28 August 2023
Let's review some things we've learned over the past couple of months. Some of you readers are asking questions that indicate a need for this.
The word "pantheon" comes from the idea of a temple that was dedicated to all the gods recognized by the nation -- pan (all) + theos (god). The word is quite similar in Latin and Greek, and the "god" part of it includes a far wider range of beings than it does in English. The word then became associated with the theoretical notion of all the various spirit beings in congress. Thus, Michael Heiser's "divine council of elohim" fits under the term "pantheon".
First, let's review the American pantheon, as it were. Specifically, the American Christian pantheon posits the Trinity, and then a slew of angels and demons, and not much else. While uncountable, the assumption is that angels outnumber demons two to one. These beings are wholly polarized between serving God versus those who serve Satan, who is himself one of three "archangels". The other two are among the good guys: Michael and Gabriel.
This is not the Hebrew understanding of things; it's not what the Bible actual says.
Dr. Heiser's research indicates that the Hebrew pantheon is far more complex. There is no precise Trinity in the Bible in terms of actual distinct Persons. Rather, there are roles as we experience God, who Himself is far beyond any intellectual definition. Thus, Scripture doesn't describe three Persons, but characterizes God in terms of three roles He plays in our human interactions with Him. The Hebrew people, and their Hebrew language, would never propose to place factual propositions in discrete packages for intellectual use, but dramatically suggests what we will encounter if we explore the duty of making peace with God as fallen people.
Thus, it is not a question of extracting factual data from the Bible. There is no concrete reality; this world is inherently false. Rather, we gather hints to map out a pattern of experience, which is likely to be consistent among folks living in the same context. Any pantheon we come up with is just a working model, at best.
When you back away from the western assumptions about reality, the model proposed in Scripture from a Hebrew perspective is actually quite different from the pantheon defined by American Christian mythology.
There is God our Creator, and His expressed will (His "Word") is the one we call His Son. In Ancient Near Eastern culture, that's the image of a human heir to a powerful lord. But because that is all in a higher spiritual realm, our experience of any deity would tend to be as spirits. These spirits are capable of manifesting as more-or-less corporeal beings, but in actual nature, are not physical in the sense we are. Remember, this world isn't exactly "real" in the sense that it is not ultimate reality. At any rate, our experience with God in this world is as a Spirit wholly unconstrained by physical boundaries. He can be in any one or more persons at the same time, as a Presence that changes how they think and act.
And God has created a whole range of beings closer to His own nature than to ours. This is where we come to the "divine council of elohim" -- that word elohim being grammatically plural, but not necessarily plural in usage. It can indicate a plentitude of power in an individual character, and so is appropriate for God Himself, but also for a collection of beings He created as His divine council. As far as we experience things, they are all in a class together, with one holding the unique place of Creator.
These "sons of God" (often styled "princes") are not on par with the Creator we call in English "Jehovah" but are so far above us that the difference is pretty small. We give Jehovah credit for creating all this, but we had darned sure better be respectful of the others. Not only can they also manifest as a spiritual presence among humans, but this is how they operate in general.
Their mission is to guide humans as nations, though "nation" is a somewhat flexible term. It is typically a matter of DNA, but not solely so. Covenant arrangements can actually trump DNA connections in identifying people as a nation. This was recognized throughout the Ancient Near East. It is more or less stated in Scripture that there are limited number of national "princes", but then there are scenes where a congress of the divine council appears to include a lot of other "elohim" level beings who don't have such an assignment. Their duties as members of the council are more a matter of operational concerns, a division of labor covering types of issues God handles. That's about as far the explanation can go, based on what Scripture and related literature indicates.
While these elohim are empowered with some portion of God's own power, they are not His equal. Yet, they have routinely revealed themselves to their domains as deities. Thus, they receive worship, and the Bible condemns this practice, though acknowledges it as so common that there is nothing any human can do about it. We can try to explain it better, but we should not expect anyone to really embrace that except as they are moved by God's own Spirit. We can know it's a violation of policy, but it should be readily apparent God is not going to enforce His policy as we might expect. We have to tolerate it operationally; it's above our very limited dominion as human servants of Jehovah.
The operational use of this imagery is that we remind ourselves that theses beings aren't actually gods, and as an evangelistic note we mention it to outsiders, but we should expect the elohim to keep acting like gods. That means they will maintain a very powerful influence over people in terms of national identity (both actual and notional) and other tribal identities that arise from devotion to just about anything and everything except Jehovah's revealed will. Most people serve so very many deities that they hardly have any awareness of it. In their minds, it's all a matter of concrete factual reality -- "that's how it really is".
Somewhere below the elohim level are angels. Notice, please, that the words in Scripture translated as "demon" do not match our American Christian mythology. A "demon" in the Bible is not polarized on evil; the biblical "demon" is any number of beings more powerful than humans, and they have free will. All serve Jehovah in the broader sense, but some bear an opposition to some parts of His agenda. They are not simply lost angels, though they may well belong to what we can perceive as the angelic order of beings.
You can pretty much count on angels as being direct servants of Jehovah, runners and messengers of various kinds. Some of them carry a high commission of authority that empowers them to accomplish stunning miracles, both in type and scale. But they remain just runners for Jehovah. Whether or not the elohim council members can commission angels seems doubtful, but again, Hebrew language and ideas are not the precise and concrete. The words translated "angel" refer to messengers as a function, not really a class of being. It's a role, not a discrete ontology.
So, we end up with Satan likely being a label that refers to more than one actual elohim figure, not an archangel. Rather, "satan" is also a term referring to a role, an operational figure in a given context. The Tempter in the Garden is not necessarily the same person who tempted Christ in the Wilderness, but they definitely work together on the same opposition agenda.
And Michael is not an angelic figure, but an elohim. Daniel mentions him as a Chief of Princes, while the Prince of Persia as another elohim who was powerful enough to interfere in the angel's mission. Gabriel is an angelic person, someone on a wholly different and lower rank than the elohim, yet a senior angel sent to the likes of Mary, Jesus' mother.
The terms are all relative and role-based, entirely contextual, not a matter of distinct personal identity. That is a typical emphasis of the Hebrew language and the sort of thinking common across the Ancient Near East. It's not a question of what is, but of what we must know about the situation in our own terms so we can act faithfully. Everything we think we can say about it is merely provisional.
Notice that our situation with all these elohim running things in opposition to God's agenda, the only escape from their power is to renounce the human identity that gives them leverage over us. We must stop thinking of ourselves as belonging to any standard human tribes. We are not white, black, red, etc. We are not Americans or Canadians, etc. We followers of Christ alone, or we are not on Jehovah's side. We are covenant children, or we are not. We either gather with Christ, or we scatter abroad among the tribes guided by the elohim.
It makes a huge difference how we envision this situation. The American Christian mythology is a lie offered by several different elohim working together against Jehovah. It's the worst kind of lie, being a half-truth, but missing the point. Get a clear Hebrew-biblical pantheon, or you'll always be chasing the impossible.
Comments
DarkMirror
The pantheon idea easily explains switching references between singular and plural pronouns in the OT, when speaking about God or divine beings.
Also interesting to note there are other religions that don't posit "demons," or the "bad" contingent of divine beings, as being purely evil. Shinto comes to mind, and some versions of Islam and ANE-based paganism.
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