Like All the Rest

Posted on November 16, 2025 by ehurst

So, you’ve noticed the political turmoil in the US. The only thing certain is that it will get worse. In the wider Radix Fidem community, we tend to agree that God is not tipping His hand on the specifics. That’s because they don’t matter, in the sense that none of them points to any key issues of faith and morals. All of them together are simply the death knell of the American Empire.

We can see certain things clearly.

  1. The tariffs: Whether or not they were good policy was never the point. Trump didn’t sell it to the public. He is not a good teacher; he should have appointed someone who is a good lecturer to go on national TV and explain how a temporary economic decline could eventually improve our lives. He should have used the power of Presidential privilege for public address. Never trust the news services to get your message across when they are hostile in the first place.
  2. ICE thuggery: The majority has no complaint with trying to reverse the invasion of recent years, but the quick-n-dirty methods of ICE are simply unacceptable brutality, not to mention too little too late.
  3. The Epstein Files cover-up: Trump promised to release them, then waffled. It appears he is implicated in some way.
  4. Bombing Venezuelan boats: There is no valid reason for this, nor the aggression against the country.
  5. Sucking up to Netanyahu: Brazen genocide does not sit well with most people.
  6. Needlessly alienating his strongest supporters, people who have the public’s attention.

Hopefully folks can see Trump is not God’s chosen to save America, but to destroy it. He is handling these crises very poorly, which strengthens his opposition. Then again, the rising leftist response in some quarters does not signal an organized threat to him, but a threat to us little people. I’m not referring to how bad leftist policies can be, but the polarization of the public at large. At the same time the system is fracturing, we are ever more tightly bound to it.

This will not be your typical swing back and forth between two partisan poles. The national majority still prefer Trump, but his performance is collapsing. This is not a TV show where he controls all the conditions along with what is broadcast. There is no cutting room for this spectacle; it’s streaming live.

There are plenty of things Trump has unleashed that he cannot control. The forcible conversion from dollars to a central banking digital currency (CBDC) is now unavoidable, and it will be linked to some form of social credit score that Trump will not be allowed to control. The wealth gap will widen and harden between the haves and have-nots. A growing portion of the have-nots will be driven into crime, simply because it’s less painful than playing along with the system. For decades the US population was lulled to sleep by the generous provision of hedonistic comfort, but that’s going away.

You could probably see all of this using mere human reason. But the problem is that reason tends to leave you open to futile hopes that this can all be fixed. Intellect is tempted to isolate the individual problems, trying to address each one, without seeing the pattern. Moral conviction would lead you to realize that this is the end of the empire.

It will not be a clean end, as if poetic justice could be read in this disaster. It was born of a human rejection of God’s Word and it will end the same. The Devil and his allies are not interested in making sense to us. They have had a free hand in things. This empire was their enterprise from start to finish, and their preference is always mass deception that ends in human destruction. The only way to understand is from outside their system.

Aside from setting certain boundaries, God’s part in the American Empire has been to call His people out of it. Unless you depart and give your whole allegiance to Christ and His Invisible Kingdom, you will be drawn into the madness of the collapse. America doesn’t matter; it’s just a blip on the eternal outlook. No, this is not uniquely historic among human empires, much less does Christ have any little slice of it. That’s why there is no prophecy about this empire except that it’s just another human failure under the leadership of Satan.

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The Days of Noah

Posted on November 15, 2025 by ehurst

Let’s review the Three Rebellions: The Fall in the Garden, the descent of the Watchers, and the rise of idolatry after the Tower of Babel. The Fall brought mortality; that’s what the Fall and the symbol of Adam is all about. Depravity came later as the result of the Watchers. Idolatry was not the problem in the days of Noah; it was moral depravity as taught by the Watchers and the Nephilim.

Keep in mind that there is no Greek word for God’s staff, the elohim. In the Septuagint the elohim were lumped in with the angels, so the Apostles used that terminology in their Greek writings. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 11:10, Paul refers to “angels” as the background issue regarding hair and coverings, but it’s really about the Watchers.

From Genesis 6 we get the basic story of how the Watchers came into the picture, and in the 1 Enoch, along with Second Temple commentaries, we get the picture that the Watchers sent out their progeny, the Nephilim, to lead humans into depravity. Among all the things mentioned in the Jewish legends, which may or may not be true, a major element in the Watchers’ teaching is answered in Paul’s warning here in 1 Corinthians 11.

The basic problem is that Paul is emphasizing the moral necessity of male headship at home and in the faith community as a whole. In the common understanding of their day, this was connected with women having long hair and men having it short. It also included women covering their heads in public (generally scarves and veils) and men not wearing head coverings (hats, helmets, etc.). This rule held in any worship service that was open to the public. Whether or not we decide that this applies to us today in our world is not the point. The point is the spiritual and moral covering that hair and hats represented in their day.

The divine order of things in this world requires that all females submit to at least one male as her moral authority. It can be a father, husband, brother, uncle or any other male person who takes moral responsibility for the female in question. The covering of the pastor/elder is not the point, unless she resides in their home as a dependent. She must report to a household male somewhere.

Our western culture loads this concept with crap that does not come from the Bible, and leaves out some critical stuff that does. That’s a whole study in itself.

In our world today we have to give thought to various alternative ways of obeying this because the whole idea is blatantly illegal in the West. Still, the principle of spiritual covering still applies to those who claim Christ as Lord. It remains to this day a critical boundary line that can keep your life out of the hands of the Nephilim spirits today. You should be able to see clearly how the rebel alliance, both in Heaven and in the Abyss, has worked hard to destroy this way of living.

It’s not just the practical issues humans can reasonably understand from feminine emancipation. Anyone with a brain can see how the birth and raising of children is almost destroyed just from the mechanics of human social structure when women are declared legally and socially “equal” to men. However, there is a very destructive spiritual loss that is not visible to human logic. Every nasty thing the Watchers set loose on humanity is enabled by this wicked thing. It is a wedge, a lever, a doorway for Nephilim spirits to come and go in the individual soul and all their familial and social connections. It places you inside the Devil’s realm.

Thus, whenever Jesus mentions “in the days of Noah” He is referring to the depravity of humans doing anything they pleased with zero moral restraint. That’s what happened before the Flood. It’s what made Noah mourn and plead with God to rescue him from that depravity. It’s the corruption and perversion of everything God had revealed as the proper way for humans to live during their time as mortals. Female emancipation is part of this tragic image.

We aren’t seeking to roll things back to the bad old days of western patriarchy. That was evil in its own right. We are looking at the biblical shepherd headship. A man’s greatest treasure is his wife, so he needs to choose carefully who fills that role.

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Languages of the Bible and in the Bible

Posted on November 8, 2025 by ehurst

In order to handle one particular Bible passage, we need a wealth of background explanation. All the more do we need it because we need to clobber some false notions common in our day.

Abraham was referred to in Scripture as “Aramaen”. We need to understand that this was not precisely an ethnic identity, but simply noting that he spoke the Aramaic language. He probably was literate in other languages, to include Akkadian and Sumerian. Those were both Semitic tongues. Sumerian was one of the oldest known written languages, eventually replaced in daily use by Akkadian, while Sumerian remained a formal ceremonial language. Akkadian was replaced in turn by Aramaic because the latter was far more easily written on what were then modern materials. It was no longer restricted to poking a stick into clay tablets, but could be written in a script on scrolls or papyrus. Aramaic became the most common language used in commerce and routine record keeping.

Because of Abraham’s rather high social status, it’s quite likely he was familiar with other languages not related to any Semitic tongues. For the upper classes in Mesopotamia, it was the rule to be conversant in the languages you were likely to encounter. For the middle classes, it was only a little less so necessary. For the lower classes, it was likely they were at least familiar with several languages, depending on their exposure.

Apparently Abraham used Aramaic at home, but would have taught his descendants all the languages he knew they would likely encounter. Given that Palestine in those days was just a highway between Egypt and Mesopotamia (and beyond), we should expect the Patriarchs to be multi-lingual based on the dominant caravan traffic of the day. In turn, it was quite likely caravans always included people who spoke Aramaic simply because it was in those days the language of trade to the point Egyptians would be familiar with it.

It turns out that most of the Canaanite nations also used a variation of Aramaic that remained mutually intelligible. No one should be surprised that the Patriarchs drifted closer to Canaanite languages in their daily usage. During the sojourn in Egypt that drift would have stopped for a few centuries. After the Conquest, since it was only partial, the drift would have returned. This is when the classical Hebrew language was established. By the time of the Babylonian invasion, the difference between what was by then the Hebrew language and the old Aramaic would have been substantial. Still, keep in mind that the upper and middle classes would still be able to converse in Aramaic for the sake of trade and imperial correspondence. We note that Nebuchadnezzar’s officials also knew the Hebrew dialect well enough to parley with troops on the walls of Jerusalem.

During the Exile, the common language of the Judeans in Mesopotamia drifted back to Aramaic as it was at the time there in Babylon. The small group who returned had some struggle with reading the old Hebrew Scriptures because it was a little different. The upper classes knew the old Hebrew, and some of the middle classes would have, but the lower classes were quite unlikely to know it well enough. Thus, in public readings of the Hebrew Scriptures, they had people stand around offering a targum (rough translation) for the lower classes.

So it went with each imperial conquest. The conquering officials would be familiar with Aramaic because, who wasn’t? But in order to curry favor, the Judean leadership would learn their rulers’ languages as much as possible. Learning Persian was tough, but Alexander was very friendly and evangelistic about teaching everyone Greek. When the Romans took over what was left of the Greek Empire, they played things a little differently. Seizing upon the convenience of the existing ubiquity of Greek language everywhere they went, they reserved Roman for their official correspondence and communicated in Greek with all their subjects.

By this time we had one existing center of Hellenistic culture in Alexandria, Egypt. The Old Testament was translated into a rather clean scholarly Greek, which we refer to as the Septuagint (“LXX”). The majority of upper and middle class Jews knew how to read it. Rabbis in particular would have been able to read it, along with their own old Hebrew, and of course the common Aramaic of their own people.

There’s no reason to doubt that Jesus passed through at least some rabbinical training, because He was treated as a recognized rabbi. There is evidence that one did not get that title easily, yet it was used of Him in terms that were not entirely sarcastic. We should assume He could read and converse in Greek and Old Hebrew, but in most cases, would have used Aramaic in His preaching and teaching. Whoever among His disciples was in business would also have been equally able in Greek. Since many of them appeared interested in religion (some were disciples of John the Baptist at first), they would have taken the time to study Old Hebrew, too.

Savor that for a moment. The populations of the Ancient Near East were multilingual as a rule because that’s how people survived. Only the lowest classes off the beaten path could afford to deal with only their local tongue.

For all our scholarship today, we are still uncertain about some things, including Greek usage from those days.

In Matthew 18, Jesus teaches quite a bit about forgiveness. Please note: He is talking about forgiving those who share the same covenant. This does not apply fully to folks outside the Covenant, but to your fellow believers. His teaching assumes you know how to draw the boundaries of the Covenant, but give people the benefit of the doubt until they make it obvious they aren’t covenant family. How do we keep His fundamental law of loving our brothers and sisters as He does?

Matthew records His cousin’s conversation in Greek. Peter asked a lot of questions, since he had been a disciple of John the Baptist for at least a couple of years and was familiar with the rabbinical debates John had with the Pharisees. He was also the eldest of the Twelve, the presumed “second in command”.

Having heard the Pharisees suggest that you should forgive your fellow Hebrew three times on any particular sin against you, Peter was trying to be generous in suggesting seven times (v. 21). This was, after all, the sacred number of completion (i.e., the full number) in Hebrew culture. After that, you could then take some kind of revenge.

The subject of revenge was rooted deep in Hebrew history, all the way back to Genesis 4:24 and Lamech’s vow to take vengeance. The number is distinct in the Hebrew texts we have: 77 times. Jesus was referring to this when He told Peter that seven wasn’t enough. The problem is how His answer is translated.

Jesus quotes the Septuagint, obviously, but these days we aren’t quite certain how the numbers in Greek work with the addition of a suffix that translates into English as “times” or “-fold”. We don’t have enough Greek materials that demonstrate clearly how one would say in Greek “77-fold” versus “70 times 7”. It’s a question of actual usage of suffixes. Lately, scholars are thinking it should have been translated “77-fold” because that’s what Lamech said.

Not that it makes a whole lot of difference in moral terms. It’s one thing to casually remember someone making the same mistake three times, maybe even seven times. But if you keep counting up to 77 times, you aren’t forgiving in the first place, much less 490 times. Jesus was plainly trying to reverse Lamech’s vow of vengeance with a vow of forgiveness, so if you want to nit-pick, it should be 77.

(Note: Hesier misses some of this in his attempt to cover this in Naked Bible 105: Q&A 13.)

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God Demands Mysticism

Posted on November 6, 2025 by ehurst

Let me bring to your attention the excellent comment posted by Jackabond:

There’s a great deal of scaffolding in the established Church, such as Christology, that has been erected around Christian beliefs that aren’t consistent with a spiritual or mystical reading of Scripture. These are clearly in reaction to various heresies in the early Church that the modern Church still clings to, probably out of fear of those heresies creeping back in. This scaffolding is often just the Hellenistic mind trying to make sense of something that was given in more mystical and symbolic terms. Sadly, the scaffolding has become a rigid structure in the established Church that often stands in the way of spiritual growth.

This is precisely the problem with most historical church doctrine and theology, regardless of the branch or denominational legacy. It was all based on human attempts to nail down something that exceeds human intellect. This in turn is simply the flesh trying to evade capture and the utter necessity of feudal submission to Christ as Lord.

If human reason can capture something in a proposition, then the demands of God can be subjected to fleshly desire. That’s the whole point. It won’t matter if you leave it as a paradox of Christ as both God and man. The obsession with locking in the words and thoughts on a human level denies the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not operate directly in mind, but in the spirit, which in turn speaks to your heart, not your head. Your brain is not the essence of what makes you “in His image”. It is your spirit, something indefinable in words.

The only valid question here is not what Christ is, but who. There’s no what or why until you have answered who and whom. You can bet the early Apostles did not tolerate such intellectual speculation. Just a quick reading of their comments and letters will make that obvious. Paul railed against semantic wrangling because words cannot capture the essence of God or anything that belongs to the Spirit Realm (AKA the Unseen Realm).

Have you not noticed that the Hebrew language is only nouns and verbs? Abstractions don’t exist in Hebrew. That language developed in a world where the human intellect was understood as limited, so that the only way you could address spiritual matters was to employ symbols and parables (AKA parabolic language). The whole point was to discern what God requires of you in a given context in this world. Across the entire Ancient Near East, it would have been gross arrogance and blasphemy to declare spiritual things in concrete terms. This is the paradox of biblical mysticism: It is intensely practical because it doesn’t dabble in things above human ken.

The Doctrine of the Trinity is Hellenism, a rejection of the Hebrew mystical approach to spiritual matters. Scripture itself avoids any attempt to nail down in words any specifics in how the three labels — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — relate or anything you can state in propositions. It’s all left as a mystery beyond explanation. Your job is not to parse the essence, but to obey Him.

Thus, the Apostles kept heresies at bay by pointing this out. Their reply would have been, “You are asking the wrong question. It’s a question only the flesh wants to know.” And the flesh wants to know so it can evade moral discipline. The only answer you need is to recognize Jesus as your sovereign Lord. Because your heart has the ability, you are obliged to submit and commit to Him, even without Election. That much is built into the nature of how the heart works, and the heart is supposed to lead the head. The brain, along with the rest of the flesh, must be crucified on the Cross and forced to live in submission. It is not pampered and allowed to reign.

Note: One of the greatest heresies of all Church History is the notion that the intellect is not part of the flesh, not fallen, and therefore perfectible.

We don’t need a scaffold. We are not obliged to answer the millions of fleshly concerns, which includes intellectual queries. All you need to understand is your role in Christ’s Kingdom. You need to understand that no matter how brilliant and talented you may be, God does not speak through those fleshly capabilities. He can use them for His glory if they are enslaved to faith, but they must never, ever be allowed to take the lead. The Bible says they are tainted by the fall and fleshly appetites; like fire they must be contained in order to be useful.

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False Advertising

Posted on November 3, 2025 by ehurst

It’s a personal hobby horse: I’d rather be brutally honest and let things fall where they may than to ever be guilty of deception. I found a decent explanation of how a great many modern church organizations are attempting to sucker people in by hiding their affiliations behind the false front of “non-denominational” —

Notice how the fellow in the video explains that asking about denomination is more about the doctrinal pattern than organizational linkage. People who have studied doctrine are concerned with what they’ll have to face. I’ve heard pastors discuss this in my hearing. While they don’t use honest language; what most of them are trying to do is sucker people in with programming and community before they reveal their doctrinal peculiarities. They want to make it feel like a lost investment if you find out later they teach something contrary to your convictions. They want bodies, budgets and buildings, not souls.

So I’ve been upfront about Radix Fidem community, always trying to answer queries as honestly as I can. I’ve also been open about our particular community of Kiln of the Soul. Radix Fidem functions the same as a denominational affiliation; it’s a much broader identity based on seven items we discuss in [the booklet]. Kiln of the Soul is a single church-in-effect.

So, for example, Radix Fidem doesn’t promote any particular doctrines. You can plaster the logo on your website if you like, but you’ll be adopting our approach to religion. In other words, it’s a way of building a religious identity, but only just barely qualifies for a religious identity in itself. You can embrace Radix Fidem and have female leadership, for example.

You cannot do that in Kiln of the Soul (at least, not while I’m alive). A part of the Radix Fidem mystical approach is that any particular member body is whatever the senior elder decides. It’s tribal/feudal, while Radix Fidem is collegial. Folks joining our virtual church don’t have to agree to what I promote as doctrine, but they are obliged to humor me as long as I’m the elder.

Another example: Kiln of the Soul is annihilationist. I teach that the Lake of Fire is a symbol of annihilation, not an extension of Hell. The Devil, his elohim allies, the Watchers, the Nephilim and folks who aren’t Elect will sit in Hell until Judgment Day, and then together be obliterated.

Nobody in the community has to buy that, but they do have to accept that this is what I teach. And there are plenty of things I choose not to define. For example, do sinners go to Hell because they sin or do they sin because they are damned, non-elect? The Bible says both, so it doesn’t matter. Do animals go to Heaven? That’s a silly question, presuming a western concept of Heaven as a place with specific entrance requirements one must meet. The Bible says no one is good enough to merit Heaven.

An awful lot of common theology and doctrine is rooted in a western orientation, not the Hebrew mystical orientation of the Bible. Church leaders have sought for 2000 years to define things that no Hebrew mind would have bothered to ask. Thus, neither Radix Fidem nor Kiln of the Soul has a Christology, because the whole field of study misses the point.

Go ahead, ask any question you dare.

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Because of the Clause

Posted on November 1, 2025 by ehurst

Re: Genesis 1:1-3

Feel free to visit the video on YouTube because it is slow and careful, designed to address those who have never encountered the idea that most English translations get this passage wrong. It has to do with recognizing in Hebrew the difference between a dependent and independent clause.

A dependent clause is incomplete, indicating that something more is coming. An independent clause is what we would call a “sentence” because it is a complete thought that stands on its own. Genesis 1:1, 2 and 3 in Hebrew grammar are dependent clauses, not sentences.

We understand that ancient Hebrew was written without vowels and you were supposed to simply know which vowels should be read into the text. The difference between the common reading and the correct reading is the difference in one vowel. When the vowel script was finally developed in about 800 AD, the scribes who kept the Hebrew OT manuscripts started adding them. Thus, the Dead Sea scrolls don’t show vowels because they are older than the vowel script system. Every collection of manuscripts we still have today presents a different reading than is indicated in common English translations.

Thus, the text of Genesis 1:1-3 should read:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth — now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters — then God said, “let there be light”, and there was light.

This is strict Hebrew syntax. It is not a chronological order for verses 1, 2 and 3. It is not the earth in a formless state because of God’s action in verse 1. And verse 3 does not sequentially follow verse 2. Rather, verse 2 describes the situation for God to begin His work in verse 3. In other words, something already existed when light was called forth.

Hellenized minds ask, “Where did that pre-existing matter come from?” Hebrew minds would never ask that question; it was of no interest to them. The term “created” (Hebrew bara) does not necessarily mean ex nihilo (from nothing). You might associate that meaning based on some grammatical contexts, but it is clearly not so in this case.

Genesis 1:26-27 also features the Hebrew word bara. Was it from nothing? Obviously not; the Lord formed mankind from dust (Genesis 2:7). Further, we find in Exodus 20:11 where God made things in six days, using a different Hebrew word for “made” (asa).

Nor can we deduce from Hebrew syntax that it was seven 24-hour days based on the word for “day” (yom). In Genesis 2:4 we have yom mentioned: “in the day the Lord God made the heavens and the earth”. Did He get it done all in one day? Chasing down the meaning of yom will show you that it most often means “daylight”. Putting it with a number value does not make any difference. Laban pursued Jacob over seven periods of daylight, not day and night/24 hours for a whole week.

We need to recognize that the Hebrew text of Genesis is more about a competing claim against the broad ANE literature about pagan deities than it was trying to nail down Hellenized questions. Imposing a scientific meaning on a doctrinal statement is about as bogus as it gets. The issue is not how God generated matter from scratch, but how He shaped the world as we experience it, and more to the point, our duty to Him as Creator.

Read Genesis 1 as God giving shape to something He already had. A sequence is not possible because the story is told from an eternal viewpoint, where space and time are both adjustable variables.

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Scripture and Plausible Deniability

Posted on October 28, 2025 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 104: How We Got the Old Testament

If there is one partisan difference you can point to the defines the separation point between fundamentalists and conservatives on the Bible, this podcast will do it. Coming from someone who was once a fundy, I assure that it boils down to magical thinking versus scholarship.

We do not have a single autograph (the technical term for an original document penned by the hand of the author). There are no “originals” out there. The notion that we can come reasonably close is also magical thinking, because it’s quite clear that there will always be passages that remain in doubt.

This is where the principle of Plausible Deniability comes into play: It is utterly impossible to nail down any material proof for God and His claims in this world. At some point, the whole thing stands on faith and conviction. Either the Lord secures the truth for you by His divine Presence, or you simply must guess. Those who lack the Holy Spirit can deny anything they like because there is no ironclad proof.

This is also true with every miracle; there has always been a rational explanation for everything in the Bible if you don’t believe. It’s true of every miracle for first-hand witnesses, too. That we cannot genuinely have a verified original text of the Bible is part of this. God will not back humans into a corner until it’s too late. Even when someone rose up to offer irrefutable logical proof of the Bible and what it claims, when Josh McDowell won his debates, it did not have the power to change people who were involved in the debate.

So the answer is: Pick an English translation that works for you, one that brings peace to your heart. Of, if you are willing to do the work, waffle between several the way I do. The physical artifact of the Bible is not the source of our faith; it’s God Himself. It’s the mystical communion of you and Christ living in your soul.

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Moses as Scholar

Posted on October 25, 2025 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 103: Moses and the Bronze Serpent

I’m a little irritated by this podcast; the reason will seem obscure to some folks. Bear with me.

Lots of believers today appear to find the fiery serpent narrative in Numbers 21 disconcerting. He wastes the first third of the hour-long discussion on something that was totally unnecessary. He attacks the notion that Moses produced Genesis as a way of suggesting that the people of Israel weren’t aware of any part of Genesis. In doing so, he comes dangerously close to the Straw Man fallacy.

Heiser confuses conservative biblical scholarship with fundamentalism. Let’s be clear: I’ve been a fundamentalist and I’m still somewhat conservative, and there’s a huge difference between the two. Heiser describes a position that is closer to fundamentalism than the conservative scholarship I still tend to agree with. His primary purpose is to assert that the nation of Israel was likely ignorant of the material in Genesis, particularly chapter 3. I’m not sure why he reads a modern western confusion back into the Nation of Israel.

I’m often just a little saddened that Heiser doesn’t give credit to people like Moses, whom I assume would be just as clear-headed and scholarly as people like Heiser, and maybe more so. Heiser builds an argument that doesn’t hold water. He talks about how we today look back with the knowledge of Genesis 3 in our heads about the Serpent in the Garden when we come to Numbers 21 and the Bronze Serpent. To be honest, among the thousands of church folks I’ve known, not one of them suffered the confusion he seems to think is so common today. Then he proceeds to insist that the people of Israel weren’t likely to know that story.

He doubts that Moses would have had access to the material in Genesis. He has no problem with the likelihood of some kind of oral lore, but he would exclude Genesis 3 in particular. This becomes a poor excuse for choosing to believe that Genesis was written in Babylon during the Exile, that Moses didn’t compose it. He adds that there is no hint of the very recent Egyptian experience in the writing of Genesis. Does he imagine Moses was unable to distinguish between his early education in Egypt versus his later education in the home of Jethro? Jethro’s religion was distinctly Mesopotamian and he was a descendant of Abraham.

I don’t have trouble with the idea that Genesis was edited later; I’m quite certain we do not have what Moses originally produced. However, I believe Moses was responsible for the substance of the narrative. At least a part of what happened on the mountain with God over the forty days was to help Moses sort out his oral background from both Egypt and Babylon. For that matter, I am fully convinced Moses was a scholar whose intellect was at least on par with anyone living since then (except Solomon). It is silly to raise doubts about Mosaic authorship in the first place to explain how people are confused today. This is needless background discussion that serves little purpose, and in the end he waffles after ripping into conservatives.

I never had trouble with Jesus’ use of the Bronze Serpent narrative as a symbol of His crucifixion. I agree lots of ordinary church folks choke on that, but my explanation has not changed in a couple of decades. We should not see the image of serpents as unmitigated evil; the idea of using an image of a serpent in healing snake bites and warding off snakes (and other evil) was common across the ANE. That had nothing to do with what Jesus said.

Further, that God would command Moses to use what skeptics call “sympathetic magic” (using symbols of the thing you want or want to avoid) is poorly addressed in this podcast. Yes, it sounds like he comes out on a good side, asserting that if God commands it, your faith and obedience makes it work. I’ve known for most of my life that we don’t need to explain how it worked. I agree such practices would have been familiar to the Israelites and anyone else in the ANE. But he makes it sound like God is falling back on something merely cultural to get people to follow Him, as if God Himself was humoring them in their ignorance. I find that rather insulting to God and His revelation.

Jesus didn’t command the sea to calm down simply because His disciples were used to such an idea. Indeed, they were stunned. No, it’s because it touches on something fundamental to the nature of reality itself. Heiser would never understand that because he remained an essentially western man with western assumptions about reality. He didn’t embrace the Hebrew outlook he seems to have understood. But the Hebrew understanding of reality is all the more true in Jesus’ teaching about how the Bronze Serpent is symbolic of His final act as a human.

Having a better, more elite western viewpoint doesn’t solve the problem of ignorance about the Bible. It wasn’t merely a question of throwing Genesis 3 into a blender with Numbers 21 and making a mess. It’s not that hard to understand if you take the time to explain it to church folks. Hezekiah destroyed the Bronze Serpent because his people were confused about the symbolism for an entirely different reason. We need to take action about the source of confusion that our own people have.

The rather prolonged ending of the podcast is relating some of the goofy notions about the meaning of Melchizedek and the symbolism of Jerusalem as the center of the world. We should hardly be surprised when secular minded people get that stuff wrong. We should also be disappointed when someone like Heiser rejected ancient wisdom.

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The Great Swap

Posted on October 18, 2025 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 102: What does “All Israel will be saved” Mean?

Church folks who ignore the Second Temple literature, particularly how it interprets the OT, will build a theology that is utterly rootless and alien to the New Testament. Thus, we end up with all kinds of competing nonsensical theories about what passages like Romans 11:25-27 mean:

For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” (NET)

Paul quotes from Isaiah and Jeremiah here. Heiser takes from a couple of outside sources a list of four common views of this passage and the meaning of “all Israel”. The problem is that Heiser’s explanation takes too many liberties interpreting this source material. You can read those sources and get a different idea than what Heiser offers in his summary. But we don’t need to examine the counterfeits, just make sure we understand the approach taken in Second Temple literature based on the Old Testament.

(Heiser quotes from another source no longer easy to find — Jason Staples in the Journal of Biblical Literature — but I’ll share the copy I chased down with anyone who asks for it.)

There is a distinct link between Paul’s mention of the “fullness of the Gentiles” and “all Israel”. You cannot get one without understanding the other. Part of the problem is the general lack of precision in the term “Israel” among theologians and church leadership.

Even in the common vernacular of today people have noticed an intentional ambiguity with the word “Jew”. Is it a religion or an ethnic identity? Worse, neither of those is consistent with the meaning in the New Testament. The NT use of that term refers to a national identity. It’s a contraction of Judean — someone who is a citizen of the Judean Kingdom under the Roman Empire. They may or may not be faithful to the Covenant, but they are subject to Judean government jurisdiction. This no longer exists, so the ambiguity in the modern usage does not apply here.

Thus, whatever Paul means here in Romans 11 by “Israel”, it’s not the same as ethnic Jews or religious Jews. We have a hint in Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3 that “children of Abraham” refers to those who carry on Abraham’s faith, not those who simply carry his DNA.

What can we learn by working with Second Temple literature? The name “Israel” can be used to indicate several different things, which is typical of the Hebrew language in general. It depends on the context.

1. The Patriarch, Jacob — his name was changed to Israel
2. The nation of his descendants (“Children of Israel”)
3. All Twelve Tribes
4. The Northern 10 Tribes and sometimes their territory
5. In some places it refers to the Southern Tribes, usually after they returned from Exile

The word “Jew” is regarded as a term originating outside the nation. It’s not a name they chose, but they might use the term in the presence of outsiders to accommodate them. It’s a specifically exilic term; it arose as a reference to them as captives of Babylon, even after they returned. In Hebrew and Aramaic, it’s a plural: Yehudim. 2 Kings 25:25 or Jeremiah 34:9 seems to be the earliest, but it’s used throughout Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. You also see it in Daniel and Zechariah, both after the Exile began. (Keep in mind that the Exile occurred in three waves — 605, 597 and 586 BC — so Jeremiah mentions them after at least the first wave.)

Heiser notes that Josephus is very precise about the meaning and usage of the term and quotes him using the Greek form Ioudaioi, referring to both the people and the territory. As to the people, it refers to everyone descended from the Returnees. Modern usage of the term “Jew” arises more from the Fourth Century and later. Frankly, we should view the word “Jew” in English translations of the Bible as bad scholarship. It’s better to translate it as “Judean”.

The term “all Israel” shows up 153 times in the Bible, but only once in the New Testament — where Paul uses it in Romans 11:26. It specifically refers to the collective Twelve Tribes in both the Old Testament and in Second Temple literature. Not just the people, but specifically to the tribal structure of the nation. The concept of the term fades from meaning between the Divided Kingdom and the Exile. The precision of meaning shows up in the Qumran Community and in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, Paul is not thinking in Romans 11 about ethnic Jews. There was already a proper term for that. No, he refers to “the totality of God’s covenant people” as Heiser puts it. It’s a theological construct. As I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s Israel-the-mission, a people who serve a specific purpose as noted in the Unseen Realm thesis. Heiser takes us back in the Roman letter to 9:6-8, which includes a quote from Genesis 21:12.

It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all those who are descended from Israel are truly Israel, nor are all the children Abraham’s true descendants; rather “through Isaac will your descendants be counted.” This means it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God; rather, the children of promise are counted as descendants. (NET)

This is consistent with Galatians 3:7-9, 25-29. Paul bluntly states that “Children of Abraham” includes Gentiles. Anyone with that fundamental loyalty to Jehovah, the OT is loaded with Gentiles who qualify: Rahab, Naaman, etc. The same answer carries over into the NT. Acts quite deliberately points out that the same Holy Spirit fell on Gentiles the same way.

Jeremiah 30:3 refers specifically to “Israel and Judah” who will return some day. God refers to “My People” against the warnings in Hosea 1:9 that the Northern Tribes were “not My People” (lo-ammi). Later Hosea says that those who were formerly “not My People” (Gentiles) will be called “My People”, and Paul quotes this in Romans 9:22-26. Paul is swapping the Lost Ten Tribes for Gentiles.

This is how “all Israel” will be saved.

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They Despise Us

Posted on October 17, 2025 by ehurst

You may be familiar with the term “geofencing” — a technique used to identify targets for an advertising campaign. Some agency will mark out a territory wherein they want to harvest targets for their ad campaign in the belief that mere physical presence indicates an interest in what they are selling. If you happen to enter that area carrying your cellphone, your number will be recorded and added to the list. Cell towers in that area will sniff for what apps you use that can relay their ads and you will be targeted through those apps with advertising.

Israel has decided to use this invasive technique to target church-goers with their propaganda. They have assembled a list of specific churches in certain areas of the southwestern US for geofencing. Cellphone numbers that pass through those church properties will be placed on a list for targeted ads in support of Israel and against Palestine. Oh, and some pastors are marked for receiving stipends to include the propaganda in their message.

Keep in mind: Jews hate Christians. It’s part of the Talmud and their ethnic culture. They love the money and cannon fodder, but hate our faith. They’ll be nice as long as it pays off, but they despise us as a doctrine of their religion, Gentiles in general and Christians in particular.

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