Who am I?

I’m a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., Ancient History) and the University of Wisconsin- Madison (M.A., Ph.D., Hebrew Bible and Semitic Studies). I have a dozen years of classroom teaching experience on the college level and another ten in distance education. I’m currently a Scholar-in-Residence at Logos Bible Software, a company that produces ancient text databases and other digital resources for study of the ancient world and biblical studies.

Why do I do what I do online?

In a nutshell, my homepage, podcasts, other websites, and writing all aim to produce quality content for people who want certain things:

• Serious academic content for understanding the Bible in its own context, unfiltered by creeds and traditions — but made decipherable to those who don’t live in the ivory tower
• Serious academic critique of the cyber-twaddle you find on the internet about the Bible and the ancient world
• Serious Christian engagement with modern alternative worldviews and the paranormal

What do I believe?

While I’m not anti-creedal or opposed to denominations, I am opposed to using creeds and denominational preferences to filter the Bible. Creeds are selective, historically-conditioned, limited by their context and the resources available to their formulators, and often agenda-driven. I’m more concerned with what the text says and what it can sustain in terms of interpretation than I am with creeds and mission statements. Every post-first century religious context is foreign to the Bible, and therefore is not the context of the Bible. The right context for interpreting the Bible is the context that produced it — the worldview and cognitive frame of reference of the biblical writers. (Here’s a video that explains what I mean). I’m a trained biblical scholar, but I also have what I think is a healthy disdain for the trendiness of academia and its own brand of self-assured dogmatics. I’d be a happier guy if every graduate student in biblical studies and theology was forced to take courses in logic and critical thinking. I once said that out loud in a doctoral class. I didn’t win hearts and minds that day.

Reversing Hermon is a groundbreaking work. It unveils what most in the modern Church have never heard regarding how the story of the sin of the Watchers in 1 Enoch 6-16 helped frame the mission of Jesus, the messiah. Jews of the first century expected the messiah to reverse the impact of the Watchers’ transgression.

For Jews of Jesus’ day, the Watchers were part of the explanation for why the world was so profoundly depraved. The messiah would not just revoke the claim of Satan on human souls and estrangement from God, solving the predicament of the Fall. He would also not only bring the nations back into relationship with the true God by defeating the principalities and powers that governed them. Jews also believed that the messiah would rescue humanity from self-destruction, the catalyst for which was the sin of the Watchers and the influence of what they had taught humankind.

The role of Enoch’s retelling of Genesis 6:1-4 in how New Testament writers wrote of Jesus and the cross has been largely lost to a modern audience. Reversing Hermon rectifies that situation.

Topics include:

• Understanding Genesis 6:1-4 and the Sin of the Watchers in Their Original Context: How the ancient Mesopotamian story of the apkallu aligns with Gen 6:1-4, was preserved in 1 Enoch, and sets the stage for the theme of reversing the evil of the Watchers
• How the theme of reversing the transgression of the Watchers colors the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus, his genealogy, and his ministry.
• How the writings of Peter and Paul allude to the sin of the Watchers and present Jesus as overturning the disastrous effects of their sins against humanity.
• How the descriptions of the antichrist, the end-times Day of the Lord, and the final judgment connect to Genesis 6 and the nephilim.

Though every topic addressed in Reversing Hermon can be found in scholarly academic literature, Reversing Hermon is the first book to gather this information and make it accessible to Bible students everywhere. The book also includes lengthy appendices on the ancient debate on the inspiration of the book of 1 Enoch, New Testament allusions to the book, and academic resources for studying 1 Enoch and the Book of Giants from the Dead Sea Scrolls.