Two Cheers for Michael Heiser

by Andrew Koperski

Recently, Theopolis has been publishing a critical retrospective symposium on the oeuvre of Michael Heiser (d. 2023).

Heiser, for the unfamiliar, was an influential and widely read Old Testament scholar whose work often attempted to recontextualize the Bible in the mythological and religious traditions of the Ancient Near East. His writing uniquely stressed the cosmological significance of the “angelic” divine council. It also underscored the importance of the Enochian mythos in making sense of certain biblical themes and passages.

I once asked a mentor who specialized in OT and Semitics what he thought of Heiser’s stuff. On the whole, he said, what Heiser was doing was not fundamentally new or outlandish: many of his insights were fairly standard among other experts in the Ancient Near East. Certainly, some of his particular applications of that background material have parallels in other well-known biblical scholars. For example, Richard Bauckham has discerned crucial Enochian element…