Blurry Creatures EP 34 — The Forgotten Prologue (Dr. Michael Heiser)

Field note

Dr. Michael Heiser, author of The Unseen Realm, comes to Blurry Creatures as the Library’s most careful reader of the Hebrew Bible. He describes himself this way: “I’m skeptical of everything, but I’m willing to believe anything.” Then he shows what that looks like. Asked about hundred-foot giants, he notes that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint give Goliath a smaller height than the Masoretic text, and that measured pharaoh mummies undercut tall-pharaoh claims. His main argument is about structure. He reads Genesis 1–11 as the Bible’s prologue, which sets three problems the rest of the story has to resolve: death from Genesis 3, depravity from Genesis 6, and the nations handed to lesser sons of God after Babel (Deuteronomy 32:8–9, Psalm 82). In his reading, the Nephilim were a physical threat that Moses, Joshua and David removed. The Watchers’ teaching is the lasting problem. For the through-line, Heiser supplies the frame the other episodes take for granted.

Key claims

1. Dr. Michael Heiser · 0:17:38 · Documented

   “the Dead Sea Scrolls don't say that. And neither does the Septuagint.”

   “That” is the Masoretic height for Goliath, which he gives as nine feet six inches. Goliath appears in 1 Samuel 17.

2. Dr. Michael Heiser · 0:19:19 · Documented

   “with one exception, there's like one pharaoh over six feet tall.”

   He is answering claims that the pharaohs were hybrids. He cites measured mummies. Expedition Genesis has not checked the figure.

3. Dr. Michael Heiser · 0:59:36 · Interpretive

   “The real problem there is depravity.”

   About Genesis 6, which he says “really isn’t so much about the Nephilim.”

4. Dr. Michael Heiser · 0:59:49 · Interpretive

   “who wipes out the Nephilim? Moses, Joshua, and David. What those do three things have in common? They're all foreshadowings.”

   He reads each man as a type of the Messiah.

5. Dr. Michael Heiser · 1:00:35 · Interpretive

   “he assigns the nations to other sons of God. Okay, they're placeholders.”

   The third problem in the prologue. He cites Deuteronomy 32:8–9 and 4:19–20 and Psalm 82.

6. Dr. Michael Heiser · 1:04:08 · Interpretive

   “he visits the spirits in prison. Again, you're gonna read Unseen Realm. I I think that's a reference to the watchers.”

   His reading of 1 Peter 3.

Scripture and texts named

Genesis 1–11 as a prologue. Genesis 3. Genesis 6. Genesis 11 (Babel). Deuteronomy 32:8–9. Deuteronomy 4:19–20. Deuteronomy 32:17. Psalm 82. Psalm 91 (grouped with exorcism psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls). 1 Peter 3 (spirits in prison). 1 Corinthians 2 (the rulers of this age). Goliath’s height in the Masoretic Text, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint.

Where it disagrees

Heiser has the Nephilim gone by David’s time. Wayne (Confessionals 621) and Marzulli (Confessionals 881) expect giants or hybrids again at the end of the age. Heiser’s smaller Goliath conflicts with Wayne’s “eleven feet three inches” (EP 419). Heiser says Genesis 6 is not mainly about the Nephilim. Most other guests in the Library start with the Nephilim.