Heiser: Angels, NT

31DNQsiav7L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_

The Heavenly Host in the NT

Argument: there is a continuity from OT to Intertestamental to NT on the topic of angels (loc. 2357). The NT roots its angelogogy in the OT but with less variety.  While the NT doesn’t really use concepts like beney-ha elohim in the sense of the Divine Council, Paul does use geographical terms to describe dark powers (archon, archonton, arche, exousia, dynamis, thronos, kosmokrator).  All of this is in line with the Deuteronomy 32 worldview.

The heavenly hosts, what we popularly call “angels” is described as spirits (Heb. 1:14), glorious ones (2 Pet. 2:10; Jude 8), lights (James 1:17), heavenly ones (1 Cor. 15:48), holy ones (Jude 14) (loc. 2403).

The NT does use a term the OT doesn’t: archangel (1 Thess. 4:16, Jude 9)

Excursus on Moses (Loc. 2436). Moses was buried in the area that includes both Oboth and Abarim.  These locations are associated with underworld and cults of the dead. The Valley of Oberim in Dt 34:6 could in fact be the oberim of Ezek. 39:11 (cf Stronk’s article).  This might shed some light on Jude 9. Michael is Israel’s Guardian Prince who would certainly want to claim Moses.

Nature of Angels

Evidently, from 1 Cor. 11:10 Paul might have thought angels could be tempted.

Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s