeah, so the Divine Council Worldview podcast is hosted by Dr. Ronn Johnson and myself Mike Chu. So we are going to be diving into the Book of Genesis , and going through the books of the Bible as we keep going with this podcast to draw out the major Divine Council [01:25:00] worldview perspectives and sort of the underlying worldview of the writer and the audience that they were writing to. And so, we hope that people will tune in, listen, and maybe even see something that they never noticed before in the Scriptures.

When you're looking at it from that sense of, there is an unseen realm, there is the reality of other divine beings or gods, if, you know, don't want to scare people, but that there are actually spiritual beings that interact with our physical world. However that plays out, we know that the scriptures allude to this, they speak to it.

Let's actually take that seriously and let's see how does that affect our interpretation and our understanding of what the scriptures have said.

Carey Griffel: Yeah. Fantastic. I am looking forward to the new episodes coming out. Thanks for joining me today, Mike.

Mike Chu: Thank you, Carey's always fun to talk, talking with you and, you know, hopefully this was helpful for the audience.

Carey Griffel: All right. Well, that is it for another episode. And I want to thank Mike for coming on and talking about that [01:26:00] with me, because it is always great to dig into the Divine Council worldview, into the supernatural views of the original writers and readers of the Bible. So I hope you all enjoyed it.

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