The Unseen Realm Expanded Edition: Myths, Mysteries, and Majesty (3M)

The Unseen Realm: Expanded Edition presents an exploration of the Bible’s supernatural worldview, uncovering how ancient concepts of divine beings, spiritual rebellion, and cosmic order reveal the majesty and sovereignty of God. It examines themes such as the divine council, the origin and nature of the Nephilim, and the continuity of supernatural conflict from Genesis through Revelation. The book draws comparisons between biblical and ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, clarifying that while mythological parallels exist, Scripture uniquely discloses the one true God whose authority encompasses heaven, earth, and the unseen realm. It also highlights traces of Trinitarian thought in the Old Testament, the multifaceted nature of atonement, and the theological meaning of celestial order as a reflection of divine governance. Through these studies, The Unseen Realm reclaims the ancient biblical perspective that all creation—visible and invisible—is ordered under Christ, whose lordship extends beyond time, space, and every spiritual power.

TRANSCRIPT

Opening Music: Stories make the breath go high. Below, whispers of legends—ghost possessions and nightmares, dreams lurking. Nothing is as it seems: giants walking, angels and demons fighting. All the truth can bring the light, the echoes of time, the rise of prophecy. Calls from valley pikes to buried treasure. This podcast brings nothing but pleasure. Powers evening in gothic castles where screaming wizards cast spells in the towers tonight, exploring myth and imagination through the storytelling power.

Nikola: Blessed Sunday, everyone. Welcome to episode 200. It’s actually chronological episode 199, but because this podcast was dedicated to and started in honor of the late Dr. Michael Heiser, and today we are reviewing his updated, extended version which came out ten years after the original, I just had to skip one episode—which we’ll do this Friday—and mark this one as 200. It’s such a special episode with a special guest. We’re welcoming back Pastor Anthony Delgado for this occasion. Pastor Delgado, thank you so much for finding time for the audience and myself. Maybe we can start by you introducing yourself and telling us something about your work and your latest books.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, absolutely. My name’s Anthony Delgado. I’m a pastor of a church in Southern California called Palmdale Church. I’m also an author, as you mentioned, and I’ve written a number of books. My most recent is a book called God-Shaped Prayer, where we look at the Lord’s Prayer from a biblical-theological standpoint and then ask questions of application about how we ought to pray as a means of God’s sanctification for us. We could probably talk for hours about that, but that’s my latest book. I’m a long-time Dr. Michael Heiser fan—read The Unseen Realm nearly when it came out and half a dozen times since then—and of course picked up the new copy as soon as it was available. I’ve been highly influenced by Dr. Heiser and am looking forward to getting into some of the material and talking through it. Thank you for having me.

Nikola: I just want to say that I’ve included Pastor Delgado’s podcast link in this video’s description, as well as links to all of his books, including this one. I got it for free, and I’m about to review it and talk about it within a few weeks with Pastor Delgado. All of his books have received excellent reviews, so buy those books for yourself. They’re prime examples of biblical theology. Surprise your pastor, your husband or wife, or your kids, and learn from these books.

When it comes to the updated version of The Unseen Realm, here’s the copy—you can also see it on Pastor Delgado’s table. It’s an extended version with the same number of chapters, but about 150 extra pages because of the additional notes. We’ll be covering most of those notes tonight. We won’t be going through the old material, because, come on—if in these ten years you haven’t bought Dr. Heiser’s book, which to me is the most important book on biblical theology ever released, you’re not doing yourself a favor. So again, we’ll be covering the new sections in this book, though not all of them, because we want you to buy the book. We want you to bless the ministry that continues, bless the Divine Council World community, bless Dr. Heiser’s family, and bless those studying from this work by purchasing it.

Pastor Delgado, before we start going into the first section of the book, what was your overall impression when you went through it? I know that you wrote on Facebook that you were sick and had nothing to do, so you went through the book the other day. I thought, “Man, this guy’s something—who does that?” So what was your overall impression of the book?

Anthony Delgado: Well, you’re right. I was sick, and I’m the kind of person that even when I’m sick, I have to do something—I just don’t know how to sit still. But I was too sick to go to work, so what was I going to do? I got the advanced copy from Logos when they released just the expanded material, which was fine because I already had the original. They made that available a couple of weeks before the official release, and it just happened to coincide with my free time. So I read through it pretty much in two sittings.

My first impression was, “Is this new?” From listening to Dr. Heiser’s podcast and being pretty well-read in biblical theology, I wasn’t sure at first. It didn’t feel like all of it was new, but I knew it was. I think Lexham Press said it contained about 20,000 new words, and in my review, I counted around 17,000, so there must have been some differences in the front or back matter based on what they released.

I felt like much of what was added was more technical. It reminded me of the early days when people would read The Unseen Realm and then get on the podcast or email Trey and say, “Hey, ask Dr. Heiser this,” because they’d have all these questions. I really think some of the new material must have come from that. The difficulty was that Dr. Heiser would answer those questions on the podcast, and a lot of those answers were later posted on moreunseenrealm.com, though not as easily accessible as they are now in the book.

Some of that content was written like, “Here’s how scholars deal with this issue,” and sometimes he’d give a few options without landing in one specific spot. A few of those issues might seem a bit esoteric for the everyday reader, and that was my first impression. But then I had to take a step back and consider who would actually buy the expanded edition. I’m sure the first thousands, maybe tens of thousands of buyers, were people who had the original and were ready for those deeper answers.

He always joked about an Unseen Realm 2 when people asked, and I really think this expanded edition is that, in a way. Is 20,000 words enough for another book? No. But is it a healthy chunk of material that makes it worth spending the money? Absolutely. For me, it was worth every penny. It’s been several years now since we’ve really heard from Mike, and it was genuinely nice to sit under his teaching again for a moment. I appreciated that.

Nikola: Yeah, it almost feels like he’s still with us. When you read the additional material and the notes, you can almost hear his voice in the background, like he’s teaching you personally or telling the story himself. It’s biblical teaching, but it also reads like a narrative.

Anthony Delgado: I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I read his books, I actually hear them in his voice. I don’t do that with every author, but I do with him.

Nikola: Maybe someone can make an AI voice that sounds like Dr. Heiser. Then once you buy the eBook, you could have it read to you—it’d be like he’s right there teaching again.

Anthony Delgado: That’s too much for me—but I get his voice in my head. I’ve listened to him so much that I can just read in his voice now.

Nikola: Yeah. Okay, so when it comes to the first section, the whole book has eight sections. In the first one, one of the new parts we chose to talk about is on interpreting the Bible in context. This comes on pages six, seven, and eight, where Dr. Heiser very kindly, logically, biblically, and academically responds to people who criticize scholars like him, saying, “Why do we need this ancient context to understand the Bible? Can’t we just read it through our modern lenses?” He dedicates a couple of pages to explain why that is not only erroneous but unfair and dishonest to God’s intent in speaking to us through ancient languages, ancient culture, and the ancient way of thinking. What is your overall impression of this section?

Anthony Delgado: I think Dr. Heiser made a really good observation. He kind of pointed us in two directions and said that one of the things that happens in biblical theology—and I’ll use some of my own words here—is that people can get too focused on the ancient Hebrew and Near Eastern context, where they end up reading mythologies rather than reading the Bible through its whole narrative.

For me, biblical theology means looking at the meganarrative of Scripture—the entire story of redemptive history—and then zeroing in on a specific narrative to make observations about that story in light of the whole. To do that, you really have to know the entire Bible before you can even begin, which is a daunting thing to ask. It’s like saying, “Before you read your Bible, you need to already know the whole Bible.” That’s a strange expectation. But it happens organically: as you learn the Bible more, you begin to understand it on its own terms.

So that’s part of it. But what often happens is people study individual passages without reading them in the context of the entire narrative. They start digging into the ancient Near Eastern context—learning about Mesopotamian cultures, the Egyptians on one side, and the Greeks on the other. They start gathering all this information and then interpret Scripture like they did in a traditional dispensational Sunday school class—dealing with only a few words at a time—but now trying to interpret those words through the lens of the ancient world.

What you’re doing when you do that is letting the gods of the pagan nations interpret the Bible. That leads to a lot of mistakes about the supernatural narrative of Scripture and its meaning.

Now, the opposite problem—and this, I think, is really the focus of Dr. Heiser’s section here—is what people call a Christocentric reading of the Old Testament. The mistake, as much as I appreciate Charles Spurgeon, comes from something he once said—perhaps in Lectures to My Students, though don’t quote me on that. He said that if you’re preaching the Old Testament and you’re not sure how to connect it to the story of Scripture, just run to Christ.

And so he was literally teaching that if you can’t figure out where something fits in the grand scheme of things, just jump to the gospel. Sometimes that can make sense—if you’re in certain Psalms of David, for example—but it’s not usually a good way to understand Scripture in its context.

What Dr. Heiser is doing is showing that the whole story, the entire narrative of Scripture, is about how the work of Christ—from beginning to end—brings life into a world that chose death. Humanity left Paradise, choosing death through the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God, out of love for his people, is redeeming them to bring life.

That overarching theme is what we would call the metanarrative—the narrative that stands above the meganarrative. It’s the theological observation, the theology of biblical theology. When you understand that, then when you approach a text, you can ask, “Where are we in the story?” Is this text describing darkness? Is it showing how the serpent and the fallen gods of the nations are corrupting the world? Or is it depicting moments when God intervenes in the Old Testament narrative?

We shouldn’t imagine that God left the picture after Eden and only returned in the incarnation—that’s not true. At every point where he steps into the story, he’s working toward redemption. So we read Scripture through the lens of that metanarrative, placing each passage in its canonical context—the big story, the meganarrative—and understanding it through the work of Christ. Because from the beginning, that’s where it all starts: the promise of Christ in Genesis 3 and the eternal redemption fulfilled in Revelation 21–22.

We’re always looking for where each passage fits in that schema. That means we don’t force every verse in Zechariah—or anywhere else—to be directly about Jesus just because it shares a word or phrase that reminds us of him. We don’t turn every passage into a “just accept Jesus into your heart” message. Instead, we unpack the text within its own context to see how it fits within God’s redemptive plan.

So it’s not about reading the Bible as if it’s just the story of the pagans or focusing solely on the ancient Near Eastern context. It’s about understanding how Christ engages that ancient context. That’s the essence of biblical theology. We need the ancient world to understand Scripture because it reveals what Jesus is doing—but ultimately, what matters most is what Jesus is doing.

That’s what Dr. Heiser emphasizes when he writes that critics of interpreting the Bible in its original ancient context often presume it’s contrary to a Christocentric hermeneutic. He’s addressing those who say, “Stop trying to find Christ in the Old Testament—just see what the text says in its world.” But Heiser responds, “No.” It depends on how we define that term. Many assume it means that no interpretation is valid unless it explicitly reveals Jesus—but that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that every passage exists within the grand narrative of Scripture, and therefore, it points to Jesus in some way.

Every text develops within its context, helping us understand the broader story of redemption that leads to Christ. And that’s what Mike always did. He modeled that on his podcast again and again, and he did it throughout The Unseen Realm and all his other books.

Nikola: Yeah, the reason I especially like and appreciate this first section is because, as a foreigner, if I tell you something from my culture—or even a joke—but I do it in the most wooden, literal way, you probably wouldn’t understand. It would be like when I first came to the States and people said, “Oh, that’s water under the bridge.” What does that mean to a foreigner? Nothing. You just imagine water flowing under a bridge, and it tells you nothing about the message that person is actually trying to communicate.

That’s why I always go back to that example and, as a foreigner, remind myself why studying—if you can—is so important. It’s not for everyone, but if possible, study ancient languages and grammar. And if not, at least do yourself a favor and read solid Bible commentaries from people who have spent not just years, but decades digging into ancient culture, history, and archaeology—people who have carefully compared ancient mythologies with the Bible, especially the Old Testament.

There’s so much beauty and significance when you find both parallels and differences. For instance, the ancient people believed in Leviathan—they called him Lotan—but they had the same idea of a cosmic monster. That’s already valuable information for us as biblical students. Or consider how they also had the concept of chaos, but they dealt with chaos differently than Yahweh did. That’s another similarity where the outcome is completely different.

Studying these things gives us a very important cultural and historical background for how the ancients thought. And when you learn how they thought, then when you open Genesis—or the rest of the Old Testament—you start trying to read as they would have read. You try to receive the message as the original audience, not as a 21st-century American or anyone else from the modern world. That changes everything because now you can begin to understand the text as they did—or at least do your best to.

I’m not saying that application always has to be different, but sometimes it might be. Without that context, many of us twist the original meaning of Scripture, and that’s not fair—to the text or to God, who intentionally communicated through that original meaning. But because of the distance of time—and honestly, because we don’t live in the most intellectual age—many people would rather just read a few verses or a chapter and say, “Oh, God spoke this.” Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.

That’s why I value studying the background, using Bible commentaries, and engaging with biblical theology so much. Not because intellectualism should make anyone proud or elevate one person over another—God forbid—but because it helps…

Anthony Delgado: It helps us—it helps us to understand. And I think chaos, which you mentioned a minute ago, is a great example of what I was talking about. If you look at the ancient Near Eastern cultures, they’re all trying to deal with chaos. But the way the pagan nations deal with chaos is through tyranny, while Yahweh—or Jesus—deals with chaos through love and order. That gives us a completely different perspective.

Understanding the culture shows us how the world around Israel thought about these things, but it often stands in contrast to the biblical account. Sometimes there’s overlap, but more often, it’s juxtaposed against Scripture. You can see, “The pagan nations see this too, but they handle it this way. Yahweh, on the other hand, deals with it this way.” And that’s why, in this case, we see God as a God of love rather than of domination.

Nikola: Yeah, thanks for that. The next section—Section Two—has a small entry that maybe we can skip for the sake of time. It’s on pages 26 and 27 and discusses the three, and potentially four, structures within the Divine Council. The only thing Dr. Michael Heiser is clarifying here is that the evidence for the fourth tier is weak. He mentions the scholar Mark Smith, noting that we only have one figure, one deity, that might fit this category—Kothar-wa-Khasis—and I think we covered this character before when we talked about the Baal Cycle.

He’s basically a craftsman deity in Mesopotamian theology. Dr. Heiser points out that you can’t build a whole new Divine Council tier based on one example—we would need more evidence to establish that. So it’s a short entry overall. Do you have any comments on that, or should we go straight to the next big section on page 38?

Anthony Delgado: I’ll just say briefly—I’m not an expert in this—but it reminds me of The Silmarillion in Tolkien’s world. There’s something similar with craftsman deities there. You have divine beings who are part of the created hierarchy and order of divine beings, but they’re also the ones responsible for creating others. For example, the dwarves in Tolkien’s mythology are kind of a botched creation of these craftsman deities.

What I find interesting is that this idea of divine craftsmen has persisted all the way into Tolkien’s day, maybe not just through ancient mythologies but through folklore as well. I agree with Dr. Heiser that we shouldn’t force this concept into the Bible, but I’m not sure it’s without value either. There might be times when the idea can be used symbolically to help illuminate certain themes or aspects of our worldview. That’s all I’d add.

Nikola: Yeah, thanks for that. We’re staying in Section Two, switching to pages 38 to 43. Dr. Heiser begins here by addressing religion and politics. In this entry, he explains that some—or many—biblical scholars, primarily liberal scholars, have argued that the Hebrew or Jewish religion developed out of polytheism. This view often comes from archaeological findings, where some claim that Yahweh had a consort or spouse.

Dr. Heiser pushes back on that, saying, “I don’t think so.” First, Scripture doesn’t allow us to think that way. However, he acknowledges that throughout Israel’s history, the people did go back and forth, so to speak, “flirting” with other deities. They would build high places and shrines, offer burnt sacrifices, and worship many gods instead of Yahweh. So, of course, God had to call them to repentance and judgment over and over.

Dr. Heiser notes that while this is all historically and archaeologically true, it doesn’t give anyone the right to assume that Israel’s religion originated in polytheism or that it represents a “progressive revelation,” as if Yahweh took a long time to reveal that he alone is God. He rejects that view entirely. From the very beginning—even before Abraham—people knew there was one ultimate, Most High God to whom they owed worship and allegiance.

Maybe we can start commenting on that section.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I think one of the first things to address is why that assumption happens. Usually, it comes from people who have a low view of Scripture—meaning they don’t believe Scripture is divinely inspired. When that’s the case, they feel compelled to give equal weight or even preference to everything else happening in the ancient world.

So, if you’re trying to read Israel’s faith only through the lens of its surrounding cultures, you’ll end up characterizing Israel’s religion based on what you understand about the rest of the Mesopotamian world. And I think that’s a mistake. Many assume that the religious environment in Moses’ day was the same as it was in Jesus’ day—a full thousand years later. But just look at the last thousand years of our history. Compare medieval Europe to modern society—it’s radically different.

Even though technology and information spread much faster today than in the ancient world, a thousand years is still an incredibly long time. To assume no cultural or religious development happened in that span is shortsighted.

The problem is that we don’t know as much about the ancient world as we’d like. So these scholars pick and choose fragments of data—archaeological findings, inscriptions, artifacts—and then try to piece them together into a broader narrative. But often, we don’t really know what those individual pieces mean. We only know that they exist. Then they take those fragments, assign them speculative meanings, and synchronize them into something completely different from what any of them originally represented.

Because a Canaanite is not an Israelite, for example—and none of these figures, in their own unique contexts, would have ever said the things modern scholars are claiming they did. That’s one of the big mistakes being made. To make that clearer, here’s what often happens: people look at the Bible and see something like, “Oh, look, the Israelites are worshiping Asherah and the Baals. See how they were polytheistic?” And then they conclude, “That’s the same thing that was happening in the other religions of the ancient Near East.”

They make surface-level comparisons—sometimes contrasts, but mostly comparisons—to other cultures, and then they read those parallels back into Scripture. The result is that when the prophet shows up in the story saying, “Repent and turn back to Yahweh,” these scholars treat the prophet as the outlier, the extremist, the radical fringe voice. In their view, the “mainstream” Israelite religion was polytheistic and the prophets were the odd ones out.

That’s a huge mistake. Even during times when Israel worshiped many gods, it’s not always clear that they were replacing Yahweh. More often than not, it seems they were worshiping other gods alongside Yahweh. Occasionally, they fell into something that looks a lot like modern-day syncretism—the idea that all religions are just different paths to the same God. It’s like when people today say, “Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship the same God.” And you have to stop and say, “Wait a second—because our understanding of who God is radically different.”

That same kind of thinking was happening among the Israelites. You see it in Hosea, for example, where they were comfortable calling Baal “Master,” because Yahweh is also “Master.” They treated it like it was interchangeable—potato, potahto—and that’s syncretism. So when people claim that Israel was just another polytheistic culture, they miss that distinction entirely.

And this is exactly why many people disliked Dr. Heiser’s work, both back in the day and even now. They’d hear him talk about the “appointed deities”—what he referred to as the judicial angels or divine beings over the nations—and they’d say, “See, he’s teaching polytheism! Didn’t we already deal with that nonsense?” They’d lump him in with liberal scholars simply because he discussed the ancient Near Eastern worldview.

But honestly, that’s laughable. If you’ve ever listened to Heiser talk about the gospel, the Trinity, and the essentials of the faith, you know he was deeply orthodox. To call him liberal is absurd. What his critics were doing was confusing his acknowledgment of the ancient worldview with an endorsement of it.

What’s actually happening in Scripture is a polemic—a deliberate theological contrast. The Bible is saying that the gods of the nations are not God. In the Greek pantheon, the Egyptian pantheon, or the Canaanite myths, gods could rebel, kill, or dethrone one another. But in the Hebrew Scriptures, the message is radically different. Moses, in Deuteronomy 32, says that God appointed these beings. In Psalm 82, God judges them. And in Matthew 28, Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.

There is no sense in which those lesser beings ever have authority equal to Yahweh. So what Heiser was doing was showing that the Hebrews were always monotheistic in the ultimate sense. They never viewed Yahweh as one god among others. He alone is the Most High.

But liberal scholars love to take fragments of that idea and spin them into elaborate, speculative theories about ancient Israelite religion—arguments with no real rational basis, built on assumptions about a culture they barely understand.

Nikola: I think this is a good point to cross-reference what you just said with the next entry in these new notes—Jesus and the Divine Council. As we know, many biblical scholars, including Dr. Heiser, identify Jesus as Yahweh. Just as the Father is Yahweh, so is the Son. In this section, Heiser cross-references John 10 with Psalm 82 and makes a very interesting conclusion—one that unfortunately we don’t often hear in churches on a deep level, or worse, we hear it twisted. In some circles, it gets distorted into the Word of Faith idea that, somehow, in this lifetime, we are gods. That kind of teaching frequently distorts the gospel. So, what’s your understanding or summary of this entry on Jesus and the Divine Council?

Anthony Delgado: If we’re talking about the John 10 entry—yes, page 39—I think there’s a lot going on here. And forgive me if I diverge slightly from Dr. Heiser’s interpretation, because I think there’s even more to it than he highlights in this section. I actually turned to the passage in my Bible because I wanted to look at something specific.

So, Jesus is teaching, “I and the Father are one.” He also says, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” That coincides perfectly with Paul’s teaching in Colossians, that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God.” That’s why, when you see Jesus, you see the Father.

People sometimes push back on this, but I personally teach that when we’re in the eternal kingdom of God, we won’t see the Father face to face in the way people often imagine. We see the Father because we see Jesus—because Jesus is the visible image of the invisible Father. People sometimes separate the Trinity too much and say, “Well, I want to know both of them.” But you do know both of them—by the Holy Spirit and through your confession of Christ, you already know the Father.

So, the statement “I and the Father are one” is the center of this whole discussion. That’s why the Jews get upset in John 10—they knew exactly what Jesus was claiming. They understood that he was identifying himself with Yahweh, and to them, that was blasphemy.

Now, it shouldn’t necessarily have been blasphemy, depending on which messianic expectation you were tracing during the Second Temple period. There were multiple views about who the Messiah would be. Some Jews rejected the concept of a Messiah entirely, while others, particularly certain groups like those from Qumran, seem to have expected a divine Messiah. That was not the Pharisaical view, though—the Pharisees held a very materialistic, de-supernaturalized understanding of the Messiah.

So, in John 10, when the Jews respond to Jesus saying, “It’s not for a good work that we’re going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God,” Jesus gives this brilliant response:

“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”

The key detail here is that Jesus says “in your Scriptures”—not “in our Scriptures.” That’s significant. I’ve been doing some additional study on this, and it’s fascinating. If you go to the Qumran scrolls—specifically Cave 4—and look at Deuteronomy 32 (not Psalm 82, which Jesus is quoting here), you’ll find something interesting. In Cave 4, they found two scrolls of Deuteronomy 32, and in another cave they also found the Septuagint, the Greek version. All three of these textual witnesses contain a variant reading.

So, they found a Hebrew scroll that says Yahweh divided the nations according to the number of the sons of Israel. Then, there’s a second scroll—what Dr. Heiser teaches is the original reading—that says Yahweh divided the nations according to the number of the sons of God. And “sons of God” in the Old Testament refers to divine beings. That’s why the Pharisees are upset here.

When Jesus says, “In your Scriptures,” he’s pointing out that in their version, it doesn’t say “divine beings.” It refers instead to people. He’s actually referencing Psalm 82, which says, “I said, you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you.” The Pharisees, however, were teaching from a variant reading that replaced “sons of God” with “sons of Israel.” In their interpretation, that phrase referred to the rulers or tribal chieftains of Israel.

So, when Jesus quotes it, he’s essentially saying, “In your own way of thinking, you already have a category for a man being called a god in the sense of having judicial authority over the nation.” He’s turning their logic back on them—playing by their rules to expose their inconsistency. He’s saying, “You’re accusing me of blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God, but in your own Scriptures, you already allow for men to be called gods.”

What we’re seeing here is not only a theological disagreement but also a textual one. We often make the mistake of saying “the Jews believed,” as if there were a single unified belief system, but that’s no more accurate than saying, “Christians believe…” and assuming all Christians agree. Just as there are many Christian denominations today, there were different Jewish sects in Jesus’ day—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and others—all with variations in theology and textual traditions.

And that’s what the textual discoveries show us. Every now and then, we uncover something—a potsherd, an inscription, or, in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a whole library of manuscripts—that reveals just how diverse those textual traditions were.

For example, in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament), Deuteronomy 32 says “the angels of God” instead of “the sons of God.” When they translated it from Hebrew into Greek, they interpreted “sons of God” as angels and made that explicit so no one could mistake the meaning. That’s evidence that even in the ancient world, there was an ongoing debate about how to interpret these passages.

So, the disagreement we see today—between those who accept the Divine Council worldview and those who reject it—is not new. It’s an argument that’s been happening for over two thousand years, going all the way back to Jesus’ own day and even earlier.

Nikola: Yeah, so basically to summarize, I love how in John 10 Jesus is most literally saying to the Jewish leaders, “You think you’re gods—with a small ‘g’—but then look at me, the big ‘G.’” Let’s put it that way. If you think you’re “gods” because of your role or authority within God’s council or structure, then look at me—the one who stands above the council, like in Psalm 82, where the true Judge rises to judge the divine assembly and reclaim the nations for himself.

I love how Jesus constantly gave them headaches—not only theological but intellectual ones too. They’d be left thinking, “Wait, what did he just say?” Like when he said, “What’s easier—to forgive sins or to tell this man to pick up his mat and walk?” It was this kind of divine riddle. He challenged their theology and their logic at every turn, and I love that. That’s another side of Jesus we can really appreciate.

I’ll just quickly read another short entry from page 41 before we move on. It discusses biblical divine plurality and the Shema. Dr. Heiser notes that there’s no conflict between the concept of the Divine Council and Deuteronomy 6:4. The term Elohim isn’t tied to a specific set of attributes. So when Israelites affirmed the Shema—“Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one”—they weren’t denying the existence of other elohim. The Old Testament itself presumes and affirms that other divine beings exist. Rather, the Shema is a declaration of loyalty—that Yahweh alone is Israel’s God and covenant Lord.

That loyalty also includes recognizing Yahweh’s uniqueness among the elohim. Heiser notes that these points of uniqueness—Yahweh’s incomparable nature—are discussed further in chapter four. I love that, because for people who try to critique Dr. Heiser and say his view of small “g” gods contradicts the Shema, this passage makes it clear that it actually doesn’t. When you understand the language and the context, it all fits together perfectly.

Do you have any brief comment on that, or should we switch to the next section on page 51?

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, I’d just like to read the Shema as it appears in Deuteronomy 6. “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one.” What’s really interesting is that the word Elohim is plural. We can debate endlessly why that’s the case, but the reality is that God has chosen to reveal himself through a kind of plurality. As Christians, we might speculate that this plurality hints at the Trinity, but grammatically, it’s more likely an intentional Hebrew construction that reflects majesty or fullness.

Still, notice what the verse actually says: Yahweh—our Elohim—is one. It doesn’t say, “All elohim are one.” That’s the crucial distinction. People get tripped up here because they assume this statement denies the existence of other elohim. But the text doesn’t do that—it distinguishes Yahweh from them.

And if you keep reading, the Shema goes on to say, “You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” Why say that unless there were competing objects of loyalty? It makes perfect sense if it’s a warning against divided devotion—if it’s saying, “Love Yahweh alone; don’t share your heart with the gods of the nations.”

So, in context, I think the Shema functions as both a declaration of loyalty and a safeguard against idolatry. That’s why the Israelites were told to recite it daily, to bind it on their wrists and foreheads—a constant reminder not to give their love or allegiance to other gods. Perhaps I’m reading into it a bit, but I think it’s built into the text itself: the Shema assumes that divided loyalty is the ever-present temptation of God’s people.

Nikola: Yeah, thank you. And it’s so interesting that you just mentioned plurality—that leads perfectly into the next entry between pages 51 and 53. Here, Dr. Heiser goes back to Genesis 1:26–27, when God creates humanity. He addresses a question people often ask: “Mike, how come you don’t see the Trinity in Genesis 1?”

Now, he never says there’s no Trinity in Genesis 1, because, of course, you can’t divide the Godhead. That’s not what he’s saying at all. But I remember a year or so ago when Doreen Virtue and some of her colleagues reacted to this teaching. When she heard Dr. Heiser say that Genesis 1:26–27 isn’t about the Trinity, she was shocked and made a big point of it publicly.

That reminded me of my hermeneutics class at Moody Bible Institute. My professor said something very similar. We went through a little over twenty Bible commentaries, and he told us, “Don’t take my word for it—read the commentaries from the experts and see what the ancient context tells you about Genesis 1. Who is God speaking to when he says, ‘Let us make man in our image’?”

And I love how Mike used to explain this on his podcast. He would say, imagine ten of us are in a room, and I say, “Let’s order pizza.” I’m the one who’s going to order it, but I announce it to the group. It’s an expression of intention, spoken within a community. Then he’d ask, “If this passage were about the Trinity, why would one member of the Trinity need to speak aloud to the others? Wouldn’t they already know one another’s thoughts?” He wasn’t saying it would be impossible, just that it doesn’t fit the context.

So, his point is that this is God addressing the sons of God—the divine assembly. When he says, “Let us make humankind in our image,” he isn’t inviting angels to help him. He’s declaring his intent before the heavenly host, showing them what he is about to do.

When I wrote a research paper on Genesis 1:26–27, our assignment was to choose which view we found most convincing: the Trinitarian interpretation, the majestic plural, or the divine council view. Out of all twenty-something commentaries, the majority leaned either Trinitarian or divine assembly, with many acknowledging that the “plurality” points to the divine council context.

In my conclusion, I wrote that I imagined the entire Godhead being present, and—using the analogy of a surgeon performing a procedure—God is saying to the heavenly assembly, “Watch what I am about to do.” They aren’t participating; they’re observing and marveling at his creative act. My professor appreciated that perspective.

But the larger point is this: Dr. Heiser didn’t invent this interpretation. When critics like Doreen Virtue attacked him after he passed away, claiming he denied the Trinity, they completely misunderstood his point. In this new entry—on pages 51 through 53—he explains clearly that this view is shared by many scholars. It simply recognizes that the plural “Let us make” fits within the divine council framework. God wasn’t calling on the sons of God for assistance; he was announcing his creative act before them, asserting his authority as the Creator.

Anthony Delgado: I would say two things about that. First, God regularly calls both angelic and human beings to participate in his work—not because he needs their help, but because it’s in his very nature to work with and through the creation he’s made. It’s part of his ontology. God delights in involving his creatures in his purposes. For example, Scripture tells us that the law was mediated by angels. God didn’t need to send angels to deliver the law—in Exodus, it simply says Yahweh delivered it. Yet in three places in the New Testament, it says the law was given through angels. So which is it? It’s both, because God works through his agents without diminishing his own direct action.

That said, I don’t think Genesis 1 teaches that angels participated in creation, nor do I think it teaches that they didn’t. My view, and I believe Paul’s and John’s as well, is that Christ himself spoke creation into existence. He is the Word—the voice of God, the image of the invisible God. In that sense, he is God’s presence in created space. When Jesus speaks, everything comes into being. So, yes, I do think we are supposed to see Jesus there.

However, if you’re reading the Bible strictly from left to right—especially in an English translation—you’ll naturally read Genesis 1 and assume the Father is the one creating. Then, when you get to the New Testament and see John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 all attributing creation to Jesus, it can feel confusing. For someone with a strong grasp of Trinitarian theology, that’s not a problem. But if you don’t already think in Trinitarian categories, it can be kind of earth-shattering.

I do think that in Genesis 1, God is speaking to the other heavenly beings. I don’t think we can prove that they actively participated in the creative process, but certainly he is saying “Let us” in the same way you might say, “Let’s get pizza.” It’s an inclusive, declarative expression. I agree with Dr. Heiser on that point.

But here’s something interesting: when you get to Genesis 3, humanity is said to be made in the image and likeness of God. The serpent tempts Eve by saying, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That connects back to this idea of likeness. As you trace that motif through Scripture, you find that likeness has something to do with divinity—ultimately, with theosis or deification, the spiritual perfection of believers as they are glorified and conformed to Christ.

So, the concept of likeness is woven into the created order. And Job tells us that all the “sons of God” were present, singing at creation. They were there. Whether they were active participants or not doesn’t matter as much as their presence in that divine assembly—the “us” to whom God speaks.

Now, here’s where I slightly diverge—not from Heiser, but from how some people interpret him. We don’t actually see the idea that Genesis 1:26 refers to the Trinity until we get to the early Church Fathers. In their writings, we find what’s called prosopological exegesis.

It’s not really a new field, but it’s a very specialized one. Over the last decade or so, it’s gained renewed attention. The word prosopological comes from the Greek prosopon, meaning “person.” So prosopological exegesis refers to interpreting Scripture with attention to the persons—particularly the inter-Trinitarian dialogue within texts that don’t explicitly identify that dialogue.

In other words, the Church Fathers saw certain Old Testament passages as records of conversation within the Godhead, even when the original human authors may not have recognized it that way. Matthew Bates has a great book that discusses this—though the title escapes me right now—it’s a white cover, and he explains prosopological exegesis of Jesus really clearly.

So, I think because of the early Church Fathers, we see this development of interpreting Genesis 1 in a Trinitarian way. It’s not that it’s wrong—it’s just that it’s a later theological reflection, built on the foundation of the earlier divine council understanding that Heiser was describing.

I think they’re doing prosopological exegesis of Jesus here. In the Hebrew context, you have divine beings who are active—whether or not they play a direct creative role—but present and engaged in creation, almost cheering Jesus on as he creates. To whatever degree they’re active, they participate by their presence. Then, when you get to the Church Fathers, they identify those participants as the persons of the Trinity. So that phrase “let us make man in our image” becomes a dialogue between the Father, Son, and Spirit taking place during creation.

That means humanity is made in the image and likeness of God, and yet it can also be said, as the serpent says in Genesis 3, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So both ideas—likeness to God and the temptation to be God—are operating together. Ultimately, both lead to the same end: humanity’s potential for divinization, or theosis. We are transformed, deified, united to God through Christ. So, as I often say, I think it can be both—the divine council in the Hebrew context and the Trinity in the later theological reflection.

Nikola: One quick question and one quick addition. When you talk about Dr. Matthew Bates’s books, are you referring to Salvation by Allegiance Alone or Beyond the Salvation Wars?

Anthony Delgado: No, way before those. Let me see—I’ll grab it.

Nikola: No, that’s okay. I was just thinking for the audience’s sake—Salvation by Allegiance Alone was his first book that came out in 2017, right?

Anthony Delgado: This one’s quite a bit earlier. It’s called The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and the Spirit in the New Testament and Early Christianity.

Nikola: Oh right, 2016—just a year earlier.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, that’s the one. The entire book is based on prosopological exegesis of Jesus, exploring how the Church Fathers read the Hebrew Bible and recognized divine dialogue within it. It’s dense but really good, especially the first few chapters—they’re excellent.

Nikola: Hmm. I just wanted to add one thing while listening to you. What the early Church Fathers did—reading the Old Testament through a Trinitarian lens and interpreting it in light of the New Testament—reminds me of what we were talking about at the beginning of this episode. We mentioned that common slogan, “seeing Jesus on every page of the Old Testament.”

It sounds deeply spiritual, and if you say it, it makes you sound more godly—like you see Jesus everywhere in Scripture. But Dr. Heiser would challenge that. He’d ask, “How exactly do you see Jesus in, say, Levitical laws about ritual cleansing, or passages about bodily emissions?” He’d say, “You can’t just invent Christ in those places.”

So it’s the same kind of issue. After the full canon was complete, it became easy for us to retroactively read Jesus into every text. But that can get tricky when we try to force him onto every page of the Old Testament—or when we impose a Trinitarian framework onto every passage.

Was the Trinity present in Genesis 1? Absolutely. You can’t divide the Father, Son, and Spirit. But that wasn’t the focus of Genesis 1. That’s what Dr. Heiser was pointing out—not denying the Trinity, but explaining that the text’s immediate focus was the divine council setting, not a Trinitarian dialogue.

Anthony Delgado: You’re totally right about that. Moses, when writing Genesis 1, wasn’t thinking about the Trinity. And that’s an important principle for biblical theology—we have to interpret Scripture in its original context and ask how the narrative develops as revelation unfolds.

Reflecting on Dr. Heiser’s section about creeds and confessions, he gives an important warning. Later church documents, like the creeds or even the writings of the Church Fathers, are valuable, but they’re not infallible. So just because prosopological exegesis—this reading of Trinitarian dialogue into certain Old Testament passages—is a historical method, that doesn’t automatically make it right or authoritative. It can be useful, but it must be weighed carefully.

Now, I’ll say this: the Church Fathers weren’t simply reading the Trinity into every passage. They identified it selectively, where they saw fitting typological or theological parallels between the Testaments. What they were doing was recognizing Trinitarian patterns in the New Testament and then mapping those patterns back onto the Old Testament in appropriate ways.

In fact, I asked Matthew Bates about this once. He said he wasn’t entirely sure about applying prosopological exegesis to Genesis 1, because it takes a lot of unpacking to know whether that’s what the early Fathers intended. But the Fathers were doing symbolic patterning—they recognized recurring theological motifs between the Testaments. That type of typology and symbolic reading can be complex, and yes, it has been abused over the centuries.

People still misuse it today, often forcing connections that don’t belong. But when done responsibly, it’s part of the ancient way of reading Scripture. There are right ways to do it. So, while I wouldn’t base a doctrine of the Trinity primarily on Genesis 1, I do think there are other Old Testament passages where the Church Fathers correctly identified Trinitarian themes—places where the connections between the Testaments are much clearer.

So yes, the warning is well taken, and Heiser’s caution about overextending later theological frameworks into the biblical text is wise. I think he discusses that more fully in his section on creeds, and he’s right to say that later theology must always serve the text, not control it.

Nikola: Yeah, okay, thanks. Switching now to Section Three, we’re flipping between pages 125 and 128. What would be your best summary of this section that Dr. Heiser titled Yahweh and El Terminology in the Old Testament? Because for some biblical scholars—especially those who argue, like we discussed earlier, that Israelite religion evolved from polytheism to monotheism—they also claim that El and Yahweh have a problematic relationship.

They argue that El was imported from Canaanite, specifically Ugaritic, mythology, and that at some point El and Yahweh merged. Dr. Heiser disagrees and addresses this argument. In fact, he’s written a phenomenal and lengthy PDF article on this topic that’s freely available online—it’s much longer than this brief entry. I’d highly recommend it to Bible students, theologians, professors, and pastors alike.

This question comes up frequently among atheists and skeptics who argue that the Israelites borrowed their divine council concept and theology from pagan mythologies. So, Pastor Delgado, what would be your best summary of Dr. Heiser’s section on Yahweh and El terminology in the Old Testament and how it compares to the Canaanite pantheon?

Anthony Delgado: So, the first thing I’d say is that we have to remember how language functions. In English, we use the word God. When a Muslim grows up in the United States with English as their primary language, they’ll often say God instead of Allah, even though they follow the Qur’an. The shared term doesn’t mean they’re adopting the same theology—it’s simply the word available in their language.

In the same way, the fact that the Canaanites called their god El and the Hebrews used Elohim—or even the singular El in forms like El Elyon—doesn’t imply that the Israelites borrowed their ideas from Canaanite religion. It simply reflects that in the broader Semitic world, El was a term that meant “god” or “deity.” It was a common linguistic category, not a shared theological claim.

In fact, Elohim in the Hebrew Bible doesn’t always refer to the God of Israel. It can refer to divine beings in general, to angels, or even to deceased spirits, depending on context. So again, scholars who claim that the Hebrews “borrowed” the concept of El from Canaanite religion are making a non sequitur—they’re taking a linguistic overlap and turning it into a theological conclusion that simply doesn’t follow.

We actually have contrary evidence throughout Scripture, because the Bible constantly emphasizes that none is like Yahweh. In Ugaritic mythology, El is dethroned by Baal. That kind of story would never fit Yahweh, who is consistently portrayed as supreme and incomparable. The Hebrew authors go out of their way to make that point emphatically.

So my main takeaway is that these arguments arise from presuppositions. Many of these scholars approach the Bible already convinced that it evolved out of polytheism or that it’s merely another piece of ancient mythology. They start from naturalistic or skeptical assumptions and then build their theories around them.

And I’d add this—agnosticism, which is often the default posture of modern critical scholarship, can actually be more dangerous than outright atheism. The atheist rejects the supernatural altogether, but the agnostic tries to blend everything—saying, “Well, maybe all religions are partially true,” which ends up meaning that nothing is true. That kind of syncretism sounds intellectually balanced, but when you look closely at the evidence, it doesn’t lead where they claim it does.

Nikola: Okay, thank you. Now, switching to pages 119 to 121, we come to the section on the famous Genesis 6 account. Here, Dr. Heiser cross-references Genesis 6 with 1 Enoch. He explains that in the early church, most Christians—including the early saints and the church fathers—held a supernatural view of Genesis 6.

It wasn’t until Augustine came along—and likely because of his background in Manichaeism, which was obsessed with dualism and the physical-spiritual divide—that the interpretation shifted. Once Augustine converted to Christianity, he wanted to distance himself from anything that resembled his Manichaean past, especially its fascination with sexuality and cosmic conflict.

So, as Dr. Heiser explains, Augustine rejected the supernatural reading of Genesis 6 and introduced a new interpretation: that the “sons of God” were merely the sons of men, that is, human descendants. From that point forward, this non-supernatural view became the dominant position in the Western church for many centuries.

How do you see this whole section of the book and what Dr. Heiser is emphasizing here?

Anthony Delgado: So, I think Dr. Heiser is basically right here—Augustine is the pivotal figure in the Western shift away from the supernatural view of Genesis 6. And that’s key: it happens only in the West. In the East, the church largely maintains the original, supernatural understanding—that the “sons of God” were divine beings who transgressed their boundaries. But in the West, Augustine’s influence becomes dominant, and the church moves toward a strictly human interpretation.

Now, I will say this in Augustine’s defense: he made a lot of mistakes, but often for the right reasons. Before criticizing him too harshly, people should read—or even better, listen to—The Confessions. There, Augustine explains much of his own story and how he arrived at his theological conclusions. A lot of what he says comes from circumstance rather than malice or neglect. I strongly suspect his view of Genesis 6 wasn’t him importing Manichaeism into Christianity, but rather reacting against it.

When Augustine left the Manichaeans, he left behind a worldview obsessed with dualism, cosmic sex, and the idea of evil as a substance. He wanted nothing to do with that anymore. In The Confessions, he says the Manichaeans argued differently than the church—they “illustrated” rather than exegeted the text. So part of Augustine’s conversion to orthodoxy was learning to defend Scripture itself, to read it properly and to refute heresy.

That raises a question: what text was he defending? Augustine had a brilliant mind, but he wasn’t Jewish, and he wasn’t immersed in a Semitic environment. He didn’t have access to the Hebrew Bible the way we do. At best, he was using the Latin Vulgate and, in places, the Septuagint. Ironically, the Septuagint actually preserves some of those supernatural elements quite clearly, but Augustine was wrestling with limited tools and incomplete linguistic awareness.

He knew he wasn’t reading Hebrew and tried to piece together meaning based on what was in front of him. And in his day, textual traditions were varied. Remember, even in Jesus’ time, he said to the Pharisees, “Your law says this…” implying there were already different textual streams. The very existence of Ugaritic material and the Masoretic tradition shows that by Augustine’s time, those alternate readings were out there, but inaccessible to him.

He didn’t have a library of commentaries or modern linguistics to compare. He had to decide what best served the church. And Augustine, above all, was a defender of orthodoxy. He wrote Against Heresies and became the benchmark theologian for the Western Church until the medieval period, before things like indulgences, the papacy, and purgatory became dominant.

So I think part of Augustine’s hermeneutic was pastoral and protective. He read the Bible in a way that would safeguard the core doctrines—especially the Trinity and the deity of Christ. And in that light, you can see why he’d be hesitant to emphasize divine beings in Genesis 6. To him, that might have felt like a threat to monotheism or to Christ’s uniqueness.

Now, I don’t think that’s the right way to read the Bible. For example, I’m preaching through Jude right now—only two or three verses at a time, and it’s going to take me eight weeks. When I got to the passage about Michael the archangel disputing with the devil over Moses’ body, I affirmed that narrative because scholarship like Dr. Heiser’s has recovered that supernatural worldview for us.

But Augustine didn’t have that benefit. He didn’t have 1 Enoch, he didn’t have Ugaritic parallels, he didn’t have the divine council framework. He had to choose what aligned best with the church’s creeds. And honestly, if I were in his position and had to choose between defending the doctrine of the Trinity or defending the divine council, I’d probably make the same decision.

I've got 2000 years of church history that I'm gonna lean on and defend the Trinity. I'm just thankful I'm not called to make that type of decision. That actually, I think, I think in, in many ways, the Divine Council narrative plays into early trinitarianism. So I don't need to make that distinction. I'm just saying like, I can, I can feel what Augustine was feeling when he rejected these sorts of supernatural interpretations of Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32, and a number of other passages too.

Nikola: Yeah, and thank you for that clarification. So basically, we should be more graceful because, like you said, we have way more tablets, ancient manuscripts, Bible commentaries, and all these experts from different fields of theology that can help us compare the text and come up with the best exegesis that we can.

And Dr. Heiser many times mentions the following when it comes to the Church Fathers. He says most of them did not have Hebrew. And not only that, they did not have the original Hebrew manuscripts. So the best they knew and could exegete was what they had. Sometimes it would be perfect. And if they didn’t know Hebrew, they didn’t know. I would say that most of them knew Greek, but that’s a different story when it comes to the Old Testament—it was different.

I think this is very beneficial because, like you said, Dr. Heiser is not blaming Augustine or attacking him, but giving us a very important historical narrative and context. Like, why did Genesis 6 and others start dropping down their supernatural worldview and understanding? Well, it’s because of Augustine, and then you’re giving us the further explanation—if he had to defend orthodoxy and he’s coming back from this certain religious sect, then it makes sense.

So I would say that’s all beneficial, and it helps us when it comes to combat these things and wrestle with them to come up with the best possible solution without attacking any of the Church Fathers, because even though they were an authority, they were not the authority. Sometimes they even disagreed with each other on a number of things. Yet we love them, we read them, and we find them to be very important for our theological growth and as a source of information.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I would just say one other thing too, like about Enoch. We love Enoch, right? I wrote a book called The Watchers and the Holy Ones. It’s the good part—the first book of 1 Enoch, the Watchers narrative. And I recommend that to anybody who hasn’t dug into it and really just wants to wrestle with it for the first time. And if you have dug into it, then go get Heiser’s commentaries.

But as an introduction to Enoch, I think it’s really helpful because it helps you understand that it’s pop literature. It feels so old to us. People are always asking, how come Enoch isn’t in the Bible? Look how important it is, look how much you know. Why isn’t it in the Bible? Well, because it was never a question whether we should put it in the Bible.

I would be mortified if somebody wanted to put one of my books into the Bible. You know what I mean? Absolutely not. It doesn’t mean that I think my books are bad or that they’re not important in some ways, but it’s not Scripture. I know that in every way that God has called me and empowered me by his Holy Spirit to write, I’m not doing the same thing as Paul when he wrote Romans.

So we have to understand that, in their mind, Enoch was new—it was contemporary pop literature. And we have to be somewhat sensitive to that and let it be what it is. It does become important context for understanding what’s happening, especially in Jude and Peter. I would say also in Revelation—there’s nothing close to Revelation in the Bible, at least not as close as Enoch.

But anyway, yeah. So love Enoch, but not Scripture.

Nikola: Yeah, and also I think that it’ll be important to mention, even though the book came out later and was probably written and added by a number of authors, I would say that the original beginning, or the first book of 1 Enoch, probably orally originates. It has very early origins; it wasn’t just written down until much later. But I think that’s important to mention. I think it was highly valuable in the Jewish tradition. Even though it wasn’t part of their Scripture, they would always think in those forms—like, “Hey, look what happened to Enoch,” or “Look at the imprisonment of these entities.”

So again, this is not Scripture, but just as for Paul, Greek poets and philosophers were not Scripture, yet he quotes them in the book of Acts. I think all this brings a very beautiful way of expressing yourself and communicating the gospel message through different people, different audiences, in different times and cultures, in the language they can understand. Because for you as an American, for me as a European, if you tell me about the NFL, okay, no big deal. But if you tell me about soccer, I’m like, “Oh yeah, tell me more—give me some biblical cross sections,” and all that. It can be food, it can be anything.

I love how different authors use their skills and their way of living and culture to say, “Hey, by the way, this, this, and this.” And many of the things, like you were saying in the beginning of the podcast, were written as polemics. So, yeah, I do know that you have Chaos, I know that you have Lotan or Leviathan, I do know that you have all these gods. I know that Baal is the rider of the clouds. But let me correct this and put it in proper perspective and context. When I imagine I’m Moses, writing this, I’m going to say that Yahweh is the rider of the clouds, and I’m going to correct that.

Those tohu and bohu and other things in Genesis 1, and chaos—God did not have to wrestle with chaos like other entities in their myths or their divine councils. In the Bible, everything is subdued under God’s supremacy. And it’s so beautiful because it’s like, who is like Yahweh?

So I think that’s it. It’s a beautiful way how God allowed different characters with their different perspectives, different styles of speaking, and different eras to write and pen the Scripture. Of course, being inspired by the Holy Spirit and writing in a way that may not make sense to us if we don’t study it. It absolutely doesn’t make sense. But to the original recipients of that time, they’re like, “Oh yeah, of course Yahweh is the rider of the clouds, because my neighbors five miles away are saying it’s Baal.” So, no—it’s Yahweh.

That’s why I appreciate all of these writings, but even more, the way that we’re called to study. Dr. Heiser emphasized that gentle call to study the background of different biblical passages.

Nikola: Switching to pages 132 to 134, this is another new entry in the expanded edition.

Anthony Delgado: I like this part.

Nikola: Yeah. Here we are talking about Hebrew morphology for the Nephilim, and Dr. Heiser is answering another critique—not of his work specifically, but of the divine council idea in general—because many scholars try to say that the word Nephilim, broken down by Hebrew grammar, could mean “the fallen ones.” But he’s saying, first, that’s not the proper grammar. Second, if you go and see how it was translated in the Septuagint, they rendered it gigantes—giants—because they understood what Nephilim referred to.

Also, in Mesopotamian religion and culture, if this concept is applied, it makes far more sense than just saying they’re “the fallen ones.” I mean, are they fallen in their nature, just like Satan? Of course. But that’s not the primary meaning. So what is your summary or best understanding of this new section?

Anthony Delgado: So I think the disagreement stems from this modern, materialistic notion of trying to de-supernaturalize the Bible. I think when people argue that Nephilim means “fallen ones,” and so the Nephilim are just fallen humans—they’re mighty men, they’re equated with the gibborim (which, by the way, the Septuagint also equates with the Nephilim)—they want to make them just men who were good warriors, or men who were warrior kings or chieftains, or something like that. And I think it really stems from a de-supernaturalized presupposition.

What’s interesting is that, and this is what I’ve said before, to be fair, a lot of the people who argue that will put themselves in the category of conservative scholarship. But what they’re actually doing is being liberal on the other side of things. Because what they’re doing is the same thing that liberals do: they say, “Well, it means this, and so it can only mean this, and it can never mean anything else.” They’re making a non sequitur—they’re not following the logic of the argument.

So I do struggle with this, because Heiser seems to say it doesn’t mean “fallen ones” in any way, shape, or form, but then you read other good Hebrew scholars who say it absolutely means “fallen ones.” And I struggle with that because I don’t have a PhD in ancient Semitic languages, so I don’t know how to parse that. I sort of don’t know who to trust.

But I do understand story. And in fact, that’s what my channels are all about—understanding the biblical metanarrative and meganarrative, and how things fit into the narrative of Scripture. My channel is called Biblical Reenchantment because the center of my ministry is about showing people the authentic supernatural worldview of the Bible.

So I’m trying to balance that with what different Hebrew scholars are saying. What I’m afraid of doing is saying, “Oh, Heiser is more supernatural, so he must be right.” That’s what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to say, “Heiser agrees with my suppositions, therefore Heiser is right,” because I’m always going to lean toward the supernatural, but I also want to exegete the text rightly.

My tendency on this disagreement—does it mean “giants” or “fallen ones”?—is to say, as you hinted a moment ago, why can’t it mean “fallen giants”? They are fallen ones, and often that’s what we see, because the Nephilim—it’s only used twice in Scripture. When it appears in Genesis, it looks like a class of being, but when it’s used later, it might refer to a clan of beings, in the same way that em sometimes means “a giant” or “giants,” and sometimes seems to refer to a tribe of giants.

And that makes you go, well, which is it? I think it can have a broad connotation, where perhaps it can mean both. Titles often carry meaning in addition to identity. For example, Joshua means “Yahweh saves,” and that’s also his identity. So we could say that it only means “fallen ones,” but the identity is the giant offspring of the Watchers and human women. So I think it can be both, at least from a narrative standpoint.

Nikola: Yeah. Thank you for that. Now we are switching to the last entry of section three of the book—how does the Deuteronomy 32 worldview relate to today? Pages 149 to 152. Basically, the rhetorical question that summarizes this segment would be, “How does it matter?” Because we’re still in the spiritual war. These entities—who are far greater and stronger than your regular demons, who are not even that strong—are still prevalent. Turn your head: look at politics, culture, movies, everything. Aren’t they prevalent? They are. So how does the Deuteronomy 32 worldview relate to today? It absolutely does, because again, it’s all about spiritual warfare. And then he gives examples with Paul in Acts 17 and Isaiah 24. What would be your comment or summary of this assignment, Pastor Delgado?

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I mean, to me, I’ve always taken a supernatural bent in my pastoral ministry. Even before I went to seminary and just had a little Bible school, I felt that when people tried to explain away supernatural things, they were not taking the natural meaning of the text. So I always held a supernatural worldview. I didn’t have a divine council worldview or a Deuteronomy 32 worldview until I read Heiser and was convinced of it, but I still viewed the world supernaturally.

What’s interesting is that early in my ministry—back in my youth pastor days—the teens loved it. But adults often didn’t. It wasn’t what they were used to in evangelical communities. They were very put off by it and sometimes didn’t want me teaching it to their kids. They didn’t want me to say that tongues could be a real gift, or that there are angels in heaven watching over churches and people. They didn’t like that kind of talk because they had this very formal, disenchanted view of the Scriptures.

As time went on and I started to adopt this worldview, I think—especially looking back—that Mike believed this long before he was popular. But I think it was God’s timing, because right as The Unseen Realm came out, there was this influx of people on YouTube and elsewhere who were really seeking. You had a massive expansion of Pentecostal churches because people were starting to ask spiritual questions. They were realizing religion has to answer questions about the supernatural—it cannot all be about how to have a better marriage or better parenting skills or other practical things taught in many evangelical churches.

It has to be about something bigger. And it’s like—have you read the Bible? It’s about resurrection and life and eternity. It’s about gods and angels and demons and spirits. It’s about spiritual war. Of course it’s more than that. And that’s why I think Mike’s work exploded when it did.

Today, we can see this reflected in the decline of the megachurch movement. Megachurches are closing left and right because they can’t sustain themselves. Meanwhile, there’s been a rise in Eastern Orthodoxy, which is the most consistently mystical tradition in Christianity. And while there are reasons I’m not Orthodox—I’m not telling people to convert—Orthodoxy is growing because it has consistently maintained its mysticism. So when people started asking spiritual questions, they were standing there ready with answers.

Now you have priests on YouTube addressing these questions, and people are converting because they’re hungry for this. They’re tired of what’s happening in the world—things getting more and more illogical, with rational excuses for why things are the way they are. People are saying, “I just need God to intervene.”

That’s where I think Mike’s work comes in. It helps us see that the world’s problems aren’t just about evil humans—it’s something bigger and far more sinister. And now, through Christ, we have understanding of that and a way to escape it.

Anthony Delgado: Because I have victory in Christ, I think the most effective way to preach the gospel today is not to say, “You’re a sinner, Jesus forgives sins.” Is that true? Yes, that’s true—but that’s not the question people are asking. They’re not sitting around going, “How come I can’t be a better person?” There was a time when people were asking that. That’s not today. Today, people are saying, “There has to be a reason for this. Who has the answers?” And guess what—the answer is Jesus.

So I think that’s why it’s immensely practical. And it’s not an easy thing, because you have to understand what you’re being called to. If you look at the end of what Mike writes here, he says, You either believe you’re a part of something bigger than the reality you can discern, or you don’t. He’s saying, be a materialist who believes in the incarnation and the resurrection and nothing else supernatural—or believe what the Bible actually teaches from beginning to end.

Nikola: He even bolded the text. He was like, “Receive this message, please.”

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. He says, If you want to defeat the gods of this nation as agents of the eschatological Kingdom of God… Right? He’s like, you belong to the Kingdom of God. You are an agent sent here—you’re a secret agent sent here—to defeat evil in this world.

So stop putting your hope in the systems of this world and put your hope in the Kingdom of God. You know? That’s his whole thing. He says, do what the apostles did in the book of Acts. Believe that what happened at the Resurrection and Pentecost was real. Stop making excuses. Preach the gospel. Have all things in common.

I can’t believe how many Christians live with radical obedience to their 401k, you know what I mean?—and do not care for their brothers and sisters in Christ. They use that as an excuse. This is the very thing the Pharisees were condemned for—not caring for their own people while they took care of themselves and sought higher social status.

Go have everything in common with your people, with your church, and be willing to suffer so that someone else in your church might be blessed. I think that’s powerful. And I think Mike’s view on the Hebrew Scriptures leads us into that authentic expression of what the church is in the book of Acts.

Nikola: Okay, thank you kindly. Now we’re switching to section four of the book, between pages 164 and 167, and this is the segment that Dr. Heiser called Are There Hints of a Triune Godhead in the Old Testament? I love this section because the answer is, of course—there are hints, plural.

He gives this beautiful passage. I’m just going to read a few verses from Isaiah 63:10–14. He’s speaking about the Holy Spirit, because elsewhere he speaks about two Yahwehs—the “second power in heaven,” Jesus, being the Angel of the Lord. This is much easier to find than references to the Holy Spirit and his divinity in the Old Testament. That’s why Dr. Heiser focuses on the Holy Spirit in this small section.

“But they were the ones who rebelled and they grieved his Holy Spirit. So he became an enemy to them; he himself fought against them. Then his people remembered the days of old, of Moses. Where is the one who led them up from the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is the one who put his Holy Spirit within him, who made his magnificent arm move at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make an everlasting name for himself, who led them through the depths? They did not stumble like a horse in the desert. Like cattle that go down into the valley, the Spirit of Yahweh gave them rest. So you led your people to make for yourself a magnificent name” (Isaiah 63:10–14).

And then Dr. Heiser explains how it is obvious that the Holy Spirit is Yahweh and is God. And I’ll let you continue summarizing this section.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, I completely loved this because, for two reasons. One, I’ve just been around Heiser for a long time, so the “two powers” thinking—that is, Yahweh transcendent and Yahweh immanent in his physical expression—obviously points to the Trinity. It’s sort of a proto-Trinitarianism, not full Trinitarianism. But what Mike wanted to do here was not to say that there’s a perfect Trinitarianism in the Old Testament, because there’s not, but to show that even in the Old Testament there is reason to believe that the Holy Spirit has agency as God.

In a “Jesus only” type of setting, which is really a non-orthodox Christian cult, you have only Jesus, and Jesus is just an expression of the Father immanent. But they’re the same being—they’re not two persons in one essence. This isn’t Arianism, and it’s not two beings in one. In that view, the Holy Spirit is literally just Jesus’ spirit in the same way that you have a spirit, so the Holy Spirit isn’t a distinct person either.

What differentiates Unitarianism or Arianism from Trinitarianism is the agency of the Holy Spirit and the agency of the Father. I don’t understand how you can read the New Testament and not see the agency of the Father and the Son as being distinct, even though they are one God. I don’t understand how anyone can miss that.

But the Holy Spirit is the one that gets a little tricky sometimes. It’s clear to see in the New Testament, but here Heiser shows this parallel in the Old. He talks about Isaiah, who is describing the Exodus event, and then he includes this really interesting apparatus at the end of the section—on page 166—where he shows how Psalm 78:40–41 reflects on the same event.

In Psalm 78:40–41, it reads, “How often they rebelled” (same lemma, marah, as in Isaiah 63) “against him in the wilderness and grieved him”—God, Yahweh—“in the desert.” But Isaiah 63 says, “They grieved his Holy Spirit.” So we have parallel accounts where one says “grieved Yahweh” and the other says “grieved his Holy Spirit.” They tested God and provoked the Holy One of Israel, where in Isaiah 63 they provoked Yahweh.

He’s showing that in these two different accounts, in both the psalmist’s and Isaiah’s minds, the same thing is happening—Yahweh is the one being grieved, yet it’s the Holy Spirit who has agency as Yahweh in Israel. So it’s not wrong to say it was Yahweh who did it in Isaiah 63, and it’s not wrong for the psalmist to say it was the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is Yahweh.

This is probably the clearest example in the Old Testament that the Holy Spirit is Yahweh and has unique agency as the third person of the Trinity.

Nikola: Yeah. I know we have 25 more minutes, so let’s switch to page 219. I know you wanted to add something on the approaches to the Atonement, which is basically a small entry that Dr. Heiser included—or rather, the editors did. It’s just a small section on page 219. But, Pastor Anthony, you wanted to add something when it comes to the Atonement theory.

Anthony Delgado: I mostly wanted to say amen to the way Dr. Heiser deals with the Atonement, because there’s a tendency in biblical theology today to insist on a strict left-to-right reading of the Bible. And so if you can’t find a particular idea in Leviticus, for example—or in Genesis—where atonement is mentioned, then if you find that idea in the New Testament, it’s the New Testament understanding that’s considered wrong. It’s this strict left-to-right reading that a lot of biblical theologians are insisting on.

I think that’s sort of a sentiment that hangs over from a previous dispensationalist mindset. Because dispensational hermeneutics—usually called the grammatical-historical method—insists on a strict left-to-right reading. They don’t actually want to see Christ in the Old Testament because he hasn’t been incarnate yet. So only in certain prophetic passages where it’s clear and they’re speaking futuristically. But we don’t want to see Christ doing anything in the Old Testament. They want to keep the covenants separate, which means, technically, they maintain discontinuity between the old and the new covenants.

And so I think some of that sentiment—that you can’t be a biblical theologian and be a dispensationalist—I just don’t see how you can do it. There’s only one narrative of Scripture if you subscribe to a historical form of covenant theology, where you’re tracing through the Testaments. And if anybody wants to hang me out to dry for saying that, I apologize, but I just don’t see how you can do it.

What we’re seeing here in Heiser’s view is that he’s not willing to say you have to do a strict left-to-right reading. He does value it, but he also acknowledges that you’re going to take your text and read it in the context of the whole. For Heiser, the atonement is multifaceted and based on individual context in different settings—whether that be an Israelite in the Tabernacle in the wilderness offering a sin sacrifice for atonement, or the Day of Atonement, which is a corporate setting.

If you’re trying to compare the Day of Atonement to the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, and you’re trying to create some kind of consistency there, I think all those patterns exist—and they’re right. But Mike would also say that doesn’t mean when we get to the New Testament and start to see how the New Testament authors put these patterns together in the context of substitution—specifically as this platform he mentions here—that we shouldn’t recognize Christ’s substitution in certain narratives of the Old Testament.

Probably the most famous is when Abraham is going to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the goat is substituted by Yahweh. We should see that, even though there’s no explicit clue that it has anything to do with the Messiah or the crucifixion in Genesis, as a pattern that traces through the Day of Atonement, all the way through the Old Testament, and into the gospel narratives.

So I just want to say amen to that. That’s my book—The Gospel Is Bigger Than You Think. I don’t want to say that because A is right, B is wrong. Why not A, B, and C? Heiser even acknowledges certain parts of ransom theory of the atonement—not that the devil is owed anything—but he wants to acknowledge that there’s something to the multifaceted nature of atonement.

And why not? Why not believe that Christ’s work accomplishes more than we can ever think or imagine? I think you’re so funny always putting those up—you’re faster than me and obviously more tech-savvy.

Nikola: Rather, I’m trying to advertise you so that people will get to know your podcast and your Amazon page and your ministry more, because you deserve it.

Anthony Delgado: Well, you’re a blessing. I appreciate that.

Nikola: Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing to what you already said. What I also loved about Dr. Heiser is that he said, “Hey, listen, there is no church creed that tells you that you must subscribe to just one view of atonement.” He says, “I’m fine with Christus Victor. I’m fine with the substitutionary atonement theory.”

Anthony Delgado: Yeah.

Nikola: He says, “I’m fine with both of them. Why not believe in both?” And he never stops there—he says, “What about more? Who’s stopping you from believing in more than one?” It’s not like this would make you a heretic or get you kicked out of the Kingdom of God. If you can put a couple, or even three of them, into one large understanding of the Kingdom of God—why not? Because God’s Word is not always that simple. Theology is not simple.

And what is theology except for theos and logos—the Word of God, Christ? Proclaiming the Word of God—and for us, as little Christs, understanding that and trying to preach and teach sound doctrine. If you want to be like Christ, one of the things is to teach right doctrine. Maybe people wouldn’t all agree with me about that, but it’s not the most important thing—just like it may not be the most important thing which atonement theory you subscribe to.

But I love what he said: “Listen, there’s no church or council where, when you go there, they’ll say you must believe only this or you won’t be saved.” And that’s what I also liked about him.

Okay, switching to part five—we are slowly coming to the end of this podcast. We’re switching to pages 234 to 239, and this section deals with Genesis 6. Of course, the first subtitle is What Were the Nephilim?

He says, “Listen, the Bible doesn’t tell us what they were not—it tells us what they were, and only gives a few details.” So try not to add too much to that. When it comes to the biblical text, we’re told very little about the Nephilim.

First, they’re the product of the sons of God and human women—that is, there was some sort of supernatural causation behind their existence.

Second, they were tall warriors.

And third, they are described as people—men, humans.

Then he starts expanding: just as in the Incarnation, Jesus was fully man but not only man, you can say the Nephilim were more than men in a way, but primarily they were men. Maybe we can add that they were hybrid-like, but that’s not the point. The point is that the Bible calls these beings men.

Anthony Delgado: Correct.

Nikola: They maybe didn’t have pure genetics or DNA as humans, but as Dr. Heiser says here, that wasn’t even in the mind of early Jewish writers because they didn’t know anything about genetics or DNA. So maybe we can start talking about what the Nephilim were, and then we can cover this theory of them appearing after the flood. The subtitle here is The Bad Seed?

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I completely agree with Heiser on the DNA thing. I think we need to stop looking for giant DNA. The Nephilim are hybrids of the Watchers—the “gods,” if you will, or the sons of God—and human women. They were beloved by their Watcher parents. They wanted children like men had children. They were jealous of men, and we see that same kind of jealousy in the mythology surrounding the serpent, the devil. There was jealousy that God had given a special place to humankind that these divine beings didn’t share, and that led to a lack of understanding and rebellion.

So that’s the narrative—they came down. And I do think they took women without permission. I don’t think it was some mutual arrangement. I think it’s more like Zeus than anything else. And to be honest, Zeus is a serial rapist.

Nikola: We called him a pimp on the last podcast, on Friday.

Anthony Delgado: Oh yeah, that too. Zeus is not a good example of divinity.

Nikola: When you check all these old gods, especially the Greek and Roman ones—Pan, too—they’re nothing more than pimps. They’re drunkards. They’re lustful. They’re exchanging women. They’re nothing more than promiscuous men. Why? Because these gods were made in man’s image—unlike in the Bible, where man is made in the image of God. That’s why you see such a difference. You can’t even compare Yahweh to Zeus.

Anthony Delgado: Correct. And that’s exactly what’s happening here. We should think of Zeus, Dionysus, and all those figures when we think of the 200 Watchers coming down to take human women and have children with them. And it doesn’t turn out well in Greek mythology either. Hercules, for example, kills his entire family. So there’s all kinds of destruction that comes from these unions.

We should think the same way about the Watchers who came down. Now, I don’t think—and Heiser teaches this too—that we should take all of the cultural mythologies and read them directly into the biblical giants. Because when you get to the actual descriptions, Heiser prefers the Septuagint rendering—“four cubits and a span” for their height—which puts them at about six and a half feet tall. Not super giant, but still tall, especially since the average person then was much shorter.

Think of when the Israelites were told they’d have a king back in Deuteronomy. It wasn’t an issue that they wanted a king, but they said they wanted a king “like the nations.” That means they wanted a Nephilim—a giant warrior-king. Think of Goliath. Who is Goliath? He’s a chieftain of the Philistines, the biggest, strongest man—so he gets to be in charge.

That’s what Israel wanted. They wanted to do what the Watchers taught them—to war like the nations, to gain power for themselves. But that didn’t go well. They found Saul, who was head and shoulders above every other Israelite. In other words, he was like a Rephaim. Now, I can’t prove Saul had any kind of divine blood, but for all intents and purposes, he was an Israelite who was a giant—bigger than everyone else.

So that’s who they are. They’re called gibborim at times, which means “mighty men.” They’re great warriors who war on earth to cause tyranny and corruption.

You wanted to talk about the Bad Seed idea—because that’s what people always ask about, right?

Nikola: Yeah, but let me just give the context, because we switched topics—it’s the same chapter, but just to give context to the audience who don’t have the book yet. The question is, how did the Nephilim, or the giants, continue after the flood? So, at the bottom of page 235, Dr. Heiser gives three potential answers.

He says, “Well, I noted several possible trajectories that could yield an answer.”

The first one is that the flood was a localized regional event.

Number two, the behavior of Genesis 6:1–4 happened after the flood as well. This possibility is derived from a grammatical consideration with respect to the asher clause of Genesis 6:4. And I think here we can add that we’ve covered this in a number of topics related to the so-called divine ritual—divine sexual rituals that were performed in the ancient Near East.

For example, in some of these rituals, a king would sleep with a temple prostitute who was believed to be possessed by her deity or goddess, so that the child born from that union would be two-thirds divine. The king would represent godhood, the priestess would embody the goddess, and the child would be the result of that union—a half-divine being, like Gilgamesh, described as two-thirds divine and one-third human.

So that’s the second explanation, and we’ve covered this in several past podcasts, so we won’t spend much more time on it here.

But I was surprised by number three—the bad seed, quote-unquote, was carried through the flood in Noah’s bloodline, either through him or one of his sons. That view is reflected in ancient literature but is something of an aberration.

Then Heiser goes on to explain that idea of Noah carrying the bad seed. Thankfully, he doesn’t agree with it. But you know what shocked me, Pastor Anthony? Honestly, before reading this section in the new expanded version of the book, I thought for years that this was only what conspiracy people—religious “loonies” on podcasts—believed. But actually, Dr. Heiser quotes some scholars who have discussed and wrestled with the same topic.

I was like, man, even though crazy religious podcasters might still talk about their conspiracies, I thought this idea originated from them. But I was actually surprised to see that there are real scholars who’ve explored this. And thankfully, again, Dr. Heiser, by the end of the article, disagrees with that view. But yeah, now if you can please continue.

Anthony Delgado: I would say of those three views, I think the strongest one is the second—that it continued to happen. I see no reason why the Deuteronomy 32 gods of the nations wouldn’t do exactly what the other sons of God did before, especially when they’re already endorsing all types of immorality on the earth in the first place. And it gives credence to the idea that kings are called sons of God as well.

We see that in a lot of the ancient cultures—that the kings or emperors of nations or kingdoms are considered sons of their gods. Even in Rome, after their deaths, they were then divinized and said to be among the stars in heaven. You see that same pattern.

I think the problem with the first view—that the flood was a localized or regional event—is that, again, I’m a story guy, I’m a narrative guy. I don’t want to say the flood was localized because I don’t think we should be using science to interpret the narratives of Scripture. So I absolutely reject that one. Heiser does not reject it, and I respect that—a lot of biblical theologians like the idea because it makes sense of some of the scientific data alongside the biblical data, and that’s fine.

But I think it destroys the narrative if we don’t have a full-earth destruction. It damages the weight of what the story is teaching us about human wickedness. That’s why I reject the first one.

The third one—the bad seed narrative—I have a problem with that because it’s really just idle speculation. It comes out of the Genesis Apocryphon from the Second Temple period. It’s an Aramaic text, probably written during or shortly after the exile, maybe a hundred years after. And at that time, there were a lot of texts circulating—some good, some not so good.

For example, we have things like the Assumption of Moses and 1 Enoch. These are referenced in Jude and Peter, and they don’t teach anything super controversial. They help answer certain gaps we find in Scripture, so they seem useful. But a lot of the other literature floating around then was very destructive—both to early Christian theology and to Jewish theology. So largely, everyone rejects things like the Genesis Apocryphon.

So I don’t go with the bad seed narrative—but it does make for a good movie. That’s what they went with in the Noah film, right? They had Gilgamesh or some other figure hanging onto the side of the ark. Actually, that wasn’t even the bad seed idea—it was the “survivor” theory, where someone hangs on the side of the boat and lives through the flood.

Nikola: Yeah, and thankfully Heiser didn’t mention that one. But you can still find it on religious podcasts—people saying, “What if some of the giants were hiding on top of the ark?” Seriously—they’ll say they were just up there the whole time, hiding and fasting for forty days, and no one smelled them or heard them!

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, absolutely. And listen, 3M listeners—you’re not going to interpret the Bible correctly through idle speculation.

You’re not going to get there by coming up with a question and then answering it out of your own creativity. We need to have real scholarship behind what we say. And that’s what the bad seed narrative was—someone in the Second Temple period trying to make sense of something. But I think the very strong argument is simply that they kept doing it. It just seems obvious to me, because then you have Goliath, who’s a chieftain among the Philistines. It just makes sense.

Nikola: Yeah, and I think even though the Bible doesn’t mention giants after David and his people deal with them, that could have easily spread throughout the globe. First, because they fled, and second, through those divine sexual rites that were being performed everywhere in the world. I know it’s kind of a fringe topic—well, welcome to 3M. That’s what we do all the time. We cover fringe topics every day. But I think it’s not impossible, because other scholars beyond Heiser talk about divine sexual rites—including those priests on the Lord of Spirits podcast. So there must be something to it.

Opening Music: Yeah.

Nikola: But because we have ten minutes left, let’s switch to section six, pages 285 to 286. Here Dr. Heiser speaks about the giant clans and Greek Titan mythology. He’s basically saying, “Hey, why compare what happened in Genesis 6 with much later Greek mythology and the Titans? Sure, there are similarities, but there are also many differences. Wouldn’t it make more sense to compare Genesis 6 with Mesopotamian religion and mythology?” What would you add to that?

Anthony Delgado: Well, I think the reason people want to synchronize—or at least compare and contrast—with Greek mythology is because that’s the context of the New Testament.

In the Exodus narratives, back when those texts were written, we’re comparing and thinking about Egyptian mythologies. Then when we move into the Promised Land, we’re dealing with Canaanite and, to a degree, Phoenician mythologies when we look at the Philistine nations down in Gaza and surrounding regions. So you start to see all that context unfolding there.

But in the time of Jesus, we’re dealing with Greek mythologies. For a short time, the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great controlled the Promised Land. So it makes sense that we’d have these kinds of questions.

And it’s not that these are distant mythologies that just happen to coincide on certain ideas—they’re happening side by side in the same world. I think that’s worth pointing out. But we should not interpret the biblical narrative according to the Greek narrative.

A good example of this is in the New Testament, where the Hebrew word for Sheol gets replaced with the Greek word Hades. They’re similar ideas, but when a Jewish or early Christian writer says Hades, they don’t mean there’s a god named Hades ruling an underworld. They’re just using the Greek linguistic equivalent to express a Hebrew concept.

He’s ruling, but they don’t mean all of it. They don’t have the river Styx and all that imagery. They also refer to the pit or the abyss as Tartarus, but that’s not the same thing. It doesn’t mean that everything about Tartarus applies—like, you’ve got what’s-his-name rolling his rock up the hill in Tartarus? No. We don’t bring all of that in. We just say, “Look, we have a similar idea over here, and we’re going to use this word because right now, we’re speaking Greek.”

That’s a little bit controversial because everyone says, “No, they spoke Aramaic.” That’s a topic for another day, but I think Jesus spoke a whole lot of Greek—as a matter of fact, I think he spoke both Greek and Aramaic—but a whole lot of Greek. And the New Testament writers wrote in Greek for a reason.

So we’ve got a lot going on here where you have to engage on a certain level, but you always bring it back to biblical theology. The New Testament authors did this all the time. They could say Hades or Tartarus, and the audience understood that they did not mean the Greek myths.

Here’s an example. If I go on a missions trip to an Islamic nation and let’s say I speak Arabic, and I say “Heaven,” speaking of the intermediate state in biblical theology—when I say that, they hear Abode of God, but they’re hearing their Abode of God, not mine. They hear the Islamic Abode of God, not the Christian Abode of God.

So what’s happening in this context is simply the use of the language of the people of the day, but with biblical meaning. They’re borrowing vocabulary, not theology. And if it ever needs to diverge, that’s where explanation comes in: “We don’t really believe that about Hades; we believe this.” You see that kind of clarification in the Greek Fathers, who often wrote to make these distinctions clear. They’d say, “That’s not biblical theology—that’s Greek mythology. We use the same word, but we mean something different.”

So I think that’s what’s happening here when we talk about the Titans. We’re going to see some similarities, and we’ll be tempted to syncretize, but we have to be careful.

In Greek mythology, you have Uranus and Gaia, the primordial gods. When heaven meets earth, they give birth to giants. Symbolically, that’s true in the biblical sense—when heaven (the sons of God) came down to earth and took human women, they produced giants. We can acknowledge that parallel.

But then, on the very next page of the mythology, it completely diverges from the Bible. And that’s because, while these are shared ancient ideas, they didn’t arise in the same context. They go in different directions. We have divine revelation of the one true God, the Almighty, inspiring our Scriptures by the Holy Spirit. At best, their myths reflect rebellion and distortion.

That’s the key difference: our text carries divine authority; theirs doesn’t. So we don’t read ours through theirs. Yet we can still say, “Okay, we see where these ideas were present across cultures.” The narratives show that kind of overlap.

An interesting point here is that Paul, and other New Testament authors, actually used Greek mythology to point people to the truth about God. Two places stand out. The first is the one everyone knows—Mars Hill.

At Mars Hill, Paul says, “I see that you are very religious. You have all these gods, but let me tell you about this altar to the Unknown God.” That altar existed in ancient Greek thought. The Greeks asked the same questions atheists do today: if heaven and earth are the primordial sources, where did they come from? Who made them?

What Paul is saying is, “Yes, your gods were created—but there is a God who is higher, the uncreated God.”

I worship him, right? And he’s making a claim of authority over their gods. The other thing we see—and this has more to do with the Jewish context, particularly with the Alexandrian Jews—is what happened when they translated what we today call the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

So, Heiser says that Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew reads something like, “When God began to create, the heavens and the earth were formless and void,” rather than how we typically read it in English, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And you might ask, “Well, then why do we translate it that way in English?”

Well, because in the Septuagint, the Greek translation says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” But here’s what’s fascinating: I believe the reason they translated it that way—essentially “mistranslated” it—was to make it a polemic against Greek mythology.

If you read it in Greek, it’s a double entendre. It would sound like, “In the beginning, God created Ouranos and Gaia”—the primordial gods of Greek myth. So the translator is intentionally saying, “Our God created your gods.” It’s this brilliant polemical move, showing theological supremacy through linguistic nuance.

And I think what those translators did is exactly what we need to do when engaging with Greek mythologies today—not to syncretize them, but to explain their context through the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. That worldview gives us the framework to say, “Yes, I see the overlap—but let me tell you why these mythologies exist in the first place.”

Nikola: That makes sense. It does. We’re almost done.

Nikola: [Reading from the book] “Astral Theology and the New Testament,” section seven, pages 336–340, says the following:

“In this chapter, I raised the issue of how astronomy and ancient astral religion or theology relates to events in the New Testament. Astral theology for serious or orthodox Jews and Christians was not astrology as we experience it today. Modern astrology is thoroughly pagan as it assigns fate to nature. The presumptions in ancient Jewish and Christian astral theology were biblically sound, namely that, as Creator of the celestial objects, God put them there not only to mark time but also to assert his sovereignty over what happens in time—the course of human history. Serious Jews and Christians rejected astrological ideas such as the notion that the stars determined an individual’s fate, primarily because the idea impinged upon or violated the sovereignty of God. But they did not reject the notion that celestial objects could be understood as messaging divine intent or the playing out of God’s sovereignty for the wise to understand. In a pre-scientific context, it was assumed that God was behind the movement or stillness of celestial objects and their formation as constellations. Celestial objects that moved were perceived as divine beings in God’s service or in rebellion. The biblical Daniel provides a model here for how these ideas are circumscribed by biblical theology.”

I wanted to read this because it’s so beautiful, and it’s better we explain that now. By the way, last December we did an episode on how the constellations and the stars can actually speak the gospel, and hopefully this December we’ll do a sequel—covering all twelve constellations and showing which one represents what. We’re doing that by connecting them with Christian biblical authors who link the constellations to the gospel message: this one represents Mary, this one Jesus, this one Satan, and so on.

When I started studying that, I was amazed—before God even gave us the written Word, he placed the gospel message in the stars. The ancient people, who didn’t have light pollution, could see the night sky and perceive so many of these gospel images. God put it there before he gave us the written text. That’s amazing.

Any additional comment on astral theology and how it was so different from modern astrology? And also, I remember Dr. Heiser mentioning how, for the ancient people—not just the Jews but all ancient cultures—astronomy and astrology were closely connected. They weren’t like today’s horoscopes about luck, love, or money. It was far deeper and more theological.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m not an expert on this, but I’ll tell you there are some really interesting biblical-theological things when it comes to the stars. And you’re right—this wasn’t like, “Oh, no wonder my stomach is upset today because the stars are out of alignment.” That kind of stuff is utter nonsense. And I think most people actually know that; they just like it for the same reason they like the Myers-Briggs personality test or the Enneagram—because it makes you feel like you have answers for something, even though it’s not really giving you answers for anything.

No, the stars were definitely perceived to give real answers. They were seen as prophetic, as a kind of revelation—a way of understanding how the world operates under divine order. In the ancient world, you have what’s called a three-tiered cosmology.

There’s an appendix added to the expanded edition of the book that lays this out beautifully, and I think it’s one of the most helpful parts because it explains how the ancient mind worked. I don’t necessarily think that if you could go back to ancient times and ask, “Do you really think the earth is flat?” that they would even understand what you mean. They might say “yes,” but they wouldn’t mean it in a scientific sense like we would today. They would understand it as a theological and practical question, not a scientific one.

So in their cosmology, you have heaven, earth, and the abyss—the watery underworld. Humans live between heaven and earth; we don’t live in earth. We live between heaven and earth. The mountain of God is the place where heaven and earth meet. We don’t become part of the earth until we die—“from dust you came and to dust you will return.” Until then, we live in tension between heaven and earth, always ready to respond to the gospel of Christ.

When we speak of astral theology, we’re not talking about ignorance or superstition. People weren’t naïve about science. Even in the ancient and pre-modern world, you see thinkers challenging the assumptions of cosmology. The church later resisted some of those challenges, partly because they knew that if you start talking about the earth orbiting the sun, it changes theology—it changes how people visualize God’s ordering of creation.

So when we say the stars are teaching, that they proclaim truth, that’s very much in line with Daniel and the wise men—who, by the way, were Persians, pagans who followed the stars, and that’s how they were led to Christ. The stars do preach the gospel. They testify to God’s ordered cosmos, and they confirm that he governs creation according to truth.

That’s what’s really happening here. When we look at ancient cosmology through biblical eyes, we begin to understand something about the abode of God above the heavens and how he orders the heavens and the earth under his sovereignty.

Anthony Delgado: Under the earth—yes. The one weakness I think about these cosmology charts, and I think Dante is right about this, is that when, in Dante’s cosmology, when he ascends out of Paradise, he reaches what he calls the Empyrean Paradise—the pure essence of God. But in most of these charts, it always looks like what you have up there now, where God is simply above.

It’s not that God is above; it’s that God is beyond creation. All creation is wrapped, in every way, in the essence of God. There’s nothing in heaven or on earth or under the earth that isn’t in the domain of Christ. That’s what Paul tells us in Philippians 2, and that’s what Jesus is referring to when he says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

So everything is enveloped in God. And when we see the stars, it’s impossible to think that anything in the cosmos is ordered in any way other than how God orders it. That’s how I perceive these astrological or cosmological things.

And as humans—well, I’m losing my voice, so I guess it’s time—as humans, if we’re trying to interpret the stars from our own reason, folklore, or imagination, we’re doing it wrong. God already wrote us a book that tells us how to interpret the stars, and we have it right there: the Bible.

Nikola: Pastor Delgado, it’s been a blast. Thank you for your time—and sorry for going a little over two hours. This has been our review of The Unseen Realm: Expanded Edition.

The cheapest version you can get is on Christianbook.com—a little over $20. On Amazon, it’s about $26, and if you have Prime, you don’t pay for shipping. Either way, it’s a great investment.

I’d give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. I love the design—beautiful cover, great font. Some people ask, “Do you even care about that?” Yes, I do! The book even smells great—for those who love the scent of new books or magazines, you’ll enjoy this one.

The only reason I’m not giving it 5 out of 5 is because, while every entry is solid, many chapters don’t have new additions. I just wish there was more. Dr. Heiser said so much more in his PDFs and on his podcasts. I know it would’ve been impossible to include everything—it would have been a 10,000-page book and probably cost a thousand dollars—but I still wish a few more entries were expanded for clarity, especially on topics where he was often misunderstood or criticized.

So that’s my only minor critique—it’s not even a complaint, just a desire for more information. When you read it, you just want to keep going. I wish they had included more of what he said in his podcast episodes and articles from his website.

So, Pastor Anthony, what grade would you give the book? I think on your website you gave it five out of five—and any closing thoughts?

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, I gave it five out of five. Because anything that Dr. Heiser does, I love. You called him a pastor earlier—and you’re actually right. He was an elder of a church, which means he was a pastor. And if you ever met him—I'm not sure if you have—he was so pastoral in how he approached people. He wasn’t one of those arrogant, “let me teach you” types of scholars. He was humble, gentle, and genuinely loved people. He was a wonderful man.

So I love everything he did, and I know that everything he wrote, including what’s in this book, he did authentically. He never wrote to elevate himself. He wasn’t trying to stir controversy or get attention. He didn’t even want attention. He simply realized that what he discovered during his PhD research was important, and he wanted to share it with others. People resonated with it—and that’s how this all spread.

For that reason, I gave it five out of five.

I do agree with you that the book could have been longer. I don’t think it would have hurt to include a few more expansions. Everything here was written by Mike himself—he wanted to add the bibliography and these notes—but personally, I think it would’ve been fine for an editor at Lexham to supplement certain parts using material from his podcasts, lectures, or other writings. It’s easy enough to find where he elaborated on some of these ideas elsewhere.

So I sort of agree with you—but that’s a selfish wish, because I just wanted more. If it were the size of my Dante here, I’d be really happy. But even as it stands, I just love it.

And I really appreciate you having me on. I’d love to come back and chat again. Sunday nights are tough sometimes, but we’ll make it happen when we can.

Nikola: Yeah, we’ll see—maybe Friday or Sunday evening in a few weeks or a month. We’ll be dissecting your latest book. And I’ll just invite the audience to please check the links provided for this podcast episode.

On one link, you’ll find Pastor Anthony’s website—where you can buy his books and read his articles—and on the other, his YouTube channel. Please subscribe to both. It doesn’t cost you anything, but it means a lot to us. Trust me—people like Pastor Anthony, myself, and others put time, money, and energy into providing this content for free.

Your subscription, your like, your comment—it means so much. Even a simple kind comment like, “Wow, I didn’t know this,” or “This changed my life,” encourages us deeply. You can’t buy that kind of encouragement, but we carry those words in our hearts. That’s how we know the hard work is paying off—not financially, but spiritually.

So God bless you. Take care. We’ll see you Friday with another fringe topic episode, this time with Sean and Pastor Delgado. God bless you, brother—looking forward to it.

Anthony Delgado: God bless you as well.