“What I mean by context is worldview - having the ancient Israelite or first-century Jew in your head as you read. How would an ancient Israelite or first-century Jew read the Bible - what would they be thinking in terms of its meaning? The truth is that if we put one of those people into a small group Bible study and asked them what they thought about a given passage meant, their answer would be quite a bit different in many cases than anything the average Christian would think. They belonged to the world that produced the Bible, which is the context the Bible needs to be understood by.” PeopleThinkingWorldMeanDifferentChristianTermStudyTruth IsAncientJewWorldview Author:Michael S. Heiser
“Our contexts are foreign. They derive from church tradition that is thousands of years removed from the people who wrote Scripture and the audience to whom those people wrote.” PeopleChurchAudienceTraditionScripture Author:Michael S. Heiser
“It's important for people in the Church to realize that the way they talk and think about the Bible isn't the way Bible scholars talk and think about it - and I'm including "Bible-believing" scholars there. There is a wide gap between the work of biblical scholars, whose business it is to read the text of the Bible in its own worldview context, and what you hear in church.” PeopleThinkingImportantRealizingChurchScholarBiblicalWorldview Author:Michael S. Heiser
“Scholarship aimed at truly understanding what the biblical writers meant often does not filter down into the church and through the pulpit to folks who show up on Sunday. I think that's just wrong, but scholars rarely make any effort to decipher their own scholarly work for people outside the ivory tower.” PeopleThinkingUnderstandingChurchEffortSundayScholarBiblicalScholarshipScholarly Author:Michael S. Heiser
“If you don't have the worldview of the people who produced the Bible - under inspiration no less, - you can't understand what they were trying to communicate in many respects. Biblical people weren't modern people. That's self-evident no matter how much we try to deny it.” PeopleTryingInspirationModernCommunicateBiblicalWorldview Author:Michael S. Heiser
“If I were one of the gods who just wound up supervising humans, I'd want to influence the decision-makers to live according to the morals that Israel would eventually get in the Torah, and to teach those same principles to their people. I'd also want to make sure they worship no other god but the Most High.” PeopleMoralTeachInfluenceWorshipWoundsTorah Author:Michael S. Heiser
“Angels can fail because God allows them to make decisions and they are lesser beings than the perfect God. They can go astray, but the task is legitimate. God never tells they aren't allowed to instruct people - "just shut up and babysit them".” PeopleDecisionPerfectFailingAngelShut Up Author:Michael S. Heiser