Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God's Heavenly Host

thank you. very good book.

Like all his books i love that he references all material. Excellent read. Ive read many of the complaints on here. The persons giving this book less than 5 stars ive noticed, are not christians or are the type of christian that denies that the supernatural exits. These books are written as a scholar of biblical languages in a context that supports the christianity beliefs. If you are an atheist or believe in any other religion you will of course feel the need to tear then this book apart. Of course christianity is based on faith and a belief in God as the Supreme being of all the universe. We as christians have the Holy Spirit that bares witness to certain truths about God. This book is to give light on the various types of angels in the bible and other ancient documents that mention them and the roles they are assigned. For clarity versus handed down traditional myth, that changes over time, or societal beliefs. If someone writes a negative comment on here its due to their lack of belief and not due to the actual structure and content of the book.

Unlike Heiser's previous books, I can keep this review fairly short - Mostly because I feel that it is only a slight expansion on his previous materials. Don't get me wrong! If this is your first Heiser book, then it is chock full of information that you may never have heard before. It also compiles the information into a nicely organized package and great footnotes. So it is a nice little package on angels even if the publisher wouldn't pay for an index.Basically, I don't have any strong objections to the material that he included though I felt that he left out some of the more obscure areas of biblical angelology (ariels, spirit mountains, and the like). The latter is fine as they are obscure and, so, go a little far afield.I do, however, have an objection in how he presents the material. As I have said about his books before (and he proudly proclaims), he is an evangelical, the Bible and Jesus are the absolute truth kind of scholar and this shows in his books. Rather than letting the texts speak for themselves, he insists on providing later theological developments to impose an artificial order on the presentation of the materials. Heiser has no problem in retrojecting Jesus into the Old Testament where his presence is, at best, hinted at and, most likely, not non-existent.This extends to the theme of this book which is to show that Yahoweh and El are the same god and that the Elohim are subservient beings to Yahoweh Elohim. He provides impressive grammatical arguments and a casual dismissal of other theories. However, by making his arguments, he does a very good job of showing exactly where the weak points in this theology lie. As you read this, whether a believer or someone just interested in biblical mythology, just keep in mind that nearly all of these points can be argued on the side of Judaism beginning as an offshoot of Canaanism with the same exact gods (Yahoweh and Ba'al might, indeed, have been the same warrior king, son of El) which then evolved into monotheism during the Exiles. In other words, the original judaic polytheism was edited and updated into a judaic monotheism by later writers which is why all of these weird "glitches" in biblical monotheism exist. Heiser is just nice enough to show you many examples of the older belief system.Let me add that, while Heiser has presented his intimate knowledge of Ancient Hebrew as very strong, he has forgotten to mention that the Old Testament texts languages and grammar span the equivalent to Middle to Modern English with a couple of chapters of a French-English Hybrid (Aramaic) thrown in for good measure. That is quite a range of language variation over which to maintain iron-clad grammatical rules (just think of the first time that you tried to read Shakespeare only worse). On top of that, the vowel pointings (on which he places much value), were not added until (I believe) around 800 years after the last book was written. Heiser even admits that the Masoretic Text (the one on which many english translations are based) was probably not the original version of the Old Testament as known in Jerusalem at the turn of the Millenium. He frequently refers to the Dead Sea Scrolls (sadly incomplete) and the Septuagint (which themselves show variations) for clarifications of passages so it is obvious that we don't actually have an accurate copy of the Old Testament. On top of that, a perusal of an honest translation of the Old (and, probably, New) Testament shows that there are many biblical passages for which the translations are guesses at best. Add that all up and the grammatical arguments that Heiser presents, in this book, are powerful but, ultimately, subject to significant margins of error.Had he been a little more honest in discussing different possible interpretation of many of these odd biblical passages, then I would have had no problem giving this book a 4-star rating. As it is, I had to mark it down due to dishonesty deriving from his myopic theological background.

Invaluable resource for putting the study of angels in Biblical and second temple context in the grasp of the ordinary people. Excellent work.

I have been sending Dr. Heiser's books to my nephew, Chris, in prison. I am happy to say that not only does he read them, the others in his Bible Study also do and even others are interested. My nephew has been in prison since he was 15 (now 23 and has 10+ years to go), got saved by the grace of God at 18. I started listening to Dr. Heiser several years ago and was teaching Chris what I had learned and learning. These books and articles I send him are a tremendous help. To say that many at that prison in CT are learning under a Christian Scholar who cares is my greatest honor and humble privilege to praise the Lord for the Dr. and many more who are reaching out to get people to understand. I say this with tears in my eyes. We pray for you all in this ministry and thank you so very much. May God bless you all. joan :)

Great book I forgot was on my kindle! Demons came out and I forgot I wanted to read this too. Dr. Heiser has a bias in all his books, and I think he does a good job making that clear. I appreciate what he does and how he can make it so someone who knows very little about the ancient languages almost wants to start studying dead languages! This is a great book for people of faith to read, but if you are looking for something that falls in line with enlightenment thinking or thinks Jesus is not in the Old Testament, be prepared to get upset!He offers great ideas on how the Old Testament and New Testament mesh and how it is a unified story that points to Jesus. I think C. S. Lewis would like reading Dr. Heiser as his guilty pleasure was mythology, and Dr. Heiser does a good job in his books showing how they can mesh.

So much of my richer understanding of a true, accurate biblical worldview, as understood by the people who wrote the bible, comes from the works of Michael Heiser. This is a good followup to his classic Unseen Realm. I highly recommend.

Excellent. Major learning point for me was Dan10, the angel who talks to Daniel is most likely the angel of the Lord (you need Unseen Realm and Two Powers of heaven to get this). If you know anything about the Old Testament "The Name" theology you know that the angel of the Lord is also the commander of the army (Dan8/Josh 5) who is also Jesus (Jude 1:5). This angel is also identical to the one in Rev 1:12, who is Jesus as well. Some key take aways then are: God works in creation in embodied forms, angelic and human; embodiment has inherent limits even for the Son, God doesn't cheat; the opposition of the fallen elohim (prince of persia/prince of greece etc) represented real tangible evil for God the Son to overcome; there are many sons of God who share in the divine inheritance, and we will replace those who rebelled, but Jesus is the monogenes (mono+genos) only one of a kind son of God.

Must read. This wil really help people to understand what's out there. Dr Heiser dispels many misconceptions about the spiritual world and its inhabitants. He also helps to understand the interaction between our and their reality. His work is always well researched and thorough. Anyone who is serious about Bible study should read it. Anyone who wants to be truly informed should read it as well. Thank you dr Heiser for yet another great read.

Great writer!

Arrived on time and in good condition.

Break the cultural influence of how these powerful beings actually look and operate. Loved it.

General:It was a big struggle for me to decide whether to give this 3 or 4 stars. I would probably give this a 3.5. There are certain aspects I love about this author and book in general and other factors though which leave a lot to be desired.The most prominent feature I want to bring awareness to is that at times this can become an extremely academic book. Language-level wise it doesn’t use stuffy words, but the grammar and overall content can lean very heavily into university level. If your English-language level is anything under advanced intermediate your going to struggle with this.A lot of this book, especially at the beginning revolves around the nuances of linguistics. And while the author does an astounding job at highlighting his points through the differences and explanations of words in different languages, if your not a fan of linguistics, this definitely ain’t going to convert you. He makes some very interesting points but I did struggle at times to appreciate the gravity of his findings. A lot of work has been put into this book and it shows. If your a serious student or fan of this topic, then I highly recommend it. Bought this on kindle, delivery was definitely very quick and the overall format was excellent (not always a given).Pros:1) well researched2) a lot of effort has been put in and it shows.3) formatted well.Cons:1) can be difficult to read, very academic.2) does run the risk of being a tad dry.