Heiser's teachings are not without criticism though, as some assert that Heiser is merely peddling a new version of an old polytheistic heresy. An individual named Kenneth Berding has written an article in which he lays out several grounds for objection to Heiser's assertions, and far more substantially, an individual named Heath Henning, who runs a website truthwatchers.com, has published a six-part series of articles entitled "Michael Heiser's Gnostic Heresy" in which he detailedly deconstructs Heiser's teachings to show them as truly polytheistic and of a heretical nature. Most interestingly about Henning's publications, is that he has had direct correspondence with Heiser for clarifications regarding his work, and Heiser's responses have been quite telling.
Due to his interactions with Henning, Heiser has actually published an internet article addressing Henning's claims about his work. PLI encourages reading Heiser's response article, as well as Part 2 of Henning's series in which he responds to this article written by Heiser, to see just the sort of character which Heiser puts on display in contrast to Henning's handling of the topics; hopefully it will be clear to the reader that Heiser's short, dismissive, character-assassination style response speaks volumes about Heiser's character and lack of humility to serious allegations about his work, and that his response does nothing to actually alleviate the troubles which Henning calls out. Heiser can utter the words "I'm not a Gnostic" or "I'm not a polytheist" all that he wants, but if the substance of his material teaches such things, then he stands accountable to the substance.
Through examination of the material from both sources, PLI agrees that immense concern is warranted over Heiser's teachings because, as in the case of the Bible Project article on Job which is merely parroting teachings from Heiser regarding the divine council and the figure of "ha satan", assertions are made which, by implication, directly lead to the corruption of God's Holy character and perversion of the biblical concept of justice as defined by Him and His law; the teachings directly result in calling that which is truly evil, good, and making that which is good liable for evil. PLI details these realities in the downloadable publication below.
As detailed here in his own words, Heiser sees these texts as clarifying the context through which certain passages and stories of the Old Testament are to be properly understood; he goes so far to say that he would argue that these texts are as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls. In other words, Heiser asserts that we're reading the Old Testament wrong if we're not reading it through the lens which is clarified for us in these texts discovered at Ugarit. Here is where the error fo Heiser's work occurs; as mentioned by the Southern Seminary speaker in the cited video, the writings discovered at the site of Ugarit clearly detail and discuss Baal worship, and Heiser is asserting that we have been reading the Old Testament wrong because we haven't been understanding it through the lens of Baal worshippers!
As the Southern Seminary speakers discusses later in the video, the Canaanites went through a "devolution" in their religious practices, and forsook the worship of a one, true God, and began to worship many gods; also known as polytheism. This resulted in a highly sexualized religion, because Baal was worshipped in-part as a fertility God, resulting in "ritualistic prostitution in temples"[3] and other forms of sexual immorality. These are in fact exactly the people who scripture makes reference to as the people who are being "vomited" out of the land of Canaan as a result of their idolatrous practices and religious wickedness:
24 “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, 25 and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you 27 (for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean), 28 lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. – Leviticus 18:24-28
“And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.” – Judges 3:7
“So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.” – Numbers 25:3