Biblical Time Machine

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 to piece together a picture of what it was like to be a kid in ancient Israel.

Special guest Kristine Garroway from Hebrew Union College joins Helen and Dave to reconstruct family life in ancient Israel: the spiritual anxieties around pregnancy, the rules of ancient adoption, and the chore lists assigned to little Israelite boys and girls.

For more, check out Kristine's book, Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts. 

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

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  for committing adultery and admonishes her accusers: "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

But why wasn't the story included in the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament? Was it a late addition to the gospels? Or was it an ancient story suppressed by Church fathers? Was "death by stoning" really a punishment in 1st-century Judaea? 

In this fascinating episode,  Helen and Dave speak with scholar Jennifer Knust about her book To Cast the First Stone: Transmission of a Gospel Story.  

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

It's easy to read the New Testament and come away thinking that Jesus and his disciples were in opposition to "the Jews." But the first followers of Jesus were all fellow Jews and the early Jesus movement was very much a Jewish movement. Would the first generation of "Christians" have thought of themselves as anything other than Jewish? Our guest Paula Fredriksen says absolutely not. 

According to Paula, there was plenty of room in the 1st Century for competing Jewish sects—including the Jesus movement—all arguing over the right way to be Jewish.  (The fact that they were arguing, jokes Paula, is proof enough of their Jewishness.)

Check out Paula's excellent book, When Christians Were Jews: the First Generation. 

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

Comedy royalty John Cleese stopped by the podcast to chat with Helen and Dave about Monty Python's inspiration for making Life of Brian, what fascinates and frustrates him about the Bible, and so much more.

Members of the Time Travelers Club can listen to an uncut version of our entire, hour-long conversation with John. For $5/month, you can help support the show and receive bonus content and behind-the-scenes extras. Thanks to all those who have joined and special thanks to listener Josh Boldman for submitting an audio question for John Cleese.

For our U.S. listeners, John is about to embark on an American tour of his hilarious stage show An Evening with the Late John Cleese, so find out when he's coming to a city near you.  Enjoy the episode! 

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

Face it — you wouldn't survive two days back in the first century. If the food-borne bacteria didn't kill you, you might keel over from the odors alone! In this episode, Helen and Dave welcome Jodi Magness, biblical archeologist extraordinaire, for a frank and sometimes graphic discussion of what daily life REALLY would have been like in 1st-century Judaea: just nasty!

And don't forgot to check out Jodi's book: Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus.  It's terrific.   

Bonus Content
Members of the Time Travelers Club get access to a bonus conversation with Jodi about how she got into archeology. We also posted a 20-minute behind-the-scenes conversation with Helen and Dave about how they got interested in biblical studies and the origins of the podcast. Subscribe today and check it out! 

Related Stories from Bible Odyssey

• What Does Archeology Tell Us About the New Testament?
• The Aims of Biblical Archeology

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

How did a (lowercase) god named Yahweh from the pantheon of the ancient Edomites become the one and only (uppercase) God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam? It's a fascinating story that calls into question just how monotheistic the ancient Israelites really were...

For this episode, Helen and Dave are joined by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter, and author of the award-winning book, God: An Anatomy.

Join the Time Travelers Club! For $5/month, you can support the podcast (thanks!) and even contribute to the show. Subscribers can ask their very own questions on the air and access special bonus content exclusively for Club members. There's still time to ask a question to John Cleese! Learn more >

More on Yahweh from Bible Odyssey, our new content partner:

• What did Yahweh look like?
• Worshipping Yahweh outside the province of Yehud
• Divine Council
• Baal

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

Season 2 of Biblical Time Machine is coming soon! We've already recorded a slate of terrific episodes that will be dropping in the next few weeks.  Until then, check out the Time Travelers Club, a new way to get involved with the podcast.

The Time Travelers Club is a subscription service that lets you support Biblical Time Machine in exchange for some pretty sweet perks, including the opportunity to ask your questions on the air! Subscriptions are $5/month. 

Below is a schedule of upcoming recording dates and topics. Members of the Time Travelers Club can send us questions for any topic or guest, and we will read them on the air.  Or even better,  you send us an audio file of you asking your question and we'll play it on the podcast!

Upcoming Recording Dates

• Sept. 7 "When Christians Were Jews" What was life like for the first generation of Jesus's followers after the Crucifixion? Guest: Paula Fredriksen
• Sept. 11 "John Cleese and The Life of Brian" Did Monty Python strive for historical accuracy in its classic biblical satire? Guest: John Cleese
• Sept. 13 "The Woman Taken into Adultery" What are the literary origins of this powerful episode where Jesus invites those without sin to "cast the first stone"? Guest: Jennifer Knust
• Sept. 18 "Jesus and Jewish Purity Laws" Was Jesus really in opposition to the Jewish purity laws? Guest: Matthew Thiessen
• Sept. 20 "Childhood in the Ancient World" What was daily life like for children in Hebrew Bible and New Testament times? Guest: Kristine Garroway
• Sept. 21 "What Do We Know About the Gospel of John?" The 4th gospel stands apart from the synoptics stylistically and theologically. What do we know about the community where it was written and how it shaped the text? Guest: Mark Goodacre
• Sept. 29 "The Queen of Sheba" What do we know about the ancient kingdom of Cush, one possible home of the biblical character, the Queen of Sheba? Guest: Stacy Davis
• Oct. 2 "God's Monsters" How ancient belief systems shaped the monsters, demons and shape-shifters that appear in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Guest: Esther Hamori
• Oct. 11 "Pagan Writers on Jesus" What ancient Greek and Roman authors wrote about Jesus and his followers. Guest: Margaret Williams
• Oct. 30 "God's Ghostwriters" The little-known role of slaves as the scribes who penned and transmitted the New Testament. Guest: Candida Moss
• TBD "War and Weapons in Ancient Judaea" What was the reality of warfare in the 1st-century? Guest: Guy Stiebel

Thanks for listening and thanks for supporting Biblical Time Machine. We hope that you're excited for Season 2. 

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine

Thank you loyal listeners for making Season 1 of Biblical Time Machine such a success! In this short recap, Helen and Dave look back on the first 30 episodes and drop some hints about what's to come in Season 2.

We'll be taking a short pause to catch up on recordings and make plans for an even bigger and better second season of Biblical Time Machine. But don't fret, we'll be back with new episodes before you know it.

In the meantime, keep sending us your emails (we respond to each one!) and please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. 

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

The existence of the 12 tribes of Israel is central to the narrative of the Hebrew Bible. The tribes were named after the 12 sons of the patriarch Jacob and believed to be their direct descendants. As the Israelites escaped slavery in Egypt, wandered the desert for 40 years, and eventually conquered and settled the “promised land” of Canaan, they did it all as members of these 12 named tribes.

But do we have any evidence outside of the Bible that the 12 Tribes actually existed? Our guest, Andrew Tobolowsky, has studied the history of the 12 Tribes both within the biblical texts and beyond, and has some intriguing theories to how the idea of the 12 Tribes originally took form and why it's endured to this day. 

• Check out Andrew's book, The Myth of the 12 Tribes of Israel: New Identities Across Time and Space

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

Learn how a humdrum Hebrew word for "obstacle/adversary" morphed over the centuries into the goat-hoofed, pitchfork-wielding embodiment of all evil. Our guest TJ Wray traces the biblical and historical evolution of Satan from a side character in the book of Job to the snarling chaos monster of Revelation. 

• Check out TJ's book, The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots, co-authored with Gregory Mobley
• Special thanks to listener Daniel Kline for this episode topic suggestion. Email us with your own ideas for future episodes and we'll shout you out on air. 
• If you're enjoying the show, please rate and review us on your favorite podcasting app. Thanks!

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson.