Who Chose the Books of the New Testament?
Starting in the 1st century CE, there was an explosion of Christian literature — dozens of gospels, letters, apocalypses and more — but only a fraction of those texts made it into the New Testament ca...
20 Marras 202342min
What Ancient Coins Can Teach Us About the Bible
When we recognize the Bible as a product of the ancient world, we can look for subtle ways that biblical authors incorporated elements of everyday life — including coins! We spoke with historian Micha...
13 Marras 202345min
Everything We Get Wrong About Jesus and Jewish Impurity Laws
It's easy to read the New Testament and come away with the idea that Jesus was in opposition to the Jewish ritual impurity laws. In fact, that's what most Christian theologians have taught for the pas...
6 Marras 202343min
Halloween Special: God's Monsters
There aren't any werewolves or vampires in the Bible, but God deploys his own terrifying army of monsters. Have you heard of cherubs? Not what you think! Even angels have some less-than-angelic duties...
30 Loka 202342min
Did the Author of John Know the Other Gospels?
At first reading, the Gospel of John feels a world apart from the other gospels. The language is different, there are new stories (see our episode on "the woman taken in adultery") and Jesus speaks ab...
23 Loka 202343min
Is Jonah the Weirdest Book in the Bible?
Jonah and the whale (fish, technically) is one of the best-known Bible stories, but it's also completely bonkers. It stars Jonah—the worst/best prophet ever—and reads more like a fable or satire than ...
16 Loka 202344min
Childhood in Ancient Israel—What Can We Know?
Pop quiz—name a famous kid from the Hebrew Bible. Baby Moses? Teenage David? That's about it. The Bible may be largely silent about childhood, but we can gather clues from archeology and ethnography t...
9 Loka 202348min
Mysterious Origins of a Bible Story: Casting the First Stone
For the first four centuries of Christianity, the famous story of the "woman taken in adultery" was nowhere to be found in the New Testament. In this moving tale, Jesus forgives a woman condemned fo...
2 Loka 202348min
