Anamchara Books, New York, 2024. ISBN: 978-1625249081. Paperback 424 pp.

The author of this fine book has put into the hands of his readers nothing less than its title suggests, for The Invisible Dimension is a comprehensive one-volume biblically-based study of invisible beings, realms and worlds which pays careful attention to the cultural contexts and languages – mostly Hebrew and Greek – in which these and other related realities were and are primarily couched.

The reader may baulk at the ambition and in lesser hands such a comprehensive overview might have sacrificed detail for scope. Our guide here, however, has packed a remarkable amount into little more than four hundred pages and the result is a fine introduction to a range of invisible realities which might be expected to be of very great interest to many USPS members.

The book has numerous strengths and the four-part division that Arnold adopts is a sensible one which I found helpful in navigating such unusual territory. So, for example, part one serves as an introduction to the Bible’s various spirit-beings, including angels, cherubim, seraphim, The Watchers, evil spirits, demons and ghosts. Notable throughout is the author’s sensible and sustained use of Michael Heiser’s seminal work about these and other otherworldly realities and I was particularly interested to see how he made use of this essential source material in an informed yet critical way. Part two deals with what Arnold calls ‘The Evolving Afterlife’: that is, the way in which ostensibly Hebraic and related cultural-linguistic perceptions of life after death changed as the people did, starting with their very earliest perceptions and proceeding via the exilic and post-exilic period right through to the deuterocanonical writings and emergent, primarily Greek, New Testament expressions. Part three is broadly thematic, examining textual bases as it explores various issues including whether or not the dead might be said to know anything, the possibilities of communication with the departed, the exact nature of who ghosts are, the existence or otherwise of what is sometimes referred to as the ‘intermediate state’, and the question of whether the dead simply ‘sleep’; whilst part four examines a series of key biblical texts through what the author calls a ‘paranormal lens.’ I found this final section particularly interesting, not least because of the light it shed on some controversial – some might say notorious – passages, including the one detailing Saul’s consultation with the Ghost-Mistress at En-dor as found in 1 Samuel 28. The book ends with some detailed exegesis and reflection on matters pertaining to the question of the legitimacy or otherwise of prayers for the dead and concludes with some brief personal reflections.

I was engaged throughout by this new study. Readers unfamiliar with the range of areas covered might be particularly interested in the ways in which the author deftly shows how translation of biblical texts almost invariably involves translators’ interpretations which can sometimes serve to obscure, rather than to clarify, the scriptural authors’ original intentions. The book also serves as a somewhat sad reminder that the suppression of discussion of such out-of-the-ordinary matters as ghostly and demonic encounters has done nothing to ‘open up’ the invisible realms for genuinely curious congregants in at least some churches. That some of those congregants might well have had otherworldly encounters of their own I take as a given: at least that has been my experience when talking to people in my own church and elsewhere. Often they want validation. To talk and be listened to. Or at least to know more about what happened to them. Sources such as Matt Arnold’s excellent book offer context to such frequently-reported experiences and, perhaps paired with the recent CFPSS publication Talking About Spiritual Experience, it offers a fresh and open-minded approach to the definition and evolution of invisible entities and forces for those in pastoral and teaching ministries (and elsewhere) who may be called upon to deal with realities way outside of the ‘mainstream.’ I recommend it wholeheartedly to other USPS members with similar ministries and interests or simply to those seeking to research and to learn more about the hidden realities that impinge upon us all.

This review first appeared in Psychical Studies, Winter 2024/Spring 2025, Issue No 104, pp. 29 – 31