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And speaking of the Targums, here is how the Targum of Psalm 82 reads:

Psalm 82
1. A hymn composed by Asaph. God, his presence abides in the assembly of the righteous who are strong in Torah; he will give judgment in the midst of the righteous judges.
2. How long, O wicked, will you judge falsely, and lift up the faces of the wicked forever?
3. Judge the poor and the orphan; acquit the needy and the poor.
4. Save the poor and needy, from the hands of the wicked deliver them.
5. They do not know how to do good, and they do not understand the Torah, they walk in darkness; because of this, the pillars of the earth’s foundations shake.
6. I said, “You are reckoned as angels, and all of you are like angels of the height.”
7. But truly you will die like the sons of men; and like one of the leaders you will fall.
8. Arise, O LORD, judge all the inhabitants of the earth; for you will possess all the Gentiles. (http://targum.info/pss/ps3.htm)

Seeing that the Targum identifies the gods of Psalm 82 as human rulers, as opposed to divine beings, who are likened unto the angels but are not, are you willing to accept this interpretation over against Heiser’s?

If not then you are only proving that it really isn’t the the evidence that you are interested in, brother. Rather, you are merely interested in finding sources to confirm your view, not question or challenge it.

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BTW, brother here is what that Targum actuall says in context:

“… When the Most High made allotment of the world unto the nations which proceeded from the sons of Noach, in the separation of the writings and languages of the children of men at the time of the division, He cast the lot among the seventy angels, the princes of the nations with whom is the revelation to oversee the city, even at that time He established the limits of the nations according to the sum of the number of the seventy souls of Israel who went down into Mizraim. [JER. When the Most High divided the nations by lot, and distinguished the languages of the children of men, He appointed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the tribes of the Beni Israel.]” http://targum.info/pj/pjdt32.htm

So not only does Pseudo-Jonathan affirm both readings, you further see that the Targum of Jerusalem actually confirms the sons of Israel, not the angels.

This is what what happens when we simply take for granted what a particular scholars says, instead of going back to the primary sources to see if what he says matches up with the actual context of the specific writing being cited.

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Brother sorry about that. I didn’t know it’s you. Please tell me who you are since I won’t need to answer and just let you comment.

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Brother, your reply here doesn’t refute anything I wrote but is nothing other than ad hominem since you basically attack me for missing something which the scholars have known.

Furthermore, the text doesn’t say El, but Elohim, which actually ends up refuting your claim since the scholars have to argue that Deut. 32:8 must somehow correspond to the more technical rendering of the sons of El. The problem is that this phrase does appear in the OT, but not in reference to heavenly beings, but to Israel! Read Hosea 1:10 for the proof. Therefore, the writer could have easily used the phrase El but chose not to.

Moreover, the parallelism does nothing to make your case since the readings beney Adam and beney Elohim are not meant to contrast human beings with divine ones, but with the nations and Israel, since Israel alone was set aparat by God to be his Son. In fact, had you actually read the article carefully you would have seen me make this very point, namely, that Israel was chosen from all the nations to be the sons and daughters of God.

And instead of citing translations that agree with your position try dealing with what I actually wrote which you haven’t addressed yet.

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“When the Most High made allotment of the world unto the nations which proceeded from the sons of Noach, in the separation of the writings and languages of the children of men at the time of the division, He cast the lot among the seventy angels, the princes of the nations with whom is the revelation to oversee the city, even at that time He established the limits of the nations according to the sum of the number of the seventy souls of Israel who went down into Mizraim.”

Notice, you have 70 angels, a direct reflection of the ANE material as Eugene E. Carpenter writes:

“At any rate, some scholars perceive a Ugaritic background to this text that refers to the “seventy sons of Athirat,” sired by El, and his council of divine beings. Seventy gods are mentioned at Emar. A divine council of gods was common in the ancient Near East. A Phoenician (also Hittite) inscription refers to the whole “group of the children of the gods” (El). In general in other Babylonian literature we read of the gods distributing the cosmos among themselves, but not the nations. Gods in the ancient Near East could give gifts of cities, as at Ugarit or in Sumer. This is part of the broader context, but these verses are intended to contrast the fact that the Lord has set Israel apart unto himself from among all the nations, and Israel is not numbered with them. The nations have their own “gods,” who are mortal, but they do not have Yahweh, who alone does not die and is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. The great Egyptian god Re grows old with millions of years, suffering from divine age. Marduk chooses Babylon as his chief city where the gods will live with him. Kronos, a chief Greek god, although much later in history, assigns the rulership of Attica to Athena, Byblos to Baaltis, Berytus to Poseidon, and all of Egypt to Tauthos.”

But also notice that the Targum says 70 souls of Israel, which Duane L. Christensen points out and writes:

“Reading בני אלהים, “sons of God,” in place of MT בני ישׁראל, “sons of Israel,” as lectio difficilior. DSS read בני אל, “sons of God,” and LXX ἀγγέλων θεοῦ, “angels of God” (so also ς’ and some OL witnesses). According to MT, God divided the nations in relation to Israel’s numbers; though Zimmermann suggested translating the word מספר (usually “number”) as “boundary” (JQR 29 [1938–39] 242), to make better sense of the present text, I emend the text here following the reading בני אלהים, “sons of God,” found in 4QDeutj and LXX ἀγγέλων [or ὑιῶν] θεοῦ, “angels [or sons] of God,” to read “according to the number of the sons of God.” The Tg. adds “seventy” after “the number,” connecting the text with the seventy nations of the Table of Nations in Gen 10 and the song of Jacob in Gen 46:27 (cf. 10:22). It is easy to understand the change that was made in MT to remove a text that seems to suggest the existence of other gods. For a somewhat similar “nomistic correction,” see the discussion of v 14 below. These “divine beings” are also mentioned in a variant reading of v 43 below. For a useful discussion of the idea of subordinate divine beings with whom God holds council, see Ps 82 and the study by G. E. Wright (The OT against Its Environment, SBT 1.2 [London: SCM, 1950] 30–41). The idea here anticipates the later doctrine of guardian angels watching over the nations in Dan 10:13, 20–21; 12:1.”

Hope this helps, Sam. God bless.

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Even the Common English Bible has a similar reading: “When God Most High divided up the nations—when he divided up humankind—he decided the people’s boundaries based on the number of the gods.” (CEB)

Thus, these scholars point out (including Heiser) that a more technical version is: “When the Most High gave their inheritance to the nations, when he divided the sons of man, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of El.”

The phrase “sons of El” (which is “the gods”) balances the phrase “sons of man” in the parallelism. The reconstructed Hebrew text can be found in the apparatus of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, where it reads: bney el. The scribe who produced the Masoretic text took the letters BNY’L to be an abbreviation of bney Yisra’el. That’s why Hebrew linguists don’t accept the MT reading.

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