Hello everyone!
Have you discovered Michael Heiser’s work? Want to share the supernatural worldview with your church or Sunday school? Not sure where to start?
I started with the Angel of Yahweh!
This post contains links to a lesson series I presented to a Sunday school class over the course of 14-15 weeks. The focus is the Jewish Two Powers Doctrine, a staple in the Jewish theological community and the Mishnah until around 70 AD when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and Christianity took root around the ancient world.
My goal was threefold:
- Present the findings of Alan Segal, from his 1977 scholarly book Two Powers in Heaven, which investigates the steady decline of rabbinical comfort concerning the discussion of the “Second Yahweh” clearly present in the Torah.
- Present a case that this “Second Yahweh” figure in the Old Testament is, in fact, Jesus of Nazareth.
- Introduce my brothers and sisters to an Ancient Near-Eastern, thoroughly Jewish, context-rich approach to Bible study a la the work of Dr. Michael Heiser (see his books The Unseen Realm or Supernatural).
It is not a finished, refined curriculum, but rather a jumping off point for you to start developing your own lessons. I hope you enjoy these resources as a way to introduce your church to the same concepts!
God bless!
**A note on Bible translation usage:
- All references in this study refer to the King James Version.
- This is what my church is most comfortable with; however, I prefer ESV, RSV, or the Lexham translation found in the Logos Bible Software.
Lessons
- Lesson 1a – Biblical Context and Original Languages – Why are they important?
- Lesson 1b – Biblical Context and Original Languages – Thinking Like an Ancient Israelite
- Lesson 2 – What got Jesus killed? A look at Caiaphas’ theology.
- Lesson 3 – Understanding the Uniqueness of Yahweh, the Elohim of Israel
- Lesson 4a – The Visible Yahweh, Part 1 – God with Abraham
- Lesson 4b – The Visible Yahweh, Part 2 – Abraham’s Descendants
- Lesson 5 – The Angel of the LORD is Yahweh
- Lesson 6 – The Name of the LORD is Yahweh
- Lesson 7 – The Glory and the Presence of the LORD
- Lesson 8 – Two Case Studies: The Captain of the LORD’s Host and Gideon’s Encounter
- Lesson 9 – The Wisdom of God
- Lesson 10a – Alan Segal’s Work: Non-Biblical Second Temple and Jewish Sources
- Lesson 10b – Alan Segal’s Work: Interplay Between Gnostic, Rabbinic Judaic, and Christian Understandings of the Two Powers Doctrine in the First 500 Years A.D.
- Lesson 11 and BIBLIOGRAPHY – Wrap Up – Uses for Understanding the Jewish Two Powers Doctrine
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