 I would appreciate if Dr. Heizer could look at 1 Corinthians 8, verse 4 through 6. How would he respond to Paul's teaching here that there's no God but one and the other gods, whether in heaven or earth, are called so-called gods? Yeah, I think this is a really good case where the English translation, and in this case even the type setting, biases readers. In a lot of translations, you'll go to 1 Corinthians 8 and you'll have gods and scare quotes, many lords and scare quotes that sort of predispose the reader into thinking, okay, this is sort of a fairy tale kind of thing that Paul is now going to deny and go after. I actually address this in unseen realm, so I don't know if the questioner has a copy of unseen realm, but my response to this is basically I'm going to read part of what I put in unseen realm in relation to 1 Corinthians 8. So I pointed out that in the discussion in 1 Corinthians 8, 1 through 6, Paul does acknowledge that there are other gods, theoi. You know, if you go to 1 Corinthians 8, he says, you know, not concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge, this knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, so on and so forth. Verse 4, therefore as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence. Well, Paul's right, you know, the idol itself isn't alive, you know, and we know that there's no God but one, okay, well, that's a statement of the uniqueness of Yahweh, the God of Israel. We know that's true as well, but then Paul follows that by saying, for although there be many so-called gods in heaven or on earth, indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there's one God and Father from whom are all things and for whom we exist. So in the space of three verses there, he affirms that, yeah, as indeed there are many gods, theoi, and many lords, curioi. Paul affirms that, yeah, they're real, they exist, but for us there's one God, the Father, and of course there's one Lord, Jesus Christ, but then he has this language about, you know, so-called gods in heaven or on earth and we're a little bit biased when it says so-called. The term there is just a normal word, Lego, which means to say or to call, to speak, that sort of thing. So the reference is really there are many gods in heaven or on earth that people name as their gods. That's all it's saying. So to translate it so-called as though you're supposed to doubt it now is really an injustice to a very common, simple term in the Greek New Testament, Lego. You should really look at verse five and say, for although there are many gods in heaven or on earth that are called gods, and indeed there are many gods and lords, yet for us there's one. So the idea is that there are many other rivals to Yahweh that people sort of worship and assume are better than the God of Israel or, you know, sort of the real one are up there. You know, any number of ways that an idolatrous person, an idolatrous population would have looked at their gods. This is all Paul's saying. There are lots of other deities that people assign worth to, that they believe are true gods in the sense that this is the one that deserves our worship and so on and so forth. Well, Paul says, yeah, that's all true. It's all true. But, you know, for us there's one and there's one Lord, so on and so forth. So right away we're biased in the translation by the scare quotes. We're biased by translating Lego as so-called instead of just saying called. OK. Yeah, the little word so in front of it and it biases the reader. So I have a bone to pick, again, with the way the terms translated, but going back to what I said in Unseen Realm, Paul acknowledges that there are other gods and other lords among people who did not belong to Yahweh and, of course, to Jesus. Well, you know, we know this because this is what the state of the affair is that the nations were under. This is the Deuteronomy 32.8.9 worldview. And again, if you're the questioner or people listening to the podcast don't have any idea what I'm talking about here now, go to nakedbiblepodcast.com and go to start here and watch the video on the Divine Council worldview, the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, because I can't take the time in the podcast to do that. But so assuming that you know what I'm talking about here. I wrote an Unseen Realm taking Paul's comments in both. This is important in both 1 Corinthians 8 and 1 Corinthians 10 together is important because the subject matter is the same. So we have here in 1 Corinthians 8 this reference to other gods and other lords and the food sacrificed to idols. And so people read this and they're biased by the scare quotes. They're biased by rendering Lego so called instead of just called or named. And they think, oh, you know, the gods aren't real. Paul didn't think the gods are real. Well, you got a real problem when you get to 1 Corinthians 10 with that because he discusses the same subject matter. And there it's it's quite a different story. So for Paul, when you get to 1 Corinthians 10, this is when he's talking about, well, don't eat the meat because then you'd be in fellowship with demons. And in 1 Corinthians 8, he more or less says, oh, who cares if you eat the meat because we know that idols, you know, there's this isn't a real deity. This block of wood and stone, this isn't a real deity. It's not alive. It's just a piece of wood or piece of stone. So who gives a rip? OK, you know, whatever you do, what's right in your own conscience. 1 Corinthians 8 for seven, you're OK. But then he changes his tune in chapter 10. He says, well, don't eat because then you're going to be in fellowship with demons. This is 1 Corinthians 10, 21 and 22. You say, well, is Paul contradicting himself? The answer is no, because in 1 Corinthians 8, he's talking about the idol. OK, it's not real. It's not alive. But there are other gods and other lords, but for us, there's one. 1 Corinthians 10, he's talking about the entities that are behind the idols that people use to worship those entities. Paul is actually very consistent when he says, don't eat the meat because you don't want to be in fellowship with demons. So if you're going to deny the entities are real in 1 Corinthians 8, then you have to deny that the daemonion, the demons in 1 Corinthians 10 are real. And Paul obviously believed demons were real. So you can't deny one, deny the language in one to affirm the language in another. It's totally contradictory. And the real kicker here is that in 1 Corinthians 10, when Paul does talk about the demons that are that are really behind these objects, people are just using objects to worship these deities that again, Paul acknowledges, even in chapter 8, there are many gods and many lords. OK, they're using these objects to worship them. When he talks about those deities and he calls them demons in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verses 21 and 22, where does he get that? He gets it from Deuteronomy 32. He's quoting, taking the language from the Septuagint translation of Deuteronomy 32 17, which says, again, talking about Israel, Paul's actually tracking on Deuteronomy 32 through the whole chapter in chapter 10 or a big section of the chapter. Deuteronomy 32 17 says that the Israelites sacrificed to demons that were not God, that were not Eloah. It's a singular word, God. They sacrificed to demons, Shadim, that were not God. To God's Elohim, they had never known. And that was a problem for Paul. And Paul doesn't want believers in Corinth. To fall into this trap. So don't sacrifice to the, you know, Daimonion, don't eat this meat. And so the way you reconcile these two things is that apparently if you go to 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says, don't do this. But then he says, OK, if it's sold in the marketplace, go ahead. So the issue for Paul must have been some doing something that made you sort of part of the ritual, made you sort of part of the sacrifice, made you a participant in the event of the sacrifice. That to him was where the line needed to be drawn because then you'll be just like the Israelites, you'll be sacrificing to the Daimonion, to the Shadim, if we want to use the Hebrew term. And that's an abomination. These are gods, these were gods. The Israelites didn't know they weren't for the Israelites. They were assigned to the other nations. Again, the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, just a few verses earlier before verse 17. So Paul isn't contradicting himself and he's not contradicting the Old Testament. He's actually trying to tiptoe through this issue for the Corinthians and saying the issue isn't the meat. It's not the act of eating. It's not the meat itself. The issue is don't do anything that makes you a participant with these entities that Paul considered real, because, hey, the Israelites considered them real. The biblical writers considered them real. These other Elohim don't do that. That is a violation. That was Israel's downfall and we don't want this to happen to believers now who are following Christ. Don't do this. So you can go to Unseen Realms or to get the whole picture there. I give in footnotes a number of works that show how Paul tracks through Deuteronomy 32 in, again, a larger section of 1 Corinthians 10 because he's comparing, again, the believing community there in Corinth that he's writing to Christians, the church there, to the Israelites, you know, we don't want to happen to you what happened to them. And he gets to this whole thing about the demons and he says, boy, you just got to avoid this. You just must avoid this because they are real. Indeed, there are many gods and many lords. But for us, our allegiance is to one the father from whom are all things and for whom we exist. And our allegiance is to one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. Again, Paul is actually really consistent in the way he approaches this. But when you get to certain translations of 1 Corinthians 8 and then you get to chapter 10, you think this guy can't make up his mind. And it's because you've been biased to think a particular way in chapter 8 that doesn't work real well when you get to chapter 10.