Talk:Michael S. Heiser

Message from Mike Heiser

NOTE: this entry has been corrected by the person whom it is about. Some of the previous material was quite erroneous. I would like to know who took the liberty to create an entry for me on Wikipedia without first checking with me for accuracy. If you are the person, you can contact me via my website (Mike Heiser, 12/25/05)

Someone who claims to be Mike Heiser made significant changes to this article and top posted the message above on the article page. [1] I have moved this to the discussion page where it belongs. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 07:26, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed External Links

According to Wiki policy WP:EL External links may be listed when the are used as references to specific sentences in the article. Otherwise they are limited to one Official web site link and others as appropriate. "Wikipedia's purpose is not to include a comprehensive list of external links related to each topic." --Kbob (talk) 20:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Unduly Self Serving

I find that this article contains a large amount of self serving and in many cases, un-sourced text. Over the coming days I am planning to condense and remove some of this text. Bios of living persons are not meant to be a self serving platform through which the subject's philosophical or religious views are expressed and currently I see a lot of that in the article. Any comments or help with this editing process are welcomed and appreciated.-- — Kbob • Talk • 21:44, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Someone point me to the delete page button - please. No apologies from me if I find it.Gymboot (talk) 10:50, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

You won't. You could take this article to WP:AFD but you'd fail. See [2] and [3] - you'll see he's cited in scholarly publications and has a number of his own. The article needs improving, like most of our articles, but apparently you don't like the ideas he expresses. Dougweller (talk) 04:30, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Apparently Doug, you assume far too much. I object to the page because it "lacks citations" for the majority of personal data and viewpoints of the topic individual - unverifiable material everywhere. You tell me Doug, how can anyone trust what is written on this page? Worse, what am I to think of the bolded comments on the discussion page, and subsequent response? Is an imposter involved in writing the page, motive, lies, truth? Did Heiser create his own page for self-promotion? Who has added all these unverified statements of a living individual? It's a very basic principle, 'verify source of information', so don't bother responding with Wiki semantics. You are blocking deletion, and insist Heiser has a distinguished reputation, prove it. List the titles in Heiser's impressive academic portfolio. I assume you know The Facade is a science fiction novel. Two citations 'of Heiser's work' point to his endorsements of two science fiction novels (also alien themes). This Wiki page can verify and list two links to his science fiction publications; two links to his academic papers; one link to his website, and one link to his audio on the Noorey show (which verifies a few of the statements listed). The rest of the material must be deleted, if not verified with citations to legitimate sources.Gymboot (talk) 13:43, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Various editors have edited this article, look at the history. I agree a lot of statements need verification, how about helping constructively with it?

Exactly how am I blocking deletion of the article - or do you just mean you want to delete some content - I'm not blocking anything, am I?

What you should do is first show good faith by verifying some stuff yourself with citations. Then you can add {{cn}} judiciously at the end of any contentious statements. A bot will add a date, and if no one finds a reference in a couple of months, delete it.

I've just deleted something I didn't think was verifiable that had an old citation needed tags. There are some other odd old citation needed tags which seem easily verifiable and the ones about his books don't seem contentious in any case, I don't understand why they were tagged.

There is no evidence that Heiser created his own page. It was an IP address that created the article and who also made a number of edits to a wide variety of other articles, and that editor lived in Philadelphia. The IP address claiming to be Heiser is in the state of Washington and owned by Logos, Heiser's employer. So it is extremely unlikely that he crated this page. Dougweller (talk) 16:21, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

https://www.logos.com/about/bio/heiser#blog-post is an accurate and reasonably up to date list of Dr Heiser's published works. This reference page is posted by his employer, Faithlife Corp./Logos Bible Software.

Citation 5

Citation 5 does not back up the statement in the article whatsoever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.168.167.62 (talk) 05:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Article issues

Every reference in this article is from the subject's own website or the website of his employer. It needs neutral third-party references, also known as Reliable Sources. First Light (talk) 15:59, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Ditto. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 22:04, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

The lack of notable third-party references just makes me wonder if the subject would pass Wikipedia:Notability (academics). First Light (talk) 23:38, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Its' worth considering. He has published a few books and scholarly papers. But his book Facade, for example, is published on Acid Test Press, which appears to be the only book published by the company which leads me to believe the book is self published. PUblisher specified at AmazonGoogle search for Acid Test Press takes you here....look at the bottom of the web page-- — Keithbob • Talk • 17:19, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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Nominating for deletion

This article is clearly written by Michael Heiser himself primarily for publicity. It barely cites anything besides his own personal website which functions as little more than a blog, and he meets no notability guidelines. It is no different from the obscure actors who try to give themselves pages by linking to their sparsely filled IMDB page or garage bands who link to their Myspace page and their music on Amazon. AlphabeticThing9 (talk) 07:43, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the notability guidelines are. I am a brand new user who created an account to start editing because I haven't edited a page in over 17 years and things have changed since then. In the case of the recommended deletion of this page, I would respectfully ask that it be kept up. I googled this scholar's name, because I wanted to learn more about him before making a decision about whether to purchase one of his books as an academic resource to add to an extensive collection of books I own. He has published several books in his field of scholarship, many of them reference works. Since the field of scholarship is Biblical language and textual criticism, his personal views are actually what people might be looking to discover when researching him. It just makes good sense to understand the biases of contemporary, living scholars when you are reading and citing their literature. I would recommend that a comprehensive list of his works be completed, rather than a mere selected list, and that they be categorized so that it can be easily seen which are textbooks and which are works of fiction. I may get to that myself, now that I have an account and am considering editing Wikipedia articles again.Curious Ip (talk) 05:42, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Curious Ip: normally is done through the WP:AfD process. The above editor tried another method, WP:PROD, which was reverted. I doubt this article will be deleted. I'll add that we prefer views to be provided by using secondary sources meeting WP:RS. This is a better guide to what is encyclopedic and what is not. Doug Weller talk 15:48, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Curious Ip: You wrote, in part, "... he has published several books in his field of scholarship...." I have found no such book, let alone several books, that Reverend Heiser has written regarding Bible scholarship. He has not been cited by any Bible scholars; he has written nothing note-worthy that I could find; what he has written is far outside the field of Bible scholarship; the Wikipedia entry he added appears to exist merely to sell his books. If this Wikipedia entry qualifies as a valid article, then so would me adding an article about the books I have written (such as DESERT SOLILOQUY, which is a memoir that also includes original research of the East Mojave Desert's pre-written and written history). I do not meet any Wikipedia entry qualifications, and neither does Reverend Heiser: I observe no reason why this Wikipedia sales brochure should remain on Wikipedia. Desertphile (talk) 15:30, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Desertphile didn’t you read what I said? What you think is irrelevant, it can’t be deleted through talk page discussion. Doug Weller talk 16:25, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

No Bible Scholarship Articles

The subject of Reverend Michael S. Heiser came up in an elective mythology class at UNM, so I went looking for some of his published work: I cannot find any of note. He is not cited by Bible scholars, nor mythologists. I found only two articles, neither of which have been noted by Bible scholars, neither of which are unique from many tens of thousands of other non-scholarship articles. Ergo, why does this Wikipedia entry exist? There is no evidence, that I can find, that suggests Reverend Heiser is a Bible scholar. Desertphile (talk) 15:18, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

@Desertphile As above. Doug Weller talk 16:26, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

In fact, if you look at Google Scholar, it lists 136 citations of The Unseen Realm and [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=5741172890675865875&as_sdt=5,38&sciodt=0,38&hl=en 84 for his "Monotheism, polytheism, monolatry, or henotheism?" article. StAnselm (talk) 18:34, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Greetings. I wrote "... I cannot find any of note. He is not cited by Bible scholars, nor mythologists." There is no evidence that suggests Reverend Michael S. Heiser is a Bible scholar. Desertphile (talk) 21:13, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of whether you consider him a serious Bible scholar he is also notable in that he has authored more than 20 books of both fiction and non fiction. He was a guest speaker on coast to coast am several times. He was involved in 3 made for tv productions one of which was a documentary based on one of his books. Much of his work has had a significant impact on other authors with similar interests such as Gary Wayne. If your only criteria for disqualification is that he wasn’t accepted by seminary Bible scholars I think that is too narrow minded a criteria. It seems that because mainstream Bible scholarship may consider his work speculative or you in particular don’t like him, you would like to gate keep information about him on this site. You are showing a strong bias and a complete lack of objectivity which is quite unscholarly 70.118.32.246 (talk) 15:41, 3 October 2024 (UTC)