Naked Bible Podcast Episode 285: Evil and Satan

Naked Bible Podcast Transcript

Episode 285
Evil and Satan
August 18, 2019

Teacher: Dr. Michael S. Heiser (MH)

Host: Trey Stricklin (TS)
Guest: Dr. Archie Wright (AW)

Episode Summary

Many listeners will know that the New Testament teaching about Satan
underwent a good deal of development during the centuries that followed
the Old Testament era. Like many theological concepts that begin in some
form in the Old Testament (e.g., sacred space, kingdom of God), the
subject of God’s main adversary (among other adversaries) develops over
the course of time in the literature sacred to both Jews and Christians. In
this episode we talk about that development with Dr. Archie Wright, whose
academic work focuses on Second Temple Judaism and Christian origins,
particularly in regard to the forces and figures of supernatural evil.

Transcript

TS: Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 285: Evil and Satan, with
Archie Wright. I’m the layman, Trey Stricklin, and he’s the scholar, Dr. Michael
Heiser. Hey, Mike. We finally got Archie on our show.

MH: Yeah, “finally” is the right word for it. It’s been a long time.

TS: It has. We tried to do this last year. As some of our listeners may have
realized, he was at our first annual conference.

MH: Yep. And it just didn’t work out. But we kept thinking about it. And it worked
out this time.

TS: And this is just a reminder that our second annual conference is just around
the corner. We still have a few tickets available. So go to
[Link]. It’ll be here before we know it.

MH: Yeah, I know. It is coming up, and I’m looking forward to it.

TS: Well, Mike, we have some exciting news. We have a book that we’d like to
talk about. It’s called One Big Family in the Heavens and on the Earth. What’s
that about?

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MH: It’s a kids’ book. I get asked all the time, “Hey, are there kids’ books about
the Divine Council worldview stuff that’s in your books?” There are two women
on the East Coast, Sue and Laurel. And they have written this book. It’s aimed at
pre-schoolers (that age). Just a short little paperback kids’ book with illustrations
(nice, kid-friendly artwork) about what went on in Eden and the Old Testament
story up through the tower of Babel with sort of a Divine Council framework,
where Eden is God’s home, and the cherubim and all that stuff. But it’s
specifically aimed at little kids (real small children). So this is the first of what we
hope… We hope there will be others. But this is their debut effort to take my
content and make it digestible for really small children.

TS: Yeah, it’s exciting. Again, it’s called One Big Family. You can look for it on
Amazon. So please go leave a review if you get it. And we look forward to more
books. It’s very exciting.

MH: We do want to plug the book, but we’re trying… Sue and Laurel asked us to
help them publish the book, so we’re publishing it through Naked Bible Press
(that’s the imprint). And it would really, really encourage them if you went out and
bought the book. We obviously want all the authors that we bring on here to get a
benefit out of this. But this is really unique. This is the first of its kind. And it would
really encourage them to have you order a copy on Amazon and encourage them
as they are going to work on trying to make the content friendly to kids of a very
young age. I get lots of emails about, “Hey, how do you do this?” or “Hey, is there
something like this?” And the answer used to be, “Hey, I don't know,” and “No.”
[laughs] But now the answer is yes. This is something you can use, either for kids
or grandkids just to get them started on thinking about the Bible in the way we
really need to—thinking about the text through the eyes of the original author and
the original recipients. So this is a good place to start.

TS: Yes, and it’s just another place to help support what we’re trying to do here
at the Naked Bible, and we’re excited with Naked Bible Press what other projects
we’re going to have in the future. So it’s exciting. It’s good news, Mike. I can’t
wait for the next books that we publish.

MH: Yeah, hopefully we’ll be able to convince some people to give us conference
papers or stuff like that—anything that’s really going to be pertinent and helpful.
For me, as soon as this was proposed, I thought, “Yeah, this is something we
really have to do.” Because there just literally is nothing in this space. So there’s
stuff in that other space that I just mentioned. But there’s nothing here. So we’re
just hoping that this is a successful enterprise.

TS: Yeah! Naked Bible Press is something that you and I have talked about for
5:00 two years now. So it’s exciting to see it finally… This year is going to be huge.
We have other things coming.

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MH: And while we’re on it, there may be somebody out there that has taken
Supernatural or Unseen Realm and tried to produce notes or lessons for a youth
group. That’s the kind of stuff that, if we can publish that… We are certainly
willing to take a look at it and help promote it. It just needs to be done. There’s
just nothing in this space.

TS: Well there is now. It’s called Naked Bible Press. There you go, Mike.
[laughter]

MH: Right.

TS: Alright. Well, let’s just jump in with Archie Wright.

MH: Well, we’re thrilled to have Archie Wright with us on the podcast, finally.
[laughs] Archie spoke for us at the conference last year (the first Naked Bible
Conference). But we didn’t manage to get him on before that. So hey, at least we
got you on before the second conference. [laughs]

AW: Yeah, better late than never, right?

MH: Yeah, really. You’re going to be new to a lot of people in the audience. If
they’ve read Unseen Realm, they’re going to have seen your name in the
footnotes. The Origin of Evil Spirits was a major work. You have other things as
well on the whole Genesis 6:1-4 reception tradition and how that fits into Second
Temple Jewish demonology. But I want you to introduce yourself as far as where
you went to school, where you’re teaching, maybe a couple of classes you teach
normally. And then get into the interview. And mention your new book. So go
ahead. Tell everybody about yourself, Archie.

AW: Okay. I currently teach at Regent University in Virginia. My title is Associate

Professor of Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins. I did my PhD at the
University of Durham in the UK under Loren Stuckenbruck and Robert Hayward.
It was titled The Origin of Evil Spirits, which you can imagine. [laughs]

MH: Sure.

AW: I did my master’s in Ancient Languages and Early Judaism at Oral Roberts
University and did my undergrad in New Testament and Old Testament there
also.

MH: I have to ask you. What was it like being a graduate student under
Stuckenbruck?

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AW: It was fantastic.

MH: Good, I’m glad to hear that.

AW: He is a… I would highly recommend anyone to study with him. He is

probably one of the top in Second Temple Judaism, Dead Sea Scrolls, Enoch
literature especially, which was my primary focus at that point. He’s a great
person. I couldn’t ask for a better supervisor. And also Robert Hayward. He was
fantastic, too.

MH: Yeah. I’ve never met either of them. But I’m more familiar with
Stuckenbruck’s work, naturally.

AW: Yeah, sure.

MH: And I’ve heard good things, but I don't know that I’ve ever really talked to
anybody who was under him as far as direction. So that’s good to hear. That’s
the way it’s supposed to be. Somebody who’s…

AW: Yeah. He was very hands-on. I would hand stuff in and he would give it
back with… [laughter]

MH: Copious notes? [laughter]

AW: Yeah. [laughs] Good ones, though.

MH: “I’m going to publish my notes on your work.” [laughter]

AW: Yeah, in the end, it was fantastic. Great experience. I know some people
have some terrifying experiences with their PhD program/dissertation. But…

MH: That would be me. [laughter]

AW: Durham was great, and Stuckenbruck and Hayward were fantastic. I was
also there with some other really impressive… Like Tom Wright and Jimmy Dunn
and C.K. Barrett and John Barclay. So it was a fantastic group of scholars.

MH: Wow. That’s like a heyday.

AW: Yeah.

MH: Wow. Other than The Origin of Evil Spirits, go ahead and mention some of
your other books, including the new one. Our audience will be interested.

AW: A colleague at Regent (Kevin Spawn) and I did a book on the role of the
Spirit in biblical interpretation [Spirit and Scripture: Exploring a Biblical
Hermeneutic]. That was kind of a result of a conference that we did, or at an

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ongoing research session we do at IVR. And also did a two-volume edited

anthology on Early Jewish Literature. It was originally titled An Introduction in
Literature, [laughs] but it got so big that we had to go to two volumes and turned
it into an anthology. That’s been out now with Eerdmans for almost a year. It’s
having a really good reception. And it’d be a great textbook for anyone who’s
going to teach Early Jewish Literature, either in a university or college setting. So
it’s a variety of… Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, pseudepigrapha, Josephus,
apocrypha, and Septuagint. And it gives a brief introduction to about 45 different
texts from those six areas of literature. The new book I’m working on is about
Satan (of all things). [laughs]

MH: No surprise… [laughs]

AW: People just tell me, “You’ve done work on evil spirits. You might as well go
on and do the big guy.” It’s coming out with Fortress Press hopefully in the spring
of 2020. I’m in the final stages of it. It’s titled The Problem of Evil: The Satan
Tradition in Biblical and Extra-biblical Literature. It carries from some of the
allusions in ancient Near Eastern literature through the Jewish Scriptures into
Second Temple period literature (the New Testament) and then goes on into the
early Church Fathers. I think it is a significant addition to any research that’s
been done on the figure before, trying to figure out where we have that transition
into this almost autonomous opponent of God in church tradition.

MH: I have the two-volume set. And I think for those in the audience who
probably have things like Charlesworth… And then there are short introductions
in Charlesworth. Maybe the old Stone volume (Jewish Writings of the Second
Temple Period)—that Brill title. That was Fortress as well, I think. But this would
be… I would characterize your two-volume set as a significant upgrade, both in
terms of just being more up-to-date and just the material. I think that’s fair to say.

AW: Yeah. And I think what it does is… With Charlesworth, it was basically the
pseudepigrapha. This has given everyone a really…

MH: This is broader.

AW: …a fantastic overview of six very important selections of texts, with a variety
from the Dead Sea Scrolls, a good number of Philo’s writings, a good number of
Josephus’ writings, and so forth. And they’re all written and translated by the top
scholars in the field. So I think we did a fantastic job with it, as did Eerdmans. It
took a long time to get it out, but we finally made it.

MH: Mm hmm. Well let’s… We do want to talk about Satan. [laughter]

Specifically…

AW: Of all things.

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MH: Yeah, of all things. I guess in most contexts, he gets a little too much
attention, but we have to give him some time here. And this is, of course, in
conjunction with your specific book. This is why we wanted to have you on.

Let me jump in here with a question now. Obviously, many in our audience are
going to know (at least will have been introduced to the thought) that the New
Testament teaching about Satan underwent development during the centuries
that… Just the flow of biblical literature. You’re going to have this antecedent
information. English Bibles are going to have various renderings of the Hebrew
satan in the Old Testament. Then you have the Second Temple period on into
the New Testament. So they’re going to know from previous discussions on this
podcast and a little bit in Unseen Realm (my book), that there’s this concept of
development. And what I’m wondering is, to a wider audience… You’re a Second
Temple Jewish origins guy. To a wider audience, both in terms of lay people but
also in terms of Christian scholars in disciplines like systematic theology, do you
find that a lot of them don’t realize that there’s been this development?

AW: Yeah, certainly. For the majority of Christians who are kind of focused on
the New Testament, that becomes a significant issue. I think one of the first
things we have to understand is that there’s no single idea of what we would call
a Judeo-Christian Satan figure in the Hebrew Bible or Septuagint (the Jewish
Scriptures). He’s understood as a heavenly being for the times that we look at
him in this setting as being the satan. And he falls into what we call so-called
15:00 angelic category. In fact, we even see the Angel of the Lord acting at times as a
satan.

MH: Opposer, adversary, yep.

AW: Yeah. Numbers 22, for example, is the Balaam story. That’s a really good
example. He also functions in a role that’s given to him by the heavenly divine
court. In fact, as you know, he’s likely a member of that divine court, if we look at
texts such as Job 1 and Job 2 closely. I think we can see that there also. He
also…

MH: Yeah, I always like to talk about it… And this is a bit (what’s the right word)
“overstated” to call it an office, even though you’ll get Semitics guys like Lowell
Handy who will flirt with that sort of approach. So it’s not completely out of hand,
but it might be a bit overstated. There aren’t precise parallels as far as office-
holders. But you get that role. There’s a role that either God is using a member of
the heavenly host to function as an opposer in some context, or like even with
the Angel of the Lord with Balaam, obviously, impeding him. But yeah. Our
audience is going to be familiar with that. Systematic theologian folks… I’ve had
the experience of having… You know, these are people with PhDs (but it’s just a
different field). They’ll kind of look at you like you have two heads. [laughter] Just
wondering if you’ve had that experience, even at that level.

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AW: Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That’s not foreign. Whenever you’re dealing
with traditions like this that they’re so set on trying to figure out one and only
answer to it, and it can only be that way, and trying to explain to them the
development of this figure (like you said leading up to this). It’s so important, the
development of this figure. It’s not a black and white issue. He wasn’t this at this
point in time and then became this at this point in time. There’s this huge
development that we’ll talk to (I imagine) later on in this… But I agree with the
office thing. I think that’s a bit too far. I think there’s a function of this being. And I
think at times there may have been more than one of them functioning in this
role. I’m not sure it’s a single one. But we also see this figure acting as a kind of
a prosecutor in Zechariah 3 when Joshua is brought before the Lord for the so-
called questioning as to his worthiness as becoming high priest. I think we see
that there also. So it’s a multi-faceted role that this so-called angelic being… I
don’t really like that term (angelic).

MH: It’s a little imprecise.

AW: Yeah. I like calling them heavenly beings.

MH: Yeah.

AW: I think somehow they come from that realm.

MH: Yeah, “angel” is more of a job description. So is satan.

AW: Yeah.

MH: So it’s an awkward way of referring to it.

AW: Yeah. I think in general terms, though, that the term ha satan (and that’s
how the majority of the references are to the figure in the Old Testament) does
not fall into the category or categories that Christians like to see him today. I think
that’s just not there—to see him as this anti-God figure in the Old Testament.
Then when we get to the Second Temple period, we see a further transitioning of
that where the term satan becomes even more enigmatic to the point of almost
disappearing from use. But at the same time, there are multiple…

MH: Substitutes.

AW: …other figures who come along, potentially taking up the role he holds,
although it becomes a little bit different—a little more vague, so to speak.

MH: Do you think it’s figures or is it terminology for an emerging tradition about
an arch-rival or arch-enemy? Those are two related things. For lack of a better
way of putting it, there’s this entity we’re talking about, as opposed to the way the

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entity gets talked about. Do you see either one of those or is it a little bit of both?
How do you look at that?

AW: I think it’s probably a little bit of both. I think it’s… Depending what your
approach is going to be. Is it going to be a single figure, this satan? If so, then he
20:00 kind of disappears. But if you want to look at it from the point of view that perhaps
there are multiple adversarial figures… Again, one of our sticking points is
terminology, so whenever we hear the word satan or Satan, we have this Judeo-
Christian mindset that goes, “Oh! I know who that is!” But then if you think of that
in the terminology sense where, what does the word mean? It means adversary.
So when you start looking at the other figures or the other nomenclature that’s
used in Second Temple literature like Beliar, Belial, Mastema, angel of
darkness… When you start looking at those, are these just other names for a
similar type of role that’s going on with the satan figure from Hebrew Bible?
That’s the question that nobody’s really been quite able to sort out yet with
Second Temple literature. There’s been a lot of really good effort so far. And of
course, I have two or three chapters in the book that are going to be directly
related to Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigrapha, apocrypha, that treat all these
various names—specifically how they relate in the scrolls. Who is the angel of
darkness? Who is Beliar? So it’s something that… I think there are a couple of
different ways to look at it. And I don’t know that there’s one that really fits
specifically to saying, yes, Satan becomes this figure in the Dead Sea Scrolls, or
Satan becomes this figure in the pseudepigrapha. Because it’s just not that clear
with what’s going on.

MH: For listeners, if you’re not familiar with this… If you’ve read Unseen Realm,
you should be familiar with this issue. Ha satan is a big deal, because you have
satan (that’s the noun) with the definite article appended to it, prefixed to it: ha
satan. The satan. And in terms of Hebrew grammar, when you add a definite
article to a noun, that… Proper personal nouns don’t do that in Hebrew grammar.
So it’s the same as English. I’m not “the Mike.” [AW laughs] I’m not talking to “the
Archie.” Hebrew rejects that the same way English does. So when you see it
(“the” and then a noun, the satan) it tells you it’s not a proper personal name. It’s
either a title or a role or something like that. It’s just not a proper personal name.
So that’s what generates this discussion. For anybody listening who wants to get
into that, you could actually put my webpage ([Link]) and the word “satan”
and “proper noun” or something like that and you’re going to get a discussion of
it. I blogged on that before; it was in Unseen Realm. So if this is all new to you,
we’re not going to drill down on the Hebrew stuff here because I want to get into
the Second Temple material. But if you’re already a little bit lost, I recommend
reading that because that’s where this issue arises from. It’s not just a scholarly
oddity. It’s actually a phenomenon of the text and the grammar. But how do
you… You teach a lot of students. Do you both undergrad and seminary?

AW: I do primarily seminary stuff, but I do teach some undergrad. But it’s
generally more… It’s not biblical studies. It’s more of a…

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MH: Historical?

AW: …historical, even theological stuff. But nothing that’s going to touch this kind
of a topic.

MH: I was wondering how you look at it. But when you get into just the concept…
Not even this concept. I remember sitting in a… I guess it was a seminary class.
And I don’t remember precisely what the topic was. But when the concept of
“theological development” first landed in my head, I thought, “What do you mean,
theological development?” [laughs] Because you get this impression…

AW: It can’t be… [laughs]

MH: Like doctrines are just handed down. And they never grow. They never
develop. Nothing’s ever added. Obviously, part of that thinking is because we
aren’t taught as believers really anywhere how to do biblical theology, where you
start at one place and then you follow the breadcrumb trail through salvation
25:00 history and things accrue. There is development. But I remember the first time I
heard that, I thought, “What in the world? How can that be?” So I was going to
ask you, how do you help people understand that? And how do you understand it
(if you’ve never had to shepherd a flummoxed student along with that)?

AW: Let me correct what I… In undergraduate, I don’t teach the biblical

studies/theological side of things. In the graduate school and the School of
Divinity I certainly do. So yes, this is a [laughs] question I think I can kind of offer
something…

MH: Surely you’ve run into that. [laughs] The deer in the headlights.

AW: Yeah, absolutely. I think… This is one of the more difficult issues when you
get into the classroom, trying to discuss with students and folks in a church,
depending where they lie in the theological spectrum. That’s the question mark
when you first jump into this kind of thing with a classroom full of students. Where
are you all on this spectrum of understanding? Is everything set in stone? So
that’s the thing. And I think at the same time this may depend on the theological
issue in question. How much does this issue affect the person that you’re talking
to? How badly are you going to mess with their world?

So looking at theological development, I think certainly the issues evolved

through periods of history. I think my area of starting in Hebrew Bible and moving
forward into the New Testament, I see this development of theological issues on
numerous occasions. And I think it has a lot to do with the changing needs of the
people groups in question of how the theology is developing through various time
periods. I think we even see it today in the case of the church, where there are
different denominations in question. Theological development occurs

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differently—specific issues in particular in various denominations in the church. In

the ancient world, though, I think that there are varying viewpoints on things
going on in and around the Jewish people, particularly in the Second Temple
period. And as a result, the development and the strengthening or even the
changing of theological ideas was not uncommon. I think it’s something that you
can see on a fairly regular basis, starting from Hebrew Scripture and then looking
at how these concepts and ideas were developing into the Dead Sea Scrolls. The
community’s there—the pseudepigrapha and so forth on into the New
Testament.

MH: What are these bodies of literature? They’re people… The people at
Qumran, they’re people who take their Hebrew Bible seriously and they’re
thinking about it. [laughs] You know?

AW: Yeah.

MH: And they write stuff down and we can see where they were at any given
point and what they were trying to noodle—problems they saw in the text.
They’re trying to understand things. They’re not doing anything different than
what we do now.

AW: No, no. Absolutely.

MH: So yeah. Sometimes I think maybe a good strategy is to take something

that’s really obvious (like sacred space)… We begin with Eden. God’s building
his temple, and there’s Eden, the cosmic mountain. People can understand,
okay, heaven comes to earth. God lives there. That’s sacred space. And then
you get Mount Sinai and you get the tabernacle and you get the temple. And by
the time you get to the New Testament, you have Jesus show up and say,
“Destroy this temple,” referring to his own body… [laughs]

AW: Exactly.

MH: That’s development. It’s so obvious. And then believers become sacred
space. So there’s a very obvious development… It’s hard to miss that. But you
get that. But it might be useful (at least I’ve found it useful) to say, “Okay now, we
all can see this one. There are other theological topics within the pages of this
thing we call the Bible.” And just in the flow of believing community history here
(if we can use real broad terms) the same thing is happening.

AW: Yeah. Let me just throw you a couple of examples that happened in the
Second Temple period, which you are familiar with. So it’s a very short period of
time… (Although 400-500 years in some perspectives is not a short period of
time.) But there are significant developments going on in the theology of the
Jewish people at this time. One that I’ve written on is the idea of evil spirits. So
like the satan figure in the Hebrew Bible, there’s very little evidence of evil spirits
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as most Christians would understand them today. It’s just not there. Not until the
Enochic text of the Book of Watchers comes along did this idea of the
oppressive, tempting, semi-autonomous type of evil spirit seem to have a part in
the theological worldview of Jewish people. But it was there, starting in probably
the early third century B.C. and on through. Why? I think one idea to propose is
that maybe this is a result or the desire or need of the Jewish people to have a
response to the problem of evil during the Second Temple period. They’re
looking around and going, “What’s going on with us? What’s going on in our
communities?” They’re asking the question, “Why are we, your people,
suffering?” And they’re trying to figure out, based on their reading of Genesis 6:1-
4, why these evil spirits have shown up. So that’s part of it.

MH: That’s a good example, especially when it comes to… You used the
trajectory of personal temptation. Because the Septuagint obviously is part of the
Second Temple period and they’re looking back into the Hebrew Bible (the Old
Testament) and they’re going to be using terminology… They’re going to be
seeing things in the Hebrew Bible and they’re going to be calling it a daimonion
or something like that. And that language… Your point is that that language for a
particular entity… I mean daimonion might refer to a foreign deity in the Hebrew
Bible. And there’s nothing in the Hebrew Bible about that particular foreign deity
tempting someone to personal sin. Maybe there’s a sense in some passages
about a seduction into idolatry. But you’re talking about in your example this
seduction to some sort of immorality or personal sin or something like that. But
now that we have this label (daimonion) which itself is neutral… It’s just a
spiritual being. But now some of them are (looking back into the Old Testament)
bad guys. I’m using the broadest terms possible. They’re bad guys. They’re not
on our side. So that becomes a useful term to convey this next idea, which is
what you’re talking about as far as depravity and personal evil and whatnot.

AW: Yeah.

MH: So there’s terminology issues there. There are context issues (like you were
just talking about). But it’s kind of the thing when you see what they’re doing,
looking back into their Scriptures… They’re taking their Scriptures seriously. And
then they’re talking about it in certain ways and using vocabulary, and then that
vocabulary itself becomes subject to… It’s malleable. It can get applied in
different ways.

AW: Absolutely. I think the other example is the angels, which you’ve talked
about numerous times. But I think you see that development there, that was
necessary (so to speak) because of what looked like a changing worldview and
theological positioning of the Jewish people about who God was over against
what the Gentile nations are that are surrounding them. I think you had talked
about that a great deal. But I think that’s another idea where we see this idea of
angels and how that theological issue or idea or concept developed from the

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Hebrew Bible/Septuagint on into the Jewish texts and then forward from there. I
think that changes something…

MH: Let’s take that and talk about some of the terms you brought up earlier. Why
would this sense that… Okay, we’re going to use the broadest terms we can.
Back in the garden (or Ezekiel 28 or whatever)… Somebody who has the whole
Hebrew Bible. They’re reading it. They’re just at the cusp, just getting into what
we call the Second Temple period. So they’re reading their Scriptures and they
can see that we had… The humans were deceived by this supernatural agent.
“Boy, wasn’t that an awful thing? Look at the catastrophe this was.” And so you
don’t get a whole lot… Some would say you don’t get any reference back to
specifically Genesis 3 when it comes to the human dilemma other than maybe
death (the realm of the dead) or something like that. Now you get into the
Second Temple period, why do we get a term like Mastema? Who would
have…? I’m not going to ask you because it’s an unanswerable question. But
who came up with that? [laughter]

AW: The author of Jubilees. [laughter]

MH: Right. But why…? What do you think is going on inside their head? Give us
a couple of terms and what they mean. But what would be going on their head to
35:00 all of a sudden have this term pop into their head and, “Yep, it fits. I see this term
as applying to either the one big guy,” or something else. What do you think they
were thinking about? What prompted it? (Possibly. Obviously we don’t know for
sure where these words initially come from.)

AW: Yeah, we don’t.

MH: But what might be the thought process?

AW: First of all, we know it’s from the term… Mastema first emerges in the book
of Jubilees, which is mid second century B.C.E. Jewish texts, along the lines of
the timeline of some of the Qumran scrolls. I think we have the issue of… Again,
I think they all kind of surround the problem of evil—how they explain what’s
going on in relation to the oppression of Israel, the oppression of individuals, the
oppression of communities. So I think you would know more about the etymology
of these words than I would. But I think that they’re saying probably that the term
satan in Hebrew Bible and they’re kind of maybe throwing a new twist or niche to
that in their understanding of, “Well, let’s have this lead figure of these evil spirits
that we’re going to take out of the Enochic Book of Watchers story and bring him
into the book of Jubilees.” So now they’ve decided, “Well, I think they kind of
need a leader. We can’t have them running amuck around the world. So I think
the author of Jubilees is perhaps seeing, “Well, maybe we could take on this
Satan figure from Hebrew Bible and kind of twist that image a little bit and put
him over these evil spirits so that they’re not out of control.” There’s some kind of
divine control over what’s going on with these evil spirits. They know they’re

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there now. They know. They’ve read about them. They’ve heard about them.
They believe they’re seeing the action of these spirits in the midst of the Jewish
people in the Second Temple period, but now the author of Jubilees thinks, “Well,
maybe we should put a little divine sovereignty, a little divine authority above
these evil spirits. So let’s take this Satan figure and put him over them.” I think
that’s kind of what might have been going on.

MH: For sure, some of the terms would be almost gestures of contempt.

AW: Yeah.

MH: Belial. That’s “worthless one.” So you get some of that. And I would agree
that… Again, a sweeping generalization. What upright Jew with a high view of his
Bible and a high view of God and God’s providential control over things… That
person is not going to look at the other side as evil and just say it’s autonomous.
40:00 In other words, God has to have some sort of… There has to be some kind of
check and balance. There have to be some kind of limitations. Because the only
unlimited being is the God of Israel. It’s that kind of thing. So we have to
circumscribe this in some way. So they’re thinking about how that needs to be.
And then once that thought takes hold, how do we express that? And that’s
where you get some of these other expressions and the vocabulary and the
descriptions and things like that that… I tend to think that… There isn’t much (I
know there’s going to be something)… But there isn’t a whole lot in Second
Temple literature that the data points or the seed thoughts (the little kernels)…
That’s going to come from the Hebrew Bible. But the things aren’t connected.
They’re not put into a narrative. They’re just sort of scattered. And as people
think about what they’re seeing in the text… (And then to add to your thought
about context) then they look at themselves, like “Look at our situation here.”
They’re going to essentially do the exegetical math. [laughs] they’re going to try
to put those things together and come out with a coherent way (within their
context, within their community) of talking about this. Essentially, not only how life
is, but how the spiritual component of life, both good and evil, is working. They’re
going to try to address that. And that’s a very human enterprise. We wouldn’t
look at what we do today (as either writers or pastors, or our church leaders)…
We produce things. We talk about things (verbal or written). Nobody is going to
look at that and say, “Well you shouldn’t be doing that.” You know?

AW: Yeah.

MH: “All of this should be self-evident. No one should be writing or commenting

about anything.” Nobody’s going to look at what ministry is or what the Christian
life is that way. But then somehow, when you hear a discussion like we’re having
here about, “Well, you know, they had to think about that. It took them 100 years
to get the point of, ‘Yeah, there’s where we want to be.’” They finally were able to
articulate it well. And then you see development of thought on various topics.
Why is that any less legitimate than what we’re doing today?

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AW: Yeah. I think it’s a very key exegetical component of what was going on in
the second and first century B.C.E. within Judaism. They were looking at... And
we can see this in the Pesharim (the commentaries on the prophets) in the Dead
Sea Scrolls where the authors of those texts are looking at the prophet texts of
the Hebrew Bible and they’re putting them into their everyday context. “This is
what the prophet said. Here’s what it means to us.” So I think that trying to put
something, a name connecting something to a theological issue that they’re
trying to examine, trying to understand in their community context… Coming up
with the name Mastema to try to control these evil spirits. Or trying to read Isaiah
in light of the Qumran community. It’s very much what they were trying to do, just
as we do today. When we’re reading the New Testament, we’re trying to put it in
our context. The thing to keep in mind is “What did the text mean to the
community?”

MH: Right. They had a context, too.

AW: Right, exactly.

MH: You would like their context to guide us, as opposed to the other way
around.

AW: Yeah, yeah.

MH: That’s essentially why this podcast exists. [laughter]

AW: Exactly.

MH: This is sort of an “inside baseball” question. I’m not asking you to land
anywhere here. But when you talk about the community in the Second Temple
considering their own oppression, do you think… When you say “oppression,”
are you…? (How do I ask this?) It doesn’t matter to me where you come down on
this, because this is going to bring N.T. Wright into this discussion. [laughs]

AW: I’m not going to answer it then. [laughter]

MH: Do you think they still considered themselves to be in exile? Is that what we
mean by oppression? Or is it the immediate Roman problem? What do you
think? That is an inside baseball question.

AW: Well, if I wanted to land on Tom’s good side… [laughter] I would say, “Yes,
they’re still in exile.”

MH: I find that attractive. I’m not saying that… I don't know if it’s…

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AW: It is attractive, but I think that… If you look at exile, they are in an exile of not
being in the right place where God wants them. If you want to look at it broadly
like that, I think maybe you could say that. But have they ever properly come
back from Babylon? I don't know that they have.

MH: Yeah. Because you get these prophecies that assume (or presume) that all
twelve tribes are going to be restored. So that’s got to be a lingering sense that…
I like the way you put it, that some things are not the way they’re supposed to be.

AW: Yeah. I think that’s clear through all the Second Temple texts for sure.
“We’re not right. We’re not in the right place. Where are we supposed to be?”
And I think you make a very good point about the entire twelve tribes. That would
suggest they’re still in exile, too.

MH: Yeah. That has big implications. Let’s go back to something a little easier,
like Satan. [laughter]

AW: Yeah, of course. [laughter]

MH: Okay. Now you have some Second Temple texts that have multiple satans
or Satans. Do you think that is sort of a generic application of a Hebrew term to
just various bad guys? That the point of having multiple satans is literally no more
than that? It’s a term that we now find useful just to label bad guys. Or do you
think there’s something else theologically going on there?

AW: Hmmm. Interesting. This may go back to your question on theological

45:00 development to some degree. I think when you’re looking at the Second Temple
texts, I think it’s important that we don’t dump all these Second Temple texts into
one barrel. And I think people have a tendency to do that with all these texts.
They have a tendency to… I have students that talk about the Old Testament as
if it’s one big book. Or they talk about the New Testament as if it’s one big book.
So I think the same things is true of this literature. And no, I don’t think there’s a
significant variety of texts that belong to this period—a variety of sectarian groups
writing from its own somewhat unique perspective. So all these texts are very
different. So we can’t really clump all of the Dead Sea Scrolls together, as they’re
written by different groups during different time periods that can vary as much as
300 years with the scrolls. And this is kind of what you’re talking about with these
multiple satans. It comes from the scrolls and then also the Enoch texts, too. So I
think one has to determine on an individual basis how one author is using a term
over against another author—with scrolls versus the pseudepigrapha or
apocrypha.

But then back to your question, “How do we understand this?” It depends on how
we define the term satan. I mentioned how we have to determine the contextual
meaning. Does it mean adversary? And that’s the legitimate translation of the
term satan. Or does it mean Satan (big S)? I think that’s one of the questions you

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have to think in context here. If adversary, then yes, there can certainly be
multiple adversaries (human and supernatural). So we have to realize that even
the term satan in the Hebrew Bible is primarily a human adversary. The majority
of occasions where it’s used in the Hebrew Bible, it’s referring to an adversary,
not a spiritual adversary. I think there may be more than one Satan operating in
the cosmos in the minds of the various authors (and perhaps maybe there still
are multiple Satans operating in the cosmos). But I think definitely…

MH: Yeah, just depending on what they were thinking, how they were thinking
about it.

AW: Yeah. It all depends how you define that term. Is it a big S or…? I hate to
even think that way. But “adversary” is the key to understanding. That should be
your first stop when you’re looking at the term satan, whether it’s in the Hebrew
Bible or Second Temple literature, even in the New Testament too. “Adversary” is
the key to understanding. But part of the problem in our thinking about this figure
is that we make him almost omnipresent. So when you start thinking about
multiple Satans, to me that kind of makes sense sometimes. So in other words,
he can be anywhere at any time, if you make him Satan with a big S. He’s almost
like God to some people. They think he can be anywhere at any time. That he
can be here in Virginia harassing me and at the same time harassing you
wherever you might be. He doesn’t have that power. And the Jews in the Second
Temple period realized that. And if there are multiple satans, I think that’s a very
legitimate understanding for them during that time period. And that may be where
these varieties of names started to come into play that we see in the scrolls and
pseudepigrapha. There were just rather confusingly (maybe for them) using the
same term over and over again. Then maybe they started to draw on other terms
that have variations about what they were actually doing or how they were
functioning.

MH: Mm hmm. Why do you think… There are probably half a dozen different
possible trajectories to answering this question. Taking what you just said and
then going back to… At some point, you have a lead adversary that… (How do I
want to say this?) At this point, there’s this perception of the need for order and
hierarchy in the hostile spiritual world. And the lead figure (lead adversary, lead
opposer) is referred to as (in the New Testament Satanas) Satan (with a capital
S). So why do you think that that made sense? Because that figure gets linked
50:00 back to the garden. So why do you think…? What are some of the possible
thought processes for assigning the lead role (or at least preeminence) to that
figure? There’s a way I would answer this or approach this, but I’m just
wondering what you think the logic may have been?

AW: Well I think it goes back to what we talked about a few minutes ago about
having the divine sovereignty (divine authority) in place so that things don’t just
run amuck. I think that’s probably…

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MH: So you would look at elevating the one as sort of an appointment? In other
words, who looked at him as the lead? Is that something that a Jewish writer
would say, “God appointed this one to wrangle the other ones.” Or would you
say, “The other ones look at this one as preeminent.” Or which direction does
that go?

AW: I think if you look at the satan figure in Job, his task there is to go to and fro
on the earth, testing and trying God’s faithful (or even the unfaithful—who
knows?). So now all of a sudden, in the Jewish worldview in the Second Temple
period, we have these evil spirits that are suddenly on the stage where they
weren’t there in the Job story, but they’re now there in Judaism of Second
Temple period. And their task is similar to what we see, although at times they
seem a bit more violent. But that’s really hard to say for sure. But I think the
authors had decided, “Let’s set Satan over these…” All they really had to do is
look at the book of Job. And they say, “Oh.”

MH: So the reasoning would be that, “ultimately God must have oversight over
this, so who would God appoint? Well, he would appoint this guy.”

AW: Yeah. Why not?

MH: Okay, so that’s one potential route that these Jewish writers could have
taken to “make sense of” all that. Am I summarizing that correctly?

AW: Yeah, I think so. I think they’re trying to keep God in control and this figure is
already in the literature. And remember, they’re reading just like they read
Genesis 6:1-4 for the development of evil spirits. They’re now looking at, “These
spirits kind of need somebody to keep them under control.” And if you look at
Jubilees, you see this is exactly what’s going on. The Satan figure there called
Mastema is given permission by God to keep some of these evil spirits that come
from the Watcher tradition, to work with him in order that he can fulfill his task on
the earth, which is to test and to put to trial humanity.

MH: What was it? Ten percent or a tenth?

AW: Ten percent. In some people’s minds, there’s a gazillion demons on the
earth today. But if you think about how many there possibly could have been,
based on that, if only 10% are left, we’re probably lucky.

MH: This just popped into my head when you said that. But I often get that
question on Q&A. To me, this seems to mean something. In the Bible you get
this “myriads upon myriads” language of the heavenly host. That’s never used of
those in rebellion. It’s only used of just generic heavenly host, those who are
loyal to God.

AW: Yes.

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MH: So it would seem to suggest that there’s a finite number. A much smaller
number.

AW: Yes. That’s what I thought too. Yeah.

MH: Maybe a Second Temple writer… Who knows if that’s why they had that
thought. I’m just saying that’s the thought I have. But that seems consistent. Just
a finite subset. Not this “gazillions,” like you said.

AW: Yeah. And it keeps things in control. I think that’s one of the keys, that
they’re trying to keep this force of evil (whatever you want to call it)… The
authors are trying to keep this under some kind of control, because God is still
sovereign over it. So it can’t get out of control. So if there’s massive number of
demons running around, God says, “Okay, I’ll give you 10%, Mastema. That’s it.”
You can use them to fulfill your task. That’s it.”

MH: Right. That’s God’s decision to make. It’s not his.

AW: Yes. Right.

55:00 MH: And you could see a Second Temple writer… That’s a good way to express
the idea of oversight. You could see how that might work.

Last question. You mentioned that your book… And this is different (for books on
Satan, at least the academic ones that I have), including the early church in the
discussion. So a very broad question here. What’s different about the way the
early church thought about Satan as opposed to Second Temple Jewish
communities? Give us an example. What would they have thought about?
[laughs]

AW: Well, what we have to understand when we get into the Early Church is, we
have the apostolic fathers. We have the apologists. Then we group them
together with the Early Church Fathers. But one of the main things you have to
keep in mind is why they were saying things and what their purpose was. Their
primary response (and you can see this in the writings of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus,
Origen, and even into Augustine)… Their use of the Satan figure… Or the
development is a better way to put it—theological development. (There we go
back to our early question, coming full circle here.) Their purpose was to thwart
the heretical teaching (primarily in the Gnostics) that this figure (the demiurge)
was another name for the devil or the satan. He was the bad guy. So the Early
Church is trying to narrow the power and the authority of this devil/satan figure in
the Early Church.

So part of the development that we see there is in response to the heretical ideas
of who Satan was or the power that he had. So maybe they’re at the same time

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trying to put a lid on the power (the authority) of the Satan figure. But one thing
we look at… And the New Testament, moving on into the Early Church period
and the second and third centuries C.E… You can read some of the New
Testament in the same way that you can read the function or the role of the
Satan figure in early Jewish texts or even the Hebrew Bible, where his task and
purpose is to test and try individuals, the righteous, even Jesus himself in the trial
of temptation in the wilderness. I think that’s something we have to recognize. So
this theological development is still going on, even into the New Testament. And
then when you get into the Early Church Fathers, this seems to be where this
thing clicks, where he becomes an almost semi-autonomous anti-God figure.
Where I think he’s most likely, if you’re reading it properly, he’s an anti-humanity
figure which was his view of humanity the whole time, running from the Hebrew
Bible all the way through Second Temple into the New Testament. I don’t know
that he’s really… Describing him as an anti-God figure is, I don’t think, the right
language to use. I think anti-human, because he’s jealous of humanity. If you
look at the Life of Adam and Eve, which is an early second century C.E. Jewish
text where he rebelled because he was told to bow down to Adam and worship
Adam. And he got mad and rebelled and got cast out of heaven, along with his
angels. That’s the first idea besides Revelation 12 where we see Satan rebelling
against God. But he’s never really anti-God. He’s always been anti-Adam. Anti-
Adam. Anti-Eve. And that’s the difference that we see—probably a clearer
understanding of who he should be. He’s definitely against humanity. Definitely
against us.

MH: Yeah. He’s in favor of human destruction. [laughter]

AW: Yeah, exactly.

MH: That’s the platform.

AW: I don't know if I answered your question there. I think I kind of rambled…

MH: No, the demiurge thing is interesting because to a Gnostic, the evil demiurge
is the God of the Bible. And you could see how the defenders of the God of the
Bible… It’s interesting how that battle would have played out. You have 2
1:00:00 Corinthians 4:4, “the god of this world,” and the reference in 1 John as well. So
you could see how the two sides could duke it out in a gnostic context by
appealing, or by… I don't know what the right word is, appealing to or utilizing the
notion of a main rival to set them off against each other. I could see that
happening in a Gnostic context, where they would fight that way or at least the
Early Church would have an effective rebuttal against the whole demiurge thing,
pasting that onto the God of the Bible. Yeah, I could see that. That’s interesting.

AW: But it just seems like particularly the apologists… Justin Martyr. He was the
first one to make the connection between the serpent in the garden… Although
let’s keep in mind that there’s no Satan in the garden scene in Genesis.

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MH: Right, it’s just nachash.

AW: It’s just the serpent. So he’s the first one that makes the connection
between the serpent and Satan and the devil and the heretics. So he’s battling
their original story, because he’s trying to limit the power of the Satan figure in
the garden, whereas the Gnostics are trying to make Satan the reason the
material world is evil. It’s his fault. He’s the one that made it that way. He’s the
one that created it that way, in fact. So the Early Church apologists are trying to
limit… “Okay, we’ll give the devil (the Satan) the credit with tempting Eve, but
that’s as far as it’s going to go. He’s not going to be this full-on… We’ll push that
agenda for him.” So they’re pushing the connection between the serpent and the
devil and Satan in order to limit his power in the world that the Gnostics are trying
to give him. The heretical…

MH: He’s just a created being. At the end of the day, he’s a created being.

AW: Exactly. Instead of being God #2. Right? That’s where we see Marcion, in
his evil God of the Old Testament versus his loving God of the New Testament.
That’s that same heretical, Gnostic worldview that he has that he tries to give
Satan the equality of Yahweh, in fact. He goes along that line of, “Yeah, he’s the
bad God versus Jesus’ God.” So the apologists in the Early Church period are
trying to limit the devil’s power. So they’re giving him that. “Okay, we’ll let you
have the temptation in the garden bit. But we’re not going to give you any more
of that.” So they pushed that. And that causes the rise of the Satan figure to take
on that role of this tempter of all humanity in the garden, which kind of fits with
what we’ve seen running up to that. His job is to tempt humanity, test humanity.
So let’s just let him do it in the garden, too. And that’s what happens.

MH: I’m going to tack one more question on here real quickly. I’m sure you’ve
been asked this in class, maybe even in church if you’ve taught adult Sunday
school in church, and people kind of get to know you and what you do. But here’s
the question. Why do we have to read all this non-biblical Jewish stuff? [AW
laughs] In other words, what’s the point? [laughs] Why are you making us do
this? Or why do you think we should? So how do you answer that to an
undergrad or somebody in church?

AW: That’s how I get my paycheck. [laughter]

MH: That’s what I get paid for. [laughter]

AW: Although, that’s a smart…

MH: Here’s the thumb screw. Wear it. [laughs]

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AW: We’re 2,000 years away from even the New Testament. So how do we
really understand that? In order for us to get a fuller understanding of what the
Gospels are saying, what the epistles are saying, what the book of Revelation
(John’s apocalypse) is saying… In order to properly understand what’s going on
in the New Testament, we have to see what’s running up to that. Like we said
earlier, what developments are occurring in ancient Israel, what’s going on in the
Assyrian and Babylonian exile, what’s going on in there, what’s going on in the
Second Temple period, what’s going on at Qumran? How do those things…? It’s
important for us to know how those things help us read the New Testament
1:05:00 properly. I think that’s the key. If we just look at the New Testament in a vacuum,
we’re just not going to understand what the message of the kingdom of God is
really about. By understanding Jewish theology from the Second Temple period
or Hebrew Bible or even the ancient Near East, we bring in from there to help us
best to understand what the message of the New Testament is. I think that’s the
key to all this literature.

I try to tell my students (because I teach Early Jewish Literature at Regent)... And
my students will ask me, “Why am I doing this?” And I said, “It’s to help you
understand what the message of the gospel is.” And they said, “I could just do
that on my own, can’t I? I have the Spirit.” I said, “Okay, fine. You can have the
Spirit. But at the same time, you should be intellectually ready to defend.” And
this literature—the literature of the pseudepigrapha, the literature of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, the literature of the Hebrew Bible—helps us better understand what
on earth Jesus was trying to say to us. What on earth was Paul trying to say to
us? What was Peter trying to say to us? What was John trying to say to us? And
I think having the tools in our tool bag to help read the New Testament in light of
a Second Temple period context is what we need. Let me just say this. We
actually just are about ready to start a monograph series with Baker Academic on
the New Testament in its Second Temple context. So we have a list of
contributors lined up to do that. So that’s something you can look forward to
down the road. But I think it’s important. We have to have this context to properly
understand what the New Testament is saying to us.

MH: Yeah. In a student’s (and I think just believers in general)… If you ask them,
“Write 1,000 words on what you believe about X (some social, cultural issue that
has worldview implications),” they could produce that, but then the follow-up
question would be, “Would you like me when I interpret this (this 1,000 words that
you’ve given me) to be acquainted with your life and times when I do it, or can I
just wait 10 years or 50 years and then assign an interpretation to it? Which
would you rather have?”

AW: Exactly.

MH: “Do you want to be taken in context or not?” is the general question. So
that’s why you’re doing it. Because the New Testament writers were part of this
world. And they were trying to answer questions. They were trying to rebut

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things. There were other things that they read that somebody else wrote that they
found really useful to make a particular point over here or over there. And they
interacted with it. They were acquainted with it. They interacted with it. It was part
of what they (under the providence of God) produced—what God had them
produce. They’re interacting with it in a number of different ways. And if we know
what they had to think about, we’re going to catch what they’re laying down a
whole lot more efficiently. We’ll just become better readers of the New
Testament. We just sort of lack that.

AW: I think it’s clear… If you look at the New Testament, you can see that the
authors of the New Testament were reading this literature. So if they were
reading it, I think we should read it too. [laughter]

MH: Yeah. That pretty much cuts to the chase. Well, thanks for spending an hour
with us and talking about your work and what you do, especially the newest one
on Satan. Lord willing, when we get to ETS and SBL… You said it would be out
in 2020, right?

AW: Yeah.

MH: So when the calendar rolls around to that and when it’s actually out (we
always do interviews at ETS and SBL), we’ll catch you after it comes out and
remind people that, “Hey, you may have listened to this episode, but now it’s
here. So go get it.”

AW: Absolutely. That sounds great. I appreciate it.

MH: Thank you.

AW: It’s been fun, Mike. Thank you.

TS: Alright, Mike, another good interview. Do you happen to have Archie’s book
that he’s known for and the second book that’s coming out?

MH: Yeah. The one that he’s really known for that you’ll see referenced in the
footnotes in various places in Unseen Realm is The Origin of Evil Spirits: The
Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Literature. That’s out in paperback
now. It’s very reasonable. In the old days (as we like to think, but it wasn’t) it was
expensive. But it’s an affordable book now. And it’s great. It is the best book out
1:10:00 on the primary source material for Genesis 6:1-4 in Second Temple Judaism.
And the other, the one that he just… This is real recent. This is the other two-
volume set that he referred to. It’s called Early Jewish Literature: An Anthology
Volumes 1 and 2. I know it’s an introduction and an anthology… It gives you

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overviews on, like Archie said, a whole bunch of Jewish literature within this
period, not just the Dead Sea Scrolls and not just the pseudepigrapha, but a
whole spectrum. I know it’s an introduction, but it’s actually a good reference
work for a lot of our audience. So if you’re looking for a book that gets you into
that literature with good bibliography and gives you good summaries about what
in the world this stuff is about, that… It’s just a great title.

TS: Alright. We’re going to follow up with Archie when his other book comes out
and maybe have him back on.

MH: The one on Satan.

TS: Yeah, absolutely. Alright. Don’t forget, our second annual Naked Bible
Conference is just around the corner. Just a few tickets left. So go to
[Link] to get those tickets if you’re interested. We hope to
see you there. Also, we have some swag, so go over to [Link],
and there’s an indie store link in the menu. Click that and you can get yourself a
T-shirt or a pillow with our faces on it. [MH laughs] It’s funny. I can’t stress how
much fun. I’ve been threatened…

MH: Have your dog sit on it or something. [laughs]

TS: You need to take pictures of it. You need to put Mori on it and take a picture
of him, because I've been threatening to do this stuff for a long time, and we
finally got around to doing it. So now we have T-shirts and coffee mugs and all
kinds of fun stuff. It’s just fun. I love it. Everyone, again, please go check out One
Big Family on Amazon. We would appreciate it. And with that, Mike, we’ll see you
next week. And I want to thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible
Podcast! God Bless.

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