This is a follow up to my pervious post here that summarized Heiser's scholarship on The Two Powers in the Godhead.
In Michael Heiser's video presentation titled Jesus as the Forgotten Co-Creator: What You Didn’t Know on YouTube (the original title being Jesus as Co-Creator with God), he begins by putting up the first slide pictured below which focuses on "what is God's agent or means of creation?"
Click image to enlarge
Heiser then proceeds to explain that the form of God in the Hebrew Bile is the form of a man, the man Jesus before he was born on earth. In other words, before Jesus was born he was the Word of God and his form as a Man was that which appeared as the form of God in the Hebrew Bible. According to Heiser, this form of God that looks like a man was obviously not the actual earthborn Jesus but is a supernatural representation of God in human form, which is was called the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible. Heiser explains it in more detail in his video presentation Jesus as the Forgotten Co-Creator: What You Didn’t Know on YouTube.
Heiser did not intend to defend LDS theology or my duplicate genome theory in this presentation above; but what I saw in his scriptural study above was a biblical explanation for the fifth Lectures on Faith which it refers to God's form in the Hebrew Bible as a the Father's "personage of spirit," which is part of (what constitutes) the godhead of the one Supreme Deity (described in Lecture 2). So that Heiser's Angel of the Lord is the Father as a personage of spirit that appears as the form of Jesus that looks like a man in the Old Testament, but before Jesus was born on earth because the Deity (or God the Father of lights) had formed for himself a personage of heavenly material (a personage of spirit/nooma) that was an exact super-natural copy or prototype form of the future earthborn Jesus.
These are some excerpts from The Unseen Realm (Expanded Edition Content Only) (2025) by Michael S. Heiser:
On page 14, Heiser writes (my emphasis added):
... I have shown in the book at length, the human form as a way to “image” Yahweh was used by Yahweh himself—and was part of a divine being representing him in terms of function and mission. There is simply no need to dichotomize “form” and “function” when understanding the image. Both are part of the primary meaning: humanity, by definition, is God’s representative on earth. To be human is to be the image.
Heiser is clear, the "Angel of the Lord" is a "human form" as a way for God to “image” himself, which was a "part [of] the "divine being [God]" who represented himself as a "human form," as all representing of God in form are human images. This completely aligns with Joseph Smith's doctrine in the Lectures on Faith: wherein the Deity appeared as the human-looking form of Jehovah as a personage of spirit (the form of a man as a noomatic body) This aligns with my position that the LDS Trinity can be thought of as the First Deity (the omnipresent "supreme governing power," as described in Lecture 2) chose to personify himself in form by constituting himself into a Godhead (see Lecture 5: 1-2): first by being imaged as a human form composed of noomatic material: Heiser's "Angel of the Lord" as a human man figure, which I see as the Father-Jehovah's "personage of spirit/nooma" in the 5th Lecture; and that human-looking form (personage) was a pre-earth prototype of the future earthborn Jesus.
In the section, Yahweh Visible and Invisible (in pages 40-41) Heiser makes it ever more clear when he writes:
Jesus and the Angel of the Lord:
The Angel of the Lord (Yahweh) in the Old Testament is Yahweh in human form. Some of the things said about that angel (who is Yahweh) are applied to Jesus in the New Testament, thereby linking Jesus to Yahweh via the angel. Consequently, the Angel of Yahweh = the second person of the Trinity made visible as in human form in the Old Testament. Jesus = the second person of the Trinity who was incarnate as a man. The Angel of the Lord was not the second person incarnate (conceived in the womb and born of a woman). So, Jesus and the Angel of the Lord are related, but still distinct, concepts, yet both were God in human form. But only one (Jesus) was incarnate.
Let's read that again with my emphasis showing how it matches my twin genome theory:
... the Angel of Yahweh =[/is] the [image of the] second person of the Trinity [that was] made visible as in [seen as a] human form in the Old Testament [times]. Jesus =[/is] the second person of the Trinity who was incarnate as a man. The Angel of the Lord was not the [earthborn] second person incarnate (conceived in the womb and born of a woman). So, Jesus and the Angel of the Lord [which is/was Father-Jehovah as a "personage of spirit" per Lecture 5] are related [as a duplicate image/genome], but still distinct, concepts [or personages], yet both were God in human form [which form/personage is the prototype image of Jesus]. But only one (Jesus) was incarnate.
Heiser is basically saying that the Angel of the Lord is the human-looking form of a man which is the visual form of the second person of the Trinity (Christ); but that the incarnate earthborn Jesus is a separate and distinct personage from the personage of the Angel of the Lord that appears as if in human form in the Old Testament (as Jehovah's pre-Jesus personage or form that looks like a man but is not an earthborn man but a noomatic personage). So I see this as saying exactly what I am saying on this site but without my added commentary on a shared genome.
Lets look again at page 14:
... I have shown in the book at length, the human form as a way to “image” Yahweh was used by Yahweh himself —and was part of a divine being representing him in terms of function and mission. There is simply no need to dichotomize “form” and “function” when understanding the image. Both are part of the primary meaning: humanity, by definition, is God’s representative on earth. To be human is to be the image.
This "divine being representing him [i.e. Jehovah]" as "the human form as a way to 'image' Yahweh" means to me that the Deity appeared as the form of Jehovah as a personage of spirit as described in the 5th Lecture.
I have argued on this site for a genetic understanding of the concept of Jesus as the monogene of Jehovah; and Heiser indirectly provides further support for this view when he goes on in The Unseen Realm (Expanded Edition Content Only), to talk about the angels (divine beings/lesser gods) in Genesis 6 who rebelled and literally mated with human women and produced a hybrid offspring. Heiser goes on in the section The Bad Seed on pages 28-29 to say:
Gilgamesh, who is described as two-thirds divine and quite tall, is an illustration of the hybrid nature of the post-flood apkallu, who were also of hybrid parentage after the flood and very tall. ... The ancient Near Eastern background of Genesis 6:1–4 and the meaning of the term נְפִלִים (nephilim) ... It produces a meaning of “giant” (i.e., honors the descriptions that go with the term and the giants said to descend from the nephilim). ... [Nephilim are] people of unusual height—people who’d descended from the rebel sons of God [in Gen. 6] and were therefore quasi-supernatural enemies of Yahweh and Israel. ... the Rephaim giants in hell [Sheol], so to speak, was part of the web of ideas that contributed to the Second Temple Jewish belief that demons were the disembodied spirits of giants. If you want nephilim in Ezekiel 32:27 to be the same as those in Genesis 6, you still have to see them as giants to honor both the ancient apkallu context and the Second Temple Jewish context, which, as Amar Annus shows, understood the apkallu polemic. You also have Peter and Jude’s reference to Tartarus to contend with—the term identifies the underworld as (at least in part) the residence of the rebel angels of Genesis 6:1–4 and their giant offspring (recall that Tartarus was the term that the Greek giant stories used for the imprisonment of the giants). ...
I see the angels/gods here, producing offspring with mortal women, as these gods from Jehovah's Divine Council having a divine genome so that when they mate with women there is produced a hybrid species. If these gods in Jehovah's Council have a genome, it is not farfetched to conclude that Jehovah's personage of spirit (Heiser's Angel of the Lord" figure that looks like a man) also has a genome. Since Heiser says in many of his videos that Jehovah is "species unique," then Jehovah's genome (the genome of his personage of spirit) when duplicated would create Jesus, and Heiser himself calls Jesus the Unique Gene (Monogene) of Jehovah.
On page 43 in the section titled Giant Problems, Genesis 6: What Were the Nephilim? Heiser writes
When it comes to the biblical text, we are told very little about the Nephilim:
1. They are the product of the sons of God and human women; that is, there was some sort of supernatural causation behind their existence;
2. They were tall warriors;
3. They are described as “people” and “men/humans” (Hebrew: ‘am/עַם; ’adam/אָדָם).
These are the basic facts. We are not told items that we might wish we were told. While it might be the case that Nephilim are more than human, we have no way of knowing more from the biblical text. That they are described as “people” and “men” is based merely on the visual seen by the witness (they looked like men, but were taller than normal). For example, angels were also called “men” (Gen 18:2, 16, 22; Gen 19:4–16; cp. all these references with Gen 19:1).
I don’t speculate about how this “works” with our modern scientific worldview. The biblical writers knew nothing of genetics, DNA, etc. We think in such terms; they did not. I see no cryptic commentary in the biblical text that secretly points to genetics and DNA. One thing that the Old Testament makes clear is that these bloodlines ended with Goliath and his brothers.
I’m not sure why this question of DNA and genetics is of such great urgency to some Christians but then isn’t when it comes to the incarnation and what happened with Mary (“the Most High will overshadow you”; Luke 1:35). Jesus’ humanity was normal humanity, not super-humanity. He was a normal man and fully man, which orthodox Christian theology has always affirmed. Yet he was indeed different—not because of his genetics (!)—because of what was “inside” the flesh. ... Jesus was Yahweh in human flesh. He was human, but more than human. ....
Look what Heiser does here in this paragraph, he points out that many Christians believe that the Nephilim were a hybrid species, a mix of divine and human genes after these lesser gods mated with mortal women according to Genesis 6. He then asks the question, why aren't these Christians also asking if Jesus is not a kind of hybrid between human and divine. He then goes on to deny that Jesus is both God and Man in any sense having to do with genetics and that Jesus was God "because of what was 'inside' the flesh. ... Jesus was Yahweh in human flesh. He was human, but more than human." I agree with Heiser that Jesus is not a genetic hybrid with some of Mary's DNA and some of Jeohovah's DNA, at least not in the mind of the biblical authors. Instead, what I am arguing is that Jesus is a duplicate form in the flesh as an exact image copy of Heiser's Angel of the Lord (Jehovah's Old Testament appearence as a human form). I think that is with the biblical authors were trying to say and is what is echoed in Joseph Smith's Lectures on Faith. I also agree with Heiser that Jesus was Jehovah "because of what was 'inside' the flesh": in that, as the 5th Lecture explains, the omnipresent Holy Spirit/Nooma constitutes (composes/forms) both Jehovah's personage and the resurrected Jesus' personage, as the noomatic fulness of the Deity fills both the Father and the Son.
So I agree with Heiser that the biblical authors did not understand human reproduction genetics and DNA like we do today; but they did have an intuitive knowledge of plant reproduction, because the New Testament literally uses the word sperm to describe the "seed of Christ" that begins transforming a Christian into a noomatic body. They may not have understood exactly how DNA works, but they did understand this idea of a plant seeds operating like sperm in a say a pot to produce a "potted plant"; so that Jesus becomes a life giving spirit/seed in the metaphorical pot of the Christian's body. So they did understand that the seed of the angels (lesser gods) was planted in mortal women to produce Giants (Nephlim). Heiser himself sees this too as he continues:
Noah Carries the Bad Seed?
In many ways, the most logical explanation of how Nephilim were found after the flood is that Noah passed on the seed of the watchers/sons of God to his children, having been so conceived himself. The Genesis Apocryphon (an Aramaic text—hence nefilin below) has Noah’s father fearing that his son came from the watchers. Lamech says in col. 2:1–2: “I thought in my heart that the conception was (the work) of the Watchers, and the pregnancy of the Holy Ones, and it belonged to the Nephilin, and my heart within me was upset on account of this boy.”42 Lamech’s wife, Bitenosh, answers in col. 2: 8–10, 14–15:
(8) Then Bitenosh, my wife, spoke to me very harshly … (9) and said: “Oh my brother and lord, remember my sexual pleasure! … (10) in the heat of intercourse, and the gasping of my breath in my breast. … (14) Remember my sexual pleasure! … (15) that this seed comes from you, that this pregnancy comes from you.”43
Pieter van der Horst discusses the belief in antiquity that female orgasm contributed to conception. Van der Horst explains:
That is to say, most probably Bitenosh here refers to her orgasm on that occasion. The fact that not only Lamech but also Bitenosh had an orgasm at that moment is taken as a proof that it is the two of them together who begot the child. That can only be the case if the female orgasm is here regarded as the event during which she emitted her own seed into her womb where it mingled with Lamech’s
seed so as to form the beginning embryo. It is only a double-seed theory that can explain why Bitenosh here takes recourse to an appeal to her moment suprême (to which Lamech was witness!) as a cogent argument.44
The tradition of Lamech’s fear is also something that shows up in 1 Enoch 106:1–7, in which passage we learn that Lamech’s concern stems from the (apparent) super-human attributes (really, superfluous beauty) of the infant Noah.45 It is interesting that in these texts Lamech isn’t alarmed by any giantism on the part of Noah, something we’d expect. This idea does surface in later rabbinic material.46
What you’ll find in all these debates and traditions (real or imagined) is that ancient Jewish texts sought to distance Noah from the sin of the watchers—hence my own denigration of this view in The Unseen Realm. That the discussion is even possible, though, shows us that the words of Genesis 6:9 were not a “default” for getting Noah off the hook (“Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation”).
The word for “generation” in this verse is דּוֹר (dor), which is not the normative biblical Hebrew term for “family generations” or one’s immediate/extended genealogical line. That word is תּוֹלֵדוֹת (toledoth), which is found in many genealogical contexts in the Old Testament (“these are the generations [toledoth] of”). Rather, the term here refers to one’s “generation” in the sense of one’s era (e.g., “my parents’ generation was the sixties”) or is a collective reference. One lexicon translates Genesis 6:9 as “among his contemporaries.”47
That would mean this term is of no value at all to defending Noah’s purity with respect to the sons of God incident. However, dor might perhaps be used at least once in the Hebrew Bible for immediate family members (Num 9:10), but a translation of “contemporaries” is still possible there.
To conclude, while the language itself of Genesis 6:9 cannot be said to preclude the possibility that Noah was untouched by the watchers’ scandal, the argument is still one from silence.
So I don't see why the "Angel of the Lord" figure (Heiser mentioned above) being in the form of a man (as the pre-earth figure of the man Jesus in noomatic form), could not be the noomatic genome of Father-Jehovah which would by why Heiser says the form of God (the Angel of the Lord) looks like a man! So that the Father as a personage (as the figure of the Angel of the Lord) then duplicated his divine gene (species) to form the earthborn Jesus. Again Heiser says in his videos that Jehovah is "species unique," and so if Jesus is the Unique Gene (Monogene) of Jehovah (as Heiser argues), then as I see it, Jesus the only duplicate of the unique species of Jehovah.
This is why Paul uses seed and plant anaologiesto explain how Jesus was the first Son (God's image) which would produce many more Sons (Imagers); and Jesus is described as a seed (sperm/gene) implanted in human Christians which will cause a transformation into a new creation/new creature; turning human Christians into gods (holy ones) that would join God's Council and who will even judge angels! This is all because Christians are were implanted with the nooma of Christ that contains the divine gene, the unique gene or species of Jehovah (through Christ as the duplicate genome of Jehovah), so that Christians literally "partake of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
Even more interesting, is that while some scholars have argued that the 5th Lecture on Faith presents a binitarian Godhead, Heiser himself acknowledges a binitarian Godhead in the Old Testament (Hebew Bible). His explanation, I think, helps explains the meaning of the Holy Spirit in the Lectures on Faith and how the Holy Spirit could have been thought of in Joseph Smith's mind as both an omnipresent fluid substance and as an aspect of the third person in the Trinity. In the section Are There Hints of a Trinitarian Godhead in the Old Testament? (pages 37-40), Heiser writes:
... Chapters 16–18 of The Unseen Realm establish a two-person (“binitarian”) Godhead conception in the Hebrew Bible. Readers naturally ask, “What about the Trinity?” Chapter 33 of the book deals with how New Testament writers repurposed the binitarian concept of the Old Testament to speak about Jesus as God—and to align the Holy Spirit with the two Yahwehs. There are hints of the inclusion of the Spirit in an Old Testament Godhead in the Old Testament as well. I’ll use the example of Isaiah 63 to illustrate the Spirit’s presence in the Hebrew Bible.
The key to seeing the Spirit identified with Yahweh and the second Yahweh is to find passages that speak of the Spirit in ways that the angel or the Name are spoken of elsewhere. Note the language describing the divine figures of Isaiah 63:7–14 (leb; in bold).
7 I will mention the loyal love of Yahweh, the praises of Yahweh, according to all that Yahweh has done for us, and the greatness of goodness to the house of Israel that he has done to them according to his mercy and the abundance of his loyal love. 8 And he said, “Surely my people are children; they will not break faith.” And he became a Savior to them. 9 In all their distress, there was no distress, and the messenger [= the angel; mal’akh] of his presence saved them, in his love and compassion he himself redeemed them, and he lifted them up, and he supported them all the days of old.
Through verse 8 the text is clearly describing Yahweh. He is the savior figure. But in verse 9 the “messenger (angel) of Yahweh’s presence” is introduced. This description correlates with both Deuteronomy 4:37–38, where the “presence” delivers Israel from Egypt and brings her to the land, and passages like Numbers 20:16 and Judges 2:1–3, which credit the deliverance to the angel of Yahweh. The two figures are both distinguished and yet overlap—a familiar pattern.
10 But they were the ones who rebelled, and they grieved his Holy Spirit, so he became an enemy to them; he himself fought against them. 11 Then his people remembered the days of old, of Moses. Where is the one who led up them from the sea with the shepherds of his flock?
Where is the one who puts his Holy Spirit inside him,37 12 who made his magnificent arm move at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them, to make an everlasting name for himself, 13 who led them through the depths? They did not stumble like a horse in the desert; 14 like cattle in the valley that goes down, the Spirit of Yahweh gave him rest, so you lead your people to make a magnificent name for yourself.
There are three references to the Spirit here; that much is obvious. But there is no real backdrop in the Torah for the Spirit’s inclusion in the exodus escape. But in verse 10, the Spirit became Israel’s enemy because he was grieved—or is it another figure? The Spirit seems the obvious reference, but take that understanding into the pronouns that follow:
“he became an enemy to them”
“he himself fought against them”
“his people remember the days of old, of Moses”
So far so good. But then in verse 11 the prophet asks, “Where is the one who led up them from the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is the one who puts his Holy Spirit inside him?” This seems to be asking, “Where is Yahweh?” Since Yahweh would be the one putting the Spirit inside … who? The one who led them from the sea, obviously (v. 11). This can only be the angel of Yahweh. So we have here an equation of the “Name” (i.e., the Holy Spirit) inside the angel (Exod 23:20–23). Elsewhere, as we saw in chapter 12, the Name is a way of referring to Yahweh himself. This is a clear statement of the deity of the Spirit—and (again) the angel. ... in Isaiah 63, Israel rebels against and grieves the Holy Spirit. But in the parallel passage (Psalm 78) the object of those same two verbs, in the same context, is God himself, the Holy One of Israel. A close reader of the canonical text of the Hebrew Bible (such as a New Testament writer) would have noted the identification of the Spirit with the God of Israel, and also the angel of Yahweh via Isaiah 63.
I think this section above might explain what Joseph Smith was also thinking in regards to the concept of the Holy Spirit in the 5th Lecture on Faith. We do know that Smith did clarify elsewhere that the Holy Ghost is the third person in the Godhead.
So far we see that the Bible definitely contains the idea of supernatural beings reproducing with human beings. So it would not be a far stretch for Jehovah to have formed a noomatic body as an exact replica of the future earthborn human body of Jesus, but a body composed of heavenly noomatic material (known as the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament); and then Jehovah duplicated his noomatic genome in producing the earthborn Jesus in the womb of Mary, so that they (Jehovah and Jesus) are one noomatic substance and a twin duplicate genome. This is why Jesus says that those who saw him on earth had seen the Father-Jehovah.
John 14:8-10 (Expanded Bible):
8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father. That is all we need.”
9 Jesus answered, “I have been with you ·a long time now [all this time; for so long]. Do you still not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. So why do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you don’t come ·from me [on my own authority], but the Father ·lives [remains; abides] in me and does his own work.
Could "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" mean that the Father's image is in Jesus (abides in him) as meaning Jehovah's divine genome is duplicated in Jesus? And "Jesus is in the Father" in that Jehovah formed his personage (the Angel of the Lord) based on a mental prototype of the earthborn Jesus' image that was foreseen omnisciently by Jehovah? So that Jehovah abides in Jesus because Jesus is the Monogene of Jehovah and Jesus is in Jehovah because the Angel of the Lord is the exact image of Jesus of Nazareth. Note that in The Orthodox Jewish Bible for verse 9 of John 14:8-10, it reads as follows (references in brackets are in the original translation):
... So long a time with you I am and you have not had da’as of me, Philippos? The one having seen me has seen [Elohim] HaAv [Col. 1:15; YESHAYAH 9:5(6); Prov 30:4] How do you say, Show us HaAv?
The Son [L …who] is ·the image of [exactly like; the visible representation of] the invisible God [John 1:18; Heb. 1:3]. He ·ranks higher than [L is the firstborn of/over] ·everything that has been made [all creation; Prov. 8:22–30].
If Jesus is the "[exact ...; the visible representation of]" of God, who Heiser affirms is Jehovah who appeared in the form of a man as the Angel of the Lord; then does that not mean Jesus is the twin duplicate of Jehovah, i.e. the mirror image of the Angel of the Lord (Jehovah's chosen form)? So that those who see Jesus also see Jehovah, because Jehovah's divine genome (his "species unique" gene) abides in Jesus as the monogene: with Jesus as a human form beings stamped/sealed as Jehovah's exact image copy, as the fleshly duplicate of Jehovah's personage of spirit (i.e. the Angel of the Lord figure)?
