Two Powers in Heaven

Two Powers in Heaven focuses on the ancient Jewish theology that there were two holy powers in heaven (not one good and the other evil as in Zoroastrianism). This teaching was part of Judaism until the 2nd century C.E.  The two powers in heaven idea can easily be traced back into the Second Temple period (ca. 500 B.C.E.-70 C.E., and has even earlier roots in the Hebrew Bible (specifically the divine council of Israelite religion). The two powers teaching is the backdrop for the godhead of Christianity and the binitarian monotheism of first century Judaism.

Your blog author is Mike Heiser, 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 taught on the college level for twelve years before accepting my present position working for a software company that produces ancient text databases and other digital resources for study of the ancient world and biblical studies. My dissertation was entitled, “The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature.” For more on the divine council, see www.thedivinecouncil.com. My dissertation is available via link on this blog (see “Pages”).