Re: Naked Bible 122: Ezekiel 14-15
Right in the middle of this podcast, roughly the 20:00 mark, Heiser begins talking about Ezekiel 14. Later at the 30:00 mark he raises a couple of small issues that I want to address. In Ezekiel 14, the prophet relates how the community elders came to seek reassurance that God was going to restore them to their homeland. The Lord responds that as long as they continue in their idolatry, they would all die in Babylon. They had erected their idols in their hearts, so Jehovah was not their sovereign Lord.
12 The word of the LORD came to me:
13 “Son of man, suppose a country sins against me by being unfaithful, and I stretch out my hand against it, cut off its bread supply, cause famine to come on it, and kill both people and animals.
14 Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would save only their own lives by their righteousness, declares the sovereign LORD.
15 “Suppose I were to send wild animals through the land and kill its children, leaving it desolate, without travelers due to the wild animals.
16 Even if these three men were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign LORD, they could not save their own sons or daughters; they would save only their own lives, and the land would become desolate.
17 “Or suppose I were to bring a sword against that land and say, ‘Let a sword pass through the land,’ and I were to kill both people and animals.
18 Even if these three men were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign LORD, they could not save their own sons or daughters — they would save only their own lives.
19 “Or suppose I were to send a plague into that land, and pour out my rage on it with bloodshed, killing both people and animals.
20 Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign LORD, they could not save their own son or daughter; they would save only their own lives by their righteousness.” (NET)
Notice the three major figures of faith: Noah, Daniel and Job.
How would Ezekiel have known about Daniel? I can agree that Daniel’s prophecy was not published in writing until after his death. But why would it be necessary to have a written copy in order for Daniel to be famous to Ezekiel’s audience? As Hesier notes, Daniel arrived in the first wave of exiles, roughly 605 BC. Ezekiel was in the second wave of deportees, roughly 597 BC, some twelve years later.
Does it seem so improbable that Daniel would have written home at least once or twice during that time, testifying of God’s miracles? We have ample evidence of a regular imperial courier service, along with private couriers being permitted. Also, does it seem so improbable that his fame was spread across the empire in that length of time? I’m not the only one to suggest this; I learned it from PhDs at Biblical Studies schools. Why would Heiser ignore it?
As for Job, it’s the same issue we’ve noted before: The oral lore behind Hebrew Scripture existed long before it was published in written form. The story of Job could easily be quite ancient, and it’s the content, not the grammar of the Hebrew Book of Job, that causes us to believe it’s one of the oldest narratives in Scripture, predating Mount Sinai.
This was the same issue real scholars have raised concerning the Book of Enoch. The reason the Second Temple rabbis and scribes could write the Book of Enoch is because it was part of the common oral lore that Israel carried around over the centuries. If the Talmud wasn’t written for several centuries, does it not indicate that the Hebrew people were comfortable with keeping track of a body of oral traditions?
Sometimes I’m quite puzzled by the unspoken biases I see in Heiser’s output.
I would also argue (speculate, really) that likely it wasn’t all oral transmission of Job, for example. There could have been written versions that simply didn’t survive. There’s lots of ways they could’ve been lost, exiles and temple destructions notwithstanding. I have zero idea how the writing process was commonly done back then, so this idea could be all nonsense, but I’m thinking about it because those non-surviving written copies would lead the OT writers to think a different way about the stories than if they only had oral traditions to go by.