Easter: Who Was High Priest Joseph Caiaphas?
This Easter season, Helen and Dave are doing a series of episodes on the fascinating figures that appear in the Passion narratives of Jesus's trial, crucifixion and resurrection. First up is Joseph C...
20 Mar 202337min
Ancient Manuscripts — The Bible Before It Was the Bible
The modern Bible on your bookshelf is the product of centuries of human engagement with really (really!) old texts. Some of the oldest Greek manuscripts of individual books of the New Testament contai...
9 Mar 202334min
Women in Ancient Israel — What Can We Know?
The Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is nearly silent on the lives of ordinary women in the ancient world. Thankfully, we have intriguing clues from archeology and ethnography that help piece together wome...
27 Feb 202334min
The Messiah — Not What You Think!
Return guest Matthew Novenson drops some absolute bombs in this eye-opening episode about messiahs. Pretty much everything you've been told about ancient beliefs about the messiah is wrong (in varyin...
17 Feb 202339min
Recognizing the Jewishness of Jesus
It's easy to read the New Testament and think that Jesus's ministry and message ("grace, forgiveness, love") was somehow in stark opposition to Judaism ("the law, justice, purity"). In today's episode...
6 Feb 202339min
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a Big Deal
Discovered in 1946 in abandoned caves in Israel, the Dead Sea Scrolls are by far the oldest copies we have of books from the Hebrew Bible. The ancient horde of scrolls — more than 1,000 — also sheds l...
23 Jan 202334min
What Did Jesus Look Like?
Everybody knows what Jesus looked like—the beard, the flowing locks, the tunic, and of course, the sandals! But incredibly, the Bible doesn't include a single physical description of Jesus... So where...
13 Jan 202342min
"In the Beginning..." Origins of the Creation Story
The Book of Genesis is packed with iconic stories: the Creation, Adam & Eve, Noah's Ark... but where did those ancient tales come from? Yale Assyriologist Eckart Frahm joins Helen and Dave as they set...
2 Jan 202334min
