Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
2007
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Title “Ye Really Are Gods”: A Response to Michael Heiser
concerning the LDS Use of Psalm 82 and the Gospel of
John
David E. Bokovoy
Review of Michael S. Heiser. “You’ve Seen One Elohim, You’ve Seen Them All? A Critique
of Mormonism’s Apologetic Use of Psalm 82,” presented at the 58th annual meeting
of the Evangelical Theological Society in Washington DC on 16 November 2006, now
appearing in this number of the FARMS Review, pages 221–66.
To date, the most exhaustive study of the biblical view of the divine
council by a Latter-day Saint is Daniel C. Peterson’s “ ‘Ye Are Gods’:
Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the Divine Nature of Human-
kind.” Peterson provides an impressive analysis of LDS theology and
Jesus’s use of Psalm 82 in the Gospel of John. For Peterson, the Latter-
day Saint doctrine regarding the divine nature of humanity provides
a strong interpretive crux for understanding Jesus’s use of the council
text: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of
the gods he holds judgment” (Psalm 82:1 New Revised Standard Ver-
. Martti Nissinen, “Prophets and the Divine Council,” in Kein Land für sich allein:
Studien zum Kulturkontakt in Kanaan, Israel / Palästina und Ebirnari für Manfred Weippert
zum 65. Geburtstag (Vandenhoeck: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 2002), 4.
. William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient
Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 294–95, 297.
. Daniel C. Peterson, “ ‘Ye Are Gods’: Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the
Divine Nature of Humankind,” in The Disciple as Scholar: Essays on Scripture and the
Ancient World in Honor of Richard Lloyd Anderson, ed. Stephen D. Ricks, Donald W.
Parry, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2000), 471–594. See David E. Boko-
voy, “Heavenly Councils in the Old Testament and Modern Revelation,” Religious Educa-
tor (forthcoming).
Heiser, Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 (Bokovoy) • 269
sion, NRSV). Recently, however, Peterson’s essay has drawn the atten-
tion of Michael Heiser, an evangelical Bible scholar who specializes
in the Israelite view concerning the divine council. In his critique of
Peterson, Heiser takes exception to his analysis of Psalm 82. As a spe-
cialist in biblical council imagery, Heiser attempts to correct what he
perceives as “certain flaws in the LDS understanding and use of Psalm
82” (p. 222 above). Heiser raises several important issues worthy of
careful consideration. The following essay is not an exhaustive treat-
ment of or response to the issues raised in Heiser’s critique. Instead, it
will provide a general response to Heiser’s claims, particularly those
claims that apply both to LDS thought and to Psalm 82.
testimony that “all blessings that were ordained for man by the coun-
cil of heaven were on conditions of obedience to the law thereof.”
The Book of Abraham refers to “the intelligences that were organized
before the world was” (Abraham 3:22). In this council setting, God
“stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good”
(Abraham 3:23). According to the Prophet, “every man who has a call-
ing to minister to the inhabitants of the world was ordained to that
very purpose in the grand council of heaven.” Though the concept
may seem odd to some Christians, these teachings are not completely
absent in the Bible.
The notion of God assigning members of his council to assume
important positions of administrative responsibility appears in its ear-
liest form in Deuteronomy 32:8: “When the Most High apportioned
the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of
the peoples according to the number of the gods” (Deuteronomy 32:8
NRSV). For Latter-day Saints, who at least in part associate the coun-
cil with humanity, a seemingly parallel notion appears in the council
story featured in the Book of Abraham:
And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood
in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers;
for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they
were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them;
thou wast chosen before thou wast born. (Abraham 3:23)
Parker argued that verses one and five in Psalm 82 served as nar-
rative introductions to Yahweh’s council address delivered before his
father Elyon, the head of the council. In his analysis, Parker convinc-
ingly illustrates that Yahweh would have originally appeared in Psalm
82 as merely one of the assembled participants of deities. “Having
thought that the members of the council were all gods (and therefore
just—and immortal), Yahweh now recognizes that, being incorrigi-
bly unjust, they will perish like mortals, fall like some human poten-
tate.”21 Parker’s analysis of Psalm 82 works well with Peterson’s claim
that the text reflects the story of the grand council from the Books of
Abraham and Moses.
In an important part of his critique concerning these issues,
Heiser argues against the theory endorsed by biblical scholars such as
Parker and Mark S. Smith that, in its earliest stages, Israelite religion
originally perceived Yahweh as a son of El. “In terms of an evaluation
of the separateness of El and Yahweh,” writes Heiser, “Latter-day Saint
scholars have too blithely accepted the positions of Smith, Parker, and
Barker. All is not nearly as tidy as they propose” (p. 234). Heiser, for
example, maintains that rather than a separate divine father, the Elyon
or “God Most High” presented in Deuteronomy 32:8–9 is none other
than Yahweh himself. In this proposal, Heiser’s view stands in direct
contrast to Mark Smith, who argues that “early on, Yahweh is under-
stood as Israel’s god in distinction to El. Deuteronomy 32:8–9 casts
Yahweh in the role of one of the sons of El, here called >elyôn. . . . This
passage presents an order in which each deity received its own nation.
Israel was the nation that Yahweh received.”22
The present form of Deuteronomy seems to support Heiser’s argu-
ment. Rather than a separate deity, Elyon and Yahweh might appear
as a single reference to the head God of the council. In addition to the
divine allotment depicted in Deuteronomy 32:8, the idea of a series of
minor deities that Yahweh had assigned to govern the various nations
appears in Deuteronomy 4:19–20. These verses, which discuss the
21. Parker, “Beginning of the Reign of God,” 539–40.
22. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient
Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 32.
Heiser, Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 (Bokovoy) • 275
LDS scholars have good reason to accept the historical views of schol-
ars such as Parker and Smith.
Even within LDS theology, God the Father stands out as ontologically
unique inasmuch as he created the spirits of all humanity. Modern
revelation describes God with the words “from eternity to eternity He
is the same, and His years never fail” (D&C 76:4).
that Enlil’s descent to Hades may indicate that the high god in Meso-
potamian mythology was originally sentenced to death.45 As noted
by James Ackerman in his dissertation concerning Psalm 82, these
types of judgment scenes in which the council determines that gods
will die like mortals carry important implications for interpreting the
cultural background for the biblical text.46 Contrary to Heiser’s inter-
pretation, none of these stories indicate that the dying gods were of a
different species or order than the gods who issued the sentence.
Near Eastern traditions often place considerable emphasis on the
dying-god motif.47 In no sense, however, are these dying gods—even
when resurrected—somehow depicted as a lesser species. Heiser’s con-
fusion concerning the implications of a biblical statement that God
issued a judgment of death to the deities of the divine council illus-
trates the fundamental need for biblical scholars to pursue Assyriol-
ogy in connection with their efforts to interpret the Hebrew Bible.
Also contrary to Heiser’s suggestion, the punishment meted out
to usurpers in Near Eastern council stories never indicates that the
criminals derived from some sort of exceptional species. The story
of Athtar from ancient Canaan, for instance, presents the tradition
of Athtar’s descent to the underworld following the deity’s ascension
to the throne of Baal. The details involved in Athtar’s story contain
important thematic elements depicted in ancient Near Eastern stories
of cosmic revolt. Athtar seems to share some semblance with Baal’s
mortal enemy Mot or “Death” into whom Baal himself descends.
Hence, Hugh Page notes that Athtar’s “descent to the underworld
. . . implies that on some level Athtar has placed himself in proxim-
ity to or relationship with the only god that Baal proves incapable
45. Thorkild Jacobsen, “An Ancient Mesopotamian Trial for Homicide,” in Toward
the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture, ed. Wil-
liam L. Moran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 207; first published in
Studia Biblica et Orientalia, vol. 3 of Analecta Biblica et Orientalia XII (Rome: Pontificio
Istituto Biblico, 1959), 130–50.
46. See James S. Ackerman, “An Exegetical Study of Psalm 82” (PhD diss., Harvard
University, 1966), 186–93.
47. For a recent survey of the issue, which includes a survey of previous assessments,
see Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the
Ancient Near East (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001).
286 • The FARMS Review 19/1 (2007)
The fact that Athtar, the Strong, experienced a type of “death” in which
he “ruled over the underworld” following his descent from Baal’s
throne does not suggest that Athtar was a “being species-unique” from
the other deities, any more than Inanna or Ishtar, the Mesopotamian
goddesses who experienced a type of death in the underworld, were of
a different species than the gods Ea, Enki, Marduk, and so forth.
48. Hugh R. Page Jr., The Myth of Cosmic Rebellion: A Study of Its Reflexes in Ugaritic
and Biblical Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 92; Page’s views concerning the Athtar myth
have been criticized by Gregorio del Olmo Lete, “In Search of the Canaanite Lucifer,”
Aula Orientalis 19 (2001): 125–32.
Heiser, Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 (Bokovoy) • 287
Holding the position “most honored” among the gods did not estab-
lish Arinna as species-unique. Arinna was simply the god before
whom, from the author’s perspective, the other gods would regularly
49. Richard J. Clifford, “Phoenician Religion,” Bulletin of the American Schools of
Oriental Research 279 (1990): 57.
50. As cited in Itamar Singer, Hittite Prayers (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2002), 51.
288 • The FARMS Review 19/1 (2007)
“fall down.”51 For the ancients, the Near Eastern view of the divine
court clearly reflected or were expressed in terms of earthly reality.
Therefore, just as the high king before whom other humans paid hom-
age was still a human being, so the god to whom other deities paid
homage was still a god, matching in species. For biblical authors, Yah-
weh stood at the head of the hierarchy in Israelite thought. Yahweh
was unique as the God of gods, but he was not unique in his divinity.
From a biblical perspective, Yahweh even shared this divinity with
humanity.
able emphasis upon the deified dead in the Hebrew Bible and the early
Christian teaching regarding deification.54 Heiser, notwithstanding
Peterson’s evidence, rejects the idea that a genus equation of God and
humankind appears in the Bible.
For his criticisms of Peterson’s views, Heiser places considerable
weight on the notion that “the concept of the image of God does not
advance the idea that there is a genus equation of God and human-
kind or that God was once a man” (p. 224). On some levels, Heiser’s
point concerning the word tzelem, or “image,” in Genesis 1:26–27
is correct. Concerning this controversial term, Marc Z. Brettler has
recently explained:
These lines from the tale of Sargon, the gardener whom the goddess Ishtar
loved, seem to provide an especially significant parallel with the biblical
view presented in the story of Eden. In the words of Nicholas Wyatt: “the
man in his garden is a symbolic allusion to the king in his sanctuary.”63
One of the important connections between humanity’s enthrone-
ment in the garden and later biblical traditions includes the anointing
of an Israelite king in 1 Kings 1:28–40 at the Gihon Spring; a river
named Gihon was one of the four rivers that flowed out of Eden and
round the land of Cush (Genesis 2:13). Significantly, the only other
explicit reference to the Garden of Eden in the Hebrew Bible appears
in a context that addresses the link between kingship and divinity (see
Ezekiel 28:2–13).64
Concerning the attestation of biblical rituals that may preserve
actual religious rites wherein Israelite kings assumed divinity, Wyatt
argues that
Like the account in Genesis, the lesser gods of the divine council in
Atrahasis were gardeners who did the laborious task of caring for the
canals, trees, and waterways that sustained the higher gods of the
67. For additional examples of Yahweh portrayed in the role of gardener, see Num-
bers 24:6; Psalm 104:16; Isaiah 44:14.
68. Altrahasis II.39 1–6, translation in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthol-
ogy of Akkadian Literature (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 1993), 1:159.
Heiser, Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 (Bokovoy) • 295
I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the
most High.
But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
(Psalm 82:6–7)
(Judges 13:3–6). In his critique, Heiser draws attention to the fact that
the word angel or mal<āk in the Bible is “a purely functional term and
not a species term” (p. 241). Therefore, this heavenly messenger in
Judges 13 is not an angel in the traditional way interpreted by Western
readers, but rather a divine messenger sent from the heavenly realm.
It is only after this “man of God” ascended to heaven in a fiery flame
that Manoah recognized that he had seen a god (Judges 13:22). In his
analysis of the account, Brettler states that
when Manoah’s wife speaks to her husband, she notes (v. 6),
“The man of God has come to me”; . . . the idiom [“come to”]
is also used in clear sexual contexts, so this may also be trans-
lated: “The man of God slept with me.” Through this double
entendre put in the mouth of the clever wife of Manoah, a
double entendre that her dim-witted husband is too stupid to
understand, the audience is told of the true father of the “boy
to be born.”72
Among the issues that sustain Peterson’s claim that Old Testa-
ment authors viewed humans as theomorphic are biblical references
to prophetic interaction with the council. Due to the administrative
role assumed by the council, the Old Testament frequently depicts
biblical prophets interacting with the council and receiving commis-
sions from God to function as his representatives.75 Peterson does
well, therefore, to draw attention to this phenomenon in his analysis,
since the fact that prophets functioned as part of the council strongly
supports Peterson’s claim that “a blurring of the distinction between
mortal human beings and angels, [and] between mortal human
beings and gods” appears in biblical and other ancient references to
the council.76 The book of Amos declares that “God will do noth-
ing, but he revealeth his secret [sôd] unto his servants the prophets”
(Amos 3:7). Though translated as “secret” in the King James Version
of the Bible, the noun sôd, in this instance, refers to God’s divine
council.77 “Generally speaking, the word sôd, translated both ‘coun-
cil’ and ‘counsel,’ is used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to a group or to
that which transpires within a given group. When used to signify a
group, it is used with reference both to humankind (e.g., Ezek 13:9)
and to the divine realm (e.g., Ps 89:8).”78 Jeremiah referred to a true
prophet as one who had participated in God’s sôd through the acts of
seeing and hearing (Jeremiah 23:18). By participating in the council,
75. See, for example, Edwin C. Kingsbury, “The Prophets and the Council of Yah-
weh,” Journal of Biblical Literature 83/3 (1964): 279–86; Martti Nissinen, “Prophets and
the Divine Council,” in Kein Land für sich allein, 4–19.
76. Peterson, “ ‘Ye Are Gods,’ ” 509.
77. For an introduction to this Old Testament tradition in relationship to the Book
of Mormon, see John W. Welch, “The Calling of a Prophet,” in The Book of Mormon: First
Nephi, the Doctrinal Foundation, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT:
BYU Religious Studies Center, 1988), 35–54.
78. Callender, Adam in Myth and History, 144.
300 • The FARMS Review 19/1 (2007)
The pattern witnessed in Isaiah 6 reflects the general trend for council
stories in the ancient Near East witnessed in texts like Enuma Elish
and Abraham 3.88 For Latter-day Saints, Isaiah’s story, therefore, pro-
vides an impressive type of Jesus Christ, who volunteered in the pre-
mortal council to serve as the Savior of the world with the declaration
84. Moshe Weinfeld, “Ancient Near Eastern Patterns in Prophetic Literature,” Vetus
Testamentum 27/2 (1977): 180–81.
85. Weinfeld, “Ancient Near Eastern Patterns,” 180–81.
86. See, for example, Gregory Y. Glazov, The Bridling of the Tongue and the Opening
of the Mouth in Biblical Prophecy (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 111–63.
87. Hurowitz, “Isaiah’s Impure Lips,” 54.
88. See David E. Bokovoy, “The Calling of Isaiah,” in Covenants, Prophecies, and
Hymns of the Old Testament (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2001), 128–39.
302 • The FARMS Review 19/1 (2007)
“here am I, send me” (Abraham 3:27). With his divine status, Isaiah
could respond to the question God directed toward his council, “who
will go for us,” with the response “here am I, send me.”
The story of prophetic commission presented in Isaiah 6 illustrates
the biblical view that the council was—at least in part—comprised
of divine human beings. “The members of this sôƒ [council] around
Yahweh,” explains Heinz-Josef Fabry, “are kept clearly on the termi-
nological periphery, and finally their designation as qedoshim [“holy
beings”] even opens up the possibility that human beings belong to
this sôƒ (cf. Job 15:8; Ps. 89:8[7], though this involves primarily the
prophets (1 K. 22:19–22; Isa. 6; 40:1–8; Jer. 23:18,22; Am. 3:7).”89 In
reality, Psalm 25 professes that any righteous being could receive this
distinction: “The secret [sôƒ] of the Lord is with them that fear him;
and he will shew them his covenant” (Psalm 25:14).90
For Latter-day Saints, the Old Testament perspective that proph-
ets became members of the divine council also appears in modern
revelation. Doctrine and Covenants 107:19, for example, reflects this
Old Testament notion of becoming a member of God’s heavenly coun-
cil. This revelation refers to the blessings given to those who enter into
the highest priesthood order as the “privilege of receiving the myster-
ies of the kingdom of heaven . . . [having] the heavens opened unto
them, to commune with the general assembly and church of the First-
born, and to enjoy the communion and presence of God the Father,
and Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.” According to modern
89. Heinz-Josef Fabry, “sôƒ,” in The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament,
ed. G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 10:174, Hebrew transliteration simplified.
90. Given the propensity within biblical tradition to view prophets as members of
the divine council, Latter-day Saints may wish to interpret the story of Lehi’s encoun-
ter with the heavenly host as a prophetic call narrative in which the Book of Mormon
prophet becomes a member of the heavenly host. Following his interaction with the coun-
cil mediator who in proper council protocol “stood before” him, Lehi could perform the
very same act identified with the “numberless concourses of angels” (1 Nephi 1:8). Based
upon an analogy with Old Testament traditions, in verse 14, Lehi had become one of these
angels or messengers praising God (see 1 Nephi 1:14). In what may represent a deliberate
attempt to highlight the analogy, Nephi returns in his narrative to the same verb that first
described the action of the council: “and after this manner was the language of my father
in the praising of his God” (1 Nephi 1:15).
Heiser, Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 (Bokovoy) • 303
there are other [elohim] who are divine sons” (p. 264). This claim, how-
ever, does little to refute Peterson’s basic argument: “it does not seem
that Jesus’ citation of a metaphorical use of the term god, as applied
to human beings, would go very far toward justifying his ascription
to himself of literal divinity.”95 For both Peterson and Heiser, Jesus’s
response relies upon a literal rendering of elohim as gods. The dif-
ference between the two studies lies in Heiser’s confusion concern-
ing Yahweh as a being species-unique and humanity functioning as
divine members of the assembly.
And the day [of atonem]ent is the end of the tenth jubilee in
which atonement will be made for all the sons of [God] and
for the men of the lot of Melchizedek. [And on the heights]
he will decla[re in their] favour according to their lots; for it
is the time of the «year of grace» for Melchizedek, to exa[lt in
the tri]al the holy ones of God through the rule of judgment,
as is written about him in the songs of David, who said: Ps
97. John J. Collins, “Powers in Heaven: God, Gods, and Angels in the Dead Sea
Scrolls,” in Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. John J. Collins and Robert A. Kugler
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 23–24.
98. As translated in Florentino García Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The
Qumran Texts in English, trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 118; for an
analysis of the issue, see Morton Smith, “Ascent to the Heavens and Deification in 4QMa,”
in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference
in Memory of Yigael Yadin, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), 181–99.
Heiser, Mormonism’s Use of Psalm 82 (Bokovoy) • 307
Since the text refers to “the sons of God” and the “men of the lot
of Melchizedek,” interpreters should take seriously the possibility that
this Dead Sea Scroll passage refers to an exalted human Melchizedek—
after the order of 4Q491 11—responsible for the judgment invoked in
Psalm 82. At minimum, 11Q Melchizedek provides strong evidence
for an early Jewish trend toward linking Psalm 82 with human beings.
Even John Collins (who contrary to this proposal suggests that there is
no indication that the Melchizedek of the Melchizedek Scroll was ever
a mortal man) states:
In the view of the midrash, the Most High God is El. Elohim
is a lesser deity, an angel, if you prefer. But the striking thing
about this passage is that the term Elohim, which is usually
understood to refer to the Most High in the biblical psalm,
now refers to a lesser heavenly being. There are at least two
divine powers in heaven, even if one of them is clearly subor-
dinate to the other.100
You stood at Mount Sinai and said, All that the Lord hath spo-
ken will we do, and obey (Exod. 24:7), (whereupon) “I said:
Ye are godlike beings” (Ps. 82:6); but when you said to the
(golden) calf, This is thy god, O Israel (Exod. 32:4), I said to
you, “Nevertheless, ye shall die like men (Ps. 82:7).102
7. but you shall surely die like the sons of men, and fall like
one of the princes.”
8. Arise, O Lord, judge all the inhabitants of the earth, for
you shall take possession of all the nations.105
his master will bring him to the judges, and he will bring him
to the door or to the doorposts; and his master will pierce his
ear with an awl, and he will be a slave to him, enslaved forever.
(Targum Neofiti on Exodus 21:6)109
And the sons of the judges saw that the daughters of the sons of
man were beautiful in appearance and they took wives for them-
selves from among whomsoever they chose. (Genesis 6:2)110
Conclusion
The biblical view of the divine council of deities has assumed a
fundamental role in biblical scholarship. Textual and archaeological
discoveries made in recent years carry important implications for the
way Bible-believing Christians understand their own theology in rela-
tion to Israelite beliefs. As Latter-day Saints, we owe a debt of gratitude
to Michael Heiser for his important contributions in furthering this
important discussion. Even in his critique of the LDS use of Psalm 82
and John 10, Heiser raises important issues worthy of careful consid-
eration. Ultimately, no matter which opinions regarding these texts
hold sway, clearly the Latter-day Saint position regarding humanity
and the divine council of deities is much more biblical-like than many
have supposed.