The books of the Hebrew Bible known as "wisdom literature" — Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes — are a strange fit for the biblical canon. They're ahistorical (not interested in Israel's history) and areligious (not interested in God, covenants, the temple or any other pillars of Israelite religion). So where did these funky books come from and how did they find their way into the Bible? 

Our guest Stuart Weeks is here with some answers! Stuart is a scholar of ancient Israelite wisdom literature and recently published an impressive, two-volume study of Ecclesiastes. 

• Ecclesiastes 1-5: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary
• Ecclesiastes 5-12: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

What can Bible stories about animals tells us about power dynamics in the ancient world? A lot, it turns out! Suzanna Millar joins us to talk about the fascinating new field of Animal Studies and how the Hebrew Bible can open windows into studying human-animal power dynamics 2500 years in the past.

For more on this emerging field of biblical studies, check out Suzanna's book, co-edited with Arthur Walker-Jones, Ask the Animals: Developing a Biblical Animal Hermeneutic. 

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

The Jewish sabbath (Shabbat), observed from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, is one of the oldest continuously observed holidays in existence. At first glance, the sabbath seems pretty straightforward; it's a "day of rest" that God commanded his people to observe on the 7th day. But when you read the Hebrew Bible really closely—like our guest Jon Levenson does—you run into all sorts of intriguing questions. 

Was the "7th day" the same as the sabbath? Was the sabbath a day or rest or a day of bad omens? What does shabbat even mean in Hebrew? 

If you're fans of this podcast, you will love Jon's new book, Israel’s Day of Light and Joy: The Origin, Development, and Enduring Meaning of the Jewish Sabbath. 

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

This is a Biblical Time Machine first—a historical reenactment of how the gospel writers wrote (and rewrote) the books of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Our guest James Barker made his own scrolls, wax tablets and ancient writing implements to see what the gospel-writing process was really like. It gave him all sorts of fascinating new insights into how the gospel authors worked and how they used and reused each other's material. 

You really have to check out James' terrific new book, Writing and Rewriting the Gospels: John and the Synoptics. 

JOIN US FOR THE BTM BOOK CLUB

The next meeting of the Biblical Time Machine Book Club will be Saturday, February 22 at 12pm Eastern / 5pm UK. We'll be discussing a fascinating scholarly article by Nathanael Vette, who was the guest on our episode about Judaism and the Gospels After 70 CE. To join us live, become a member of the Time Travelers Club!

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

Why were certain foods "forbidden" in the Hebrew Bible? And how did the pig attain ultra-non-kosher status among ancient Jews? Guest Jordan Rosenblum joins Helen and Dave as they try to pinpoint the origins of Jewish dietary laws and how they've been interpreted over time. 

Check out Jordan's terrific new book, Forbidden: A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig. 

JOIN US FOR THE BTM BOOK CLUB

The next meeting of the Biblical Time Machine Book Club will be Saturday, February 22 at 12pm Eastern / 5pm UK. We'll be discussing a fascinating scholarly article by Nathanael Vette, who was the guest on our episode about Judaism and the Gospels After 70 CE. To join us live, become a member of the Time Travelers Club!

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

Josephus will always be our pal, but it's time to meet another super-important ancient Jewish writer: Philo of Alexandria.  Living in the vibrant intellectual hub of 1st-century Alexandria, Philo applied Greco-Roman philosophical ideas to the Hebrew Bible and wrote some of the first books about biblical interpretation. 

Today Helen and Dave Learn all about Philo and the remarkable city of ancient Alexandria with guest Maren Neihoff, author of Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography.

MORE FROM BIBLE ODYSSEY

• "Alexandria"
• "Alexandria and Allegory"
• "Philo, Clement & Origen"

JOIN US FOR THE BTM BOOK CLUB

The next meeting of the Biblical Time Machine Book Club will be Saturday, February 22 at 12pm Eastern / 5pm UK. We'll be discussing a fascinating scholarly article by Nathanael Vette, who was the guest on our episode about Judaism and the Gospels After 70 CE. To join us live, become a member of the Time Travelers Club!

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

To the authors of the Hebrew Bible, King Nebuchadnezzar was a grade-A jerk. In the 6th century BCE, he and his army sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple and carried the Judahites into exile in Babylon. All of that stuff actually happened, but things really start to get wild in the book of Daniel. In that much later text, Nebuchadnezzar goes mad, grows feathers and eats grass for 7 years.

Where did that colorful story come from and does it have any basis in reality? Today's guest Peter Atkins has some pretty intriguing theories! Peter is the author of The Animalising Affliction of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4: Reading Across the Human-Animal Boundary.

JOIN US FOR THE BTM BOOK CLUB

The next meeting of the Biblical Time Machine Book Club will be Saturday, February 22 at 12pm Eastern / 5pm UK. We'll be discussing a fascinating scholarly article by Nathanael Vette, who was the guest on our episode about Judaism and the Gospels After 70 CE. To join us live, become a member of the Time Travelers Club!

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

Did Roman roads have rest stops? How bad were the snacks on a sea voyage across the Mediterranean? Did Paul get frequent sailor miles? On today's episode, we answer all of your questions about travel in the ancient world.

Our guest (live from an Egyptian desert) is Robert Cioffi, who wrote a terrific article titled "Travel in the Roman World." You can also check out Rob's latest book, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Greek Novel: Between Representation and Resistance.

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

Today's guest, historian Steve Mason, has called Josephus's The Jewish War "perhaps the most influential non-biblical text of Western history." And he's got a point! Read alongside the Bible, The Jewish War tells the "rest of the story" — specifically, how the Romans came to destroy the Temple in 70 CE.

The trouble is, The Jewish War isn't "history" in the modern sense. It's a narrative written to make moral arguments about "good" and "bad" leaders in both Jerusalem and Rome. In today's episode, Mason explains how historians like himself try to reconstruct the past from a wide variety of sources, not just narrative.

To learn much (much) more, check out some of Steve's excellent books:

• A History of the Jewish War, AD 66-74 (2016)
• Josephus and the New Testament (2002)
• Jews and Christians in the Roman World: From Historical Method to Cases (2023)

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We love making the show, but since we don't run ads we rely on listener contributions to cover our costs. Please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a $5/month subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos

Of course Helen and Dave have a fully functioning, very real Time Machine. But if you can't wait your turn (the line is ridiculously long), check out "documentary papyri." These scraps of ancient writing — letters, legal documents, shopping lists — offer a firsthand glimpse into everyday life in the 1st century CE. Even better, scholars like our guest Christina Kreinecker use clues from these ancient everyday texts to illuminate thorny passages of the New Testament.

Check out Christina's book (co-edited with John S. Kloppenborg and James R. Harrison) Everyday Life in Graeco-Roman Times: Documentary Papyri and the New Testament.

SUBSCRIBE AND GET A FREE MUG!

Dave's mom has another holiday gift for BTM listeners! The first 5 people to subscribe to the Time Travelers Club will receive a handsome Biblical Time Machine mug courtesy of Arlene Roos. Subscribe today!

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting the show through the Time Travelers Club, our Patreon. We love making the show, but since we don't run ads we rely on listener contributions to cover our costs. Please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a $5/month subscription.

DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHY

Check out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.

Support the show

Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos