When Doreen met the Nephilim

 

This is actually a quite interesting video, featuring Doreen Virtue, Jordan B Cooper and some others, critically discussing and/or attacking the ideas of the late Michael S Heiser (whom I kind of liked). I didn´t know that Virtue was associated with Heiser during a period. Nor did I know that Heiser and his writings are *that* popular in evangelical and charismatic circles. Apparently, he was also a "gateway drug" to Eastern Orthodoxy.

I watched about half of the video, and unsurprisingly it´s very "theological" and "orthodox" (with a lower-case o). The evangelicals or Lutherans are imprisoned by their respective theologies, and simply can´t think outside the box. It´s a bit ironic that one of them pronounces "prisms" almost as "prison"! 

The New Testament literally quotes the Book of Enoch *and calls Enoch a prophet*, suggesting that Jude (supposedly a brother of Jesus) considered the accursed book to be...well, prophetic (i.e. inspired by God, the one with the capital G). As for esoteric knowledge, the early Church probably kept the Gospels hidden from the multitude and the catechumens, so already there you have a "hierarchy". And why does Paul talk about "milk" and "meat" in his epistles?

That being said, it´s probably true that many people drawn to Heiser are interested in fringe stuff. I smiled when Virtue mentioned that he had pictures of Bigfoot, a statue of an alien and a model of the Ark of the Covenant in his office (or perhaps home). There is also a connection to charismatic Christians who believe in literally casting out demons.   

That being said, while Heiser probably wasn´t right about everything, in some paradoxical way he probably stood close to historical-critical scholarship, since he acknowledged that ancient Israelite religion wasn´t strictly monotheist in *our* sense of the term, that the "canon of Scripture" was more flexible than evangelicals usually believe, and so on. My main criticism of Heiser was that he "took an idea and run with it", in effect constructing his own theology around the Book of Enoch and then interpreting the rest of the Bible through that prism. 

But then, actual "Biblical" religion was probably pretty wild, so who knows, maybe he was closer to the real thing than the people featured in this conversation...