Killing the Devil

This might be really true, since during II-I BC the eschatology concepts as the heavens, the hell, etc were being developed as many historicians think of it today.

However, one thing I passed: did you believe the devil can be destroyed? Or there is nothing to stop him?

How does one kill a spirit?

This guy is one of my favorite biblical scholars and he just so happened to tuch on this topic today heres the link

Did you even watch the video i linked? Or do you just not take a biblical scholar serious if what he says goes against what you believe?

Yes, I watched it, and I have heard these points made before, they are not new to me. The video that I linked was also from a Bible scholar by the name of Tim Mackie, and there are other Bible scholars that disagree with Dan MacLellen. When scholars disagree with each other, you have to decide yourself between them as to who makes the most sense based on the evidence. First Dan MaClellen has always been very suspect to me because while the first video I watched of him, I found rather interesting at first, he ended it by saying something that, as someone who studies history a lot, was simply not true, in that there were boatloads of ancient texts that you can pull up online and can read for yourself the contents of, that if what he was claiming was true simply should not exist until the Enlightenment or Renaissance at least, yet existed in droves  from very prominent figures with prolific writings in the very early centuries AD, and other texts like it even many centuries before in the BC era. Likewise there is evidence from Egyptian religion a Near Eastern culture which came from the same cultural milieu of the Bible, and the text itself that he is a scholar of that even the baseline claim of what he was saying may not have been accurate, and that as a Bible scholar, I would think that he would be knowledgeable of these things as they are not unrelated to his discipline, though he may simply have a narrowed focus to just the Hebrew and Greek texts and not the conversations around it by the ancients, though if that's the case he probably shouldn't make claims outside of his expertise, even as a layman on the subject if he hasn't studied it, this applies to the former texts I mentioned rather than the Bible itself as he takes a hard skeptical view toward anything he thinks may validate any of the religions that hold the book as sacred scripture, which is a valid position that one can argue the evidence with, but still know that he's a certain type of scholar, a skeptical, Biblical minimalist, I think they're called, he has an agenda, as indeed scholars often do (Like Marxist historians for example) which filters how they interpret the evidence. (Yes, I know that he's a Mormon technically, but he contradicts the teachings of his faith with his stated beliefs often so I think that my statement is fair.)

Now, there's really nothing to respond to here in this video that really isn't mentioned in the video I posted, except for his claim that 'the serpent of old' called the devil in the Book of Revelation refers to Leviathan and not Satan. Such is a mute point as the two were conflated in the Old Testament. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden, the Tannin, Rahab, all of them are prideful serpents of chaos that oppose God clearly referenced many times in the Hebrew of the Bible, and given a clear personification and individual personality in the story of Garden of Eden with the Nacash, which means serpent, diviner, or shining one depending on how you translate it and probably means all three, who God pronounces judgments on, judgments associated with snakes like crawling on ones belly or eating dust, but metaphorically meaning that God will lay his enemy low and that one day he will die, dust being a symbol of mortality in this culture, which hints that the snake was immortal before this, and even promises that one of her offspring will crush his head, a Messianic prophecy. This event is the actual moment that Satan fell from grace in the Bible, not any military rebellion that took a third of the angels with him. That's in Revelation twelve and takes place after the Messiah, whom the book regards Jesus as, is born and refers to Satan losing his place in heaven after Christ's crucifixion, which is a clear reference to Christ's statement that," I saw Satan fall from heaven as lightning." Which Mr. MeClellan associates with the Book of Enoch. 

Basically, just because the Old Testament does not outright say directly that there is a chief enemy of God who leads the forces of darkness, death, and chaos, does not mean that such a concept does not exist in the scriptures. It is introduced directly as a character in Genesis 3, and hinted at loudly through clear implication throughout the rest of the Old Testament again and again that it is at work behind the scenes, and who it is and what its origin is. The Bible is a work of literature and like any form of literature it can and does use other literary devices to hammer home its point, in the same way many works of literature both ancient and modern do this today. I believe its called, "show don't tell." The concept of Satan was simply used in the New Testament to describe the Eden snake and the chaos serpent. Christ being led out into the desert wilderness, the desert, as well as the sea being symbols of chaos in the Ancient Near East to be tempted by Satan, alludes to this fact. The fact that Christ and John the Baptist keep using using the terms "brood of vipers" and "snake" to refer to the Pharisees refer to this fact, and so many other things. It is this very tactic of the text however that allows certain scholars of a more skeptical bent to make claims like this, but the Jews who were much closer in time to when the scriptures were compiled together, (remember, the New Testament is in the Second Temple Period of Judaism and influenced heavily by those interpreters of the scriptures during that time, and that the Second Temple was rebuilt following the Babylonian Exile, which is when the books of the Old Testament were first collected together if not written) certainly picked up on it. 

So, I put great stock in scholars, but their claims have to be weighed against evidence also when they disagree, or when they're wrong. I even put oral traditions of ancient cultures above scholars because there are so many times that they've been proven true when scholars have have dismissed them outright like the denial of the Hittites existence, or the old consensus that Troy was a mythical place among others. Oral Traditions have actually been proven to be shockingly accurate, and often people living much closer to the time of an event have a much more accurate view of things than modern scholars. For instance genetics have proven true the claims of Gildas and the Venerable Bede that the Anglo-Saxon invasion was a wholesale genocide of the native population, when modern scholars doubted this because the Anglo-Saxons came from Denmark and Northern Germany and the English don't look like Danes. But studies of Early Anglo-Saxons skeletons and subsequent samples from across British history in the People of the British Isles Project show that the English used to be much more Danish looking but apparently loved to marry French wives and so imported them at a small but steady pace over what had to be a thousands years to the point that it changed the English genetics and appearance. Likewise even the Aeneid, which i could've sworn couldn't be true about Romans descending from Trojans, seems to have a basis in fact, because there was an influx of Anatolian artifacts and material culture among the Etruscans that coincided with them becoming a more advanced society, and the Romans were their neighbors and likely were involved in this whole technological revolution. It didn't effect the genetics of the Italian Peninsula very much, but I do not doubt that many Romans, perhaps the ones instrumental even in their founding had Lydian/Trojan blood in them, and there is the fact that often even a founding invasive population may interbreed so much with the natives of the place that all traces of their genetics disappear. This is what happened to the Philistines for instance where early samples of them have clear and significant Greek admixture in their DNA, but in later generations just disappears do to interbreeding, which is why they spoke a Canaanite dialect, worshiped Canaanite gods like Dagon or Baal Zebub of Ekron etc. My thing with scholars is that this is their discipline and they do apply it rigorously and put it before the peer review process. They can be wrong, just as as a scientist maybe wrong, but I tend to give scientist weight when regarding matters of science, and not things like natural herbal healers and alternative medicine, or acupuncture, or chiropracters, or those who claim that vaccines cause autism, or those who are rabidly against the very ideas of GMOs, or other things like that. I think that while the experts may be wrong sometimes or even often, and they disagree with one another often, I don't think that there's a concerted conspiracy to mislead everyone that some alternative person making rather unusual claims, with no real evidence, or at least evidence that passes the snuff test of sorting through it logically, through primary sources, or through experimentation can truthfully pass, and no formal education in this discipline whatsoever has burst wide open. Certainly such a man can exist, I admit, but I think he's going to need to definitively prove what he is saying more rigorously than otherwise, if he's going against the collected body of knowledge of the whole of human civilization. Maybe he will, and if he does, it will supplant the official consensus, as in a free society truth will win out, but until then I shall trust experts more than him, even while giving him an ear. I am a layman myself, and I certainly wouldn't want to discount the input of laymen, who often know a great deal about the subject that they are interested in. But they learn such information from experts, or putting together evidence based on what experts have produced, even the knowledgeable layman has the experts as their foundation, how could they not? Because to not base it on such is to throw out the whole body of collective human knowledge, and if you throw that out, you will simply follow any slick voice that claims anything at all. They can claim that the moon is made of cheese, and how would you know it isn't? The scientists are saying its made of solid stone, but I just don't trust them, I think they are lying to me and a part of a conspiracy to hide the truth of the cheese moon from me. They've been wrong before, and so are probably wrong now right? Why would I listen to known frauds? Well, because knowledge evolves with new information, and we get such all the time.

Even knowledge evolves with Biblical scholarship. We are digging up new things all the time in the Middle East that actually provides much needed context to the Bible, its literary genres, devices, and conventions, its relationship functionally, conceptually, and polemically to the the religions of those around them and the stories found within, how they used language in things like hyperbolie, or boasts, in common statements that euphemistically reference something else, their cultural conventions, which were... strange to say the least, remember that this is the same cultural milieu as that which produced the first civilizations. Israel's neighbors were Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia. The further back in time you go, the closer that people start to think like actual aliens. They didn't even agree with us on what makes a thing a thing. We define objects by their properties and characteristics, they defined them by how they functioned in our world, especially as it regards human civilization. To us, a cow is a furry, four legged, bovine mammel, to them its the thing that eats grass, gives milk, and provides meat. To us the sun is a giant fiery gas ball, to them, the sun may have been a god, but it was the sun because it provided heat and light and life to the world. When Genesis 1 starts out by saying the earth was Tohu and Bohu wild and waste, or formless and void, what it means to say is that nothing at all was functioning for humanity at the least and perhaps life at the most. The sea in the book is called Tehom, which is a cognate to Tiamat, although it might not be referring specifically to the dragon but just descends from a common ancestor which has to do with the primeval sea, but the primeval sea was often personified as a sea dragon so I don't even know if there's a meaningful difference here between the two concepts, and later on in Psalms it describes this even as God breaking the heads of Leviathan so it at least fits in later books, the chaos serpent to which Leviathan is in a similar motif to. God doesn't do battle with the serpent in the way that other myths from their neighbors would do, he speaks to it and it yields, an obvious Polemic again Marduk or Baal or any other serpent slayer who created the cosmos from its carcass. When the serpent in the Garden of Eden, leads humanity astray in Eden, it leads to an awful spiral of events that ruin humanity and spread chaos across the earth to the point that what happens? God destroys the earth with a flood, he covers the earth again with the chaotic tohu and bohu waters that was thereat the beginning, the serpent's actions, the serpent's deception reduces the whole world back to that lifeless, chaotic, functionless state that it started with, it dismantled God's good ordered world created in the style of a Temple with sky as the outer courtyard, with the sea as the Holy Place, and the land as the Holy of Holies with the idol of the deity, man, created in the image of God at its center, over seven days, seven spans of time being the custom for a temple ordination, on the seventh day, he ceases and his presence enters his temple of creation, like the Tabernacle in the Torah. And then the serpent ruins it all, he ruins his temple, he ruins his living idols corrupting them and everything completely, and eventually succeeds in returning it to nothing but the dark chaotic sea. However, God saves Noah and his family, and a wind blows over the water like the Spirit of God parting the water in Genesis one, and the bird comes back with a fresh twig. God recreated the world and started again, and such is the story of the rest of the Bible. Is this serpent not Leviathan the dragon of the chaotic sea, the prideful one who ruins everything, opposes God and creation and tries to drag it all back into the ocean? Is not the subtle references to him throughout the whole of the Old Testament when things go bad or an enemy of God appears referencing this battle? And in the Book of Revelation when he is defeated at Armageddon, the devil, the inverse of Norse Ragnorak, though not in any way plausibly connected to it excepting maybe that Armageddon may have influenced Norse rather than the other way around, where in the Norse beliefs the forces of chaos win, the gods die, and the earth is destroyed, instead Christ defeats the devil and the forces of chaos, throws them in a fiery pit and, Revelation 21:1, "then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea." The Bible tells a story and the story is a struggle between order and chaos, God and what would later come to be called Satan, or properly, the Satan, just the Adversary. A more succinct title could not be devised.

Triggered? In what way? You asked me a question and I thought I answered as respectfully as possible? If I did not, I am sorry. And yes, I'm sure he did make six more videos, and perhaps they are more convincing and go into more detail than the one you posted. But I was responding to the one you posted, and was making my case, and the case of the scholars I follow. Now, yes, I am not surprised that he was able to checkmate laymen on the internet. They don't have as much access to primary sources and the resources of a university as he does, and they have not studied in higher education to earn the degrees that he has. Dan Maclellen spends his time debunking Tik Tok videos. The question is though will he debate the scholars that disagree with them, and could he answer their objections as effectively? I don't think so, and I'll tell you why.

So, I looked up Dan MaClellen's credentials and I shall take nothing away from them, they are rather impressive. He has a Doctorate in Philosophy in Religion and Religious Studies, basically a theology degree, which is why he may call himself doctor. Now, such is not necessarily what I would expect from a man primarily identifying himself as a Biblical scholar, as its actually a very different discipline from such, but interestingly, remember that thing that I said that he got historically inaccurate in one of his videos? Well, this degree does have to do with that I think which is why I am furtherly baffled at his statement now. Next he's got a Masters Degree from Trinity Western College in Biblical studies. This is more in line with what he's talking about and does give him credentials to speak on these things and for his takes to have weight. Next he has a Masters Degree in Jewish studies from Oxford University, a related field from a prestigious University certainly giving him well rounded knowledge on the subject, though the context of modern Judaism is not the context for the Hebrew Bible, like even in Christian sects, there has been a lot of accretions in Judaism and a lot of omissions and lost context such that modern Judaism and Second Temple Judaism are almost unrecognizable to one another. For that you need a different context entirely. And fourthly... well, there it is, a Bachelor's Degree from Brigham Young University in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics. That's the proper context of the Bible, but he is noticeably greatly undedicated in this rather important subject. It's nothing to sneeze at of course, its not nothing, but a bachelors degree in anything is rather attainable for any Upper Middle Class American. Over all he has very well rounded, and very impressive credentials, but again he is a Doctor in Religion not Biblical studies, and in all things regarding the Ancient Near East, he is comparatively undereducated and under credentialed. The Masters degree in Biblical Studies I think is really where his relevant credentials come from. 

Now, lets compare him to some of the scholars that I follow with interest. My favorite is the late Michael S. Heiser, the writer of many books on these subjects, the biggest being the Unseen World about the supernatural elements in the Bible. This is his area of scholarly expertise, what we're talking about here so I think he's a good one to start with. So he has a PHD in the Hebrew Bible and Semitic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an Ivy League (A Public Ivy) research university in the city and state in question. He already outranks Mr. Maclellen in the relevant field in question, then the man got a Masters Degree in the same field from the same University. Don't know why he did that but its a matter of public record. He is overeducated to the extreme in this subject. Likewise he has a Masters Degree in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania (the forth oldest institution of higher education in the United States) with a focus on Israel and Ancient Egypt, so knows a great deal about the culture that produced the Hebrew Bible and its next door neighbor which had many of the same cultural conventions. So, his scholarly focus, and his credentials would give him more weight in acedemia than McLellen possesses at least at the moment. MacLellan cannot debate Heiser because he's dead but its quite the shame that he can't, I'd love to see that.

Now we go on to the maker of the video I posted Tim Mackie. He has a PHD in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Well, here we go again, a PHD from an Ivy League University in the very field that this debate concerns, which MacLellen again lacks, and he outranks him even in Jewish studies, also looking up his area of specialty in his degree, it was on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint and the Second Temple Jewish context of the Old Testament and the New, so his area of expertise also bolsters his credentials much further because he knows what he's talking about when expounding on subjects such as the one in the video. Likewise he has a degree in Theology from Western Seminary. Now it isn't mentioned what kind of degree it is, so its probably not that high compared to the others so MaClellen certainly beats him here I think.

Now, there is another scholar whose information is listed under Tim Mackie's credential list and endorses his work coming into agreement with it. I only mention him for the purposes of making my point further so please humor me. But this man is named Walter Kim and he has a PHD from Harvard University in Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the entire region and the culture there in that all of this is concerned with. 

Now I could do this with many other similar scholars like N.T Wright, Tremper Longman, John Walton and others. What is my point here? Is the man with the most credentials necessarily correct? No, not necessarily, but these scholars have more education, more credentials, and more knowledge in general in the areas being debated here, which are their specialties than Mr. MaClellen. If MaClellen were to contend with any of these men in a debate, who do you think would have the upper hand, and who would be more prepared for these debates in every way? These aren't people on Tik Tok, they are higher ranking and more educated scholars on the subject than he and they disagree with him on this subject. These are Ivy League educated, high ranking scholars, who specialize in these fields far more than MaClellen does. You ask me if I just ignore scholars that I don't like but I ask you, who has greater knowledge, education, and credentials to speak on these things between MaClellen and the maker of the video I posted for instance? Are you going to just dismiss Michael Heiser, the man with the MA and PHD in Biblical studies from an Ivy League University who wrote the book on the supernatural worldview of the Ancient Israelites, as well as the MA in Ancient Egyptian and Israelite history?