Biblical Time Machine

What happened to Jesus on Easter Saturday? The apostles creed claims that Jesus 'descended into hell', reflecting a wider Christian motif called the 'Harrowing of Hell.' To find out more about this belief, Lloyd Lewellyn-Jones asks our resident expert, Helen Bond, who is currently writing a book on the subject.

They explore questions like:

• Is the 'Harrowing of Hell' alluded to in the gospels? 
• When did Jesus go to hell and what was he doing there? 
• How strong is the biblical foundation of this idea? 
• How is the Harrowing depicted in the Gospel of Nicodemus? 

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If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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.

In this week's bonus episode, Professor Helen Bond unpacks a tricky text in 1 Peter which some have read as the biblical basis for the harrowing of hell.  

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

Are the resurrection stories in the gospels fact or fiction? To find out, Helen and Lloyd are joined in the Biblical Time Machine by Dr Richard C. Miller, author of Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity (Routledge, 2017), who argues that the gospel resurrection accounts are similar to ancient 'translation fables.'

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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.

In this week's bonus episode, Dr Richard Miller unpacks parallels between Jesus and Romulus in early Christian literature. 

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

We have all heard the story of Adam and Eve. But what was the Garden of Eden which they inhabited? In this week's episode, Helen and Lloyd travel back to the dawn of time with Dr Dylan Johnson as their guide to this mythical landscape. Together, they get to the bottom of questions like:

• Was the Garden of Eden meant to be a real place, or a symbolic vision of paradise?
• Is Genesis borrowing from older Mesopotamian stories about divine gardens? 
• Was Adam imagined as a king placed in God’s garden to rule on his behalf?
• Is Eve really to blame for “the fall,” or is that a misreading?
• And who exactly is the serpent, before later tradition identified him with Satan?

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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.

In this week's bonus episode, Dylan Johnson unpacks whether Eden is a Temple. 

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

We have all heard rumours that ancient religions used children in ritual sacrifice. But did it really happen? To discuss the evidence, Helen and Lloyd are joined in the Time Machine by Dr Eve MacDonald, lecturer at Cardiff University and author of the acclaimed, Carthage: A New History of an Ancient Empire (Penguin, 2025). 

Dr MacDonald answers questions like: 

• Did human sacrifice really occur in the ancient world, and what does the archaeological evidence actually show?
• What happened in the Great Death Pit at Ur, and what does it reveal about ancient burial rituals?
• Why do ancient myths and biblical stories so often centre on the sacrifice of young girls?
• Did the Carthaginians really practise child sacrifice, and what does the evidence from the Tophet suggest?
• How did Greeks and Romans use accusations of shocking religious practices to demonise their enemies—and even early Christians?

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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.

Support the show

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

This week in the Biblical Time Machine, Helen and Lloyd travel back in time to hear and read Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Helping them to uncover the language is world-leading Jesus historian, Bruce Chilton, the Bernard Iddings Bell Profesosr of Religion at Bard College, NY. 

Professor Chilton is the author of numerous books, including Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography and most recently, Aramaic Jesus: Tradition, Identity, and Christianity's Mother Tongue. On the show, he answers questions like: 

• What is Aramaic and why did Jesus speak it?
• Was Aramaic the only language Jesus spoke?
• Did Jesus have a 'regional' accent?
• Can we uncover Aramaic sources behind the gospels?
• How does Aramaic shed light on Jesus' teaching? 

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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.

In this week's bonus episode, Bruce Chilton unpacks whether some of Jesus' teachings were lost in (Greek) translation. 

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

This week in the Biblical Time Machine, Prof Lloyd Lewellyn-Jones sits down with Dr Charlie Hadjiev to discuss Hosea, one of the most evocative, troubling and hopeful books of the Hebrew Bible. They cover questions like: 

• When and where was Hosea written?
• How was adultery viewed in the ancient world? 
• How can Paul Ricour’s hermeneutics shed light on the text? 
• Does Hosea present God as an abusive husband? 

Dr Charlie Hadjievis a lecturer in biblical studies at St Padarn’s Institute, Cardiff, where he teaches and researches Hebrew Bible, especially prophetic literature. His many publications include ‘“(Not) Her Husband”: Hosea’s God and Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of Suspicion and Trust’ (Religions, 2022) and Joel, Obadiah, Habakkuk and Zephaniah: An Introduction and Study Guide (T&T Clark, 2020). 

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

Is love in the biblical air this Valentine's Day?

To find out, Professors Helen Bond and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones take a trip back to the biblical world. They discuss... 

• What is ‘love’ in the biblical imagination? 
• Is there romantic love in the ancient world? 
• Is Song of Songs a wedding Song? 
• How are Heriodas and Antipas anticipated by Ahab and Jezebel? 
• How have we misread David and Bathsheba’s relationship? 
• Why is Paul ‘anti-marriage’? 
• Does same-sex love show up in the Bible? 

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

The early Christian world was awash with the language of 'belief' (pistis in Greek, fides in Latin). But what does it really mean to 'believe'? Today, we often use the word refer to an assent to a set of propositions: someone might believe that Jesus rose from the dead, or that he was born of a virgin. But is this what the language of belief meant to the early Christians, within the wider Roman world?

To unpack the lexis of 'belief', Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Time Machine with Teresa Morgan, McDonald Agape Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Yale University. Teresa is the author of Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (OUP, 2015), which suggests that belief is a more relational term than we tend to assume. It refers to a 'loyalty' and 'allegiance', rooted in social practices of trust.

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

How are Jesus and early Christianity portrayed on the big screen? To answer this question, Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Biblical Time Machine with Dr Monica Cyrino, an expert on the reception of the classical world in film. Together, they explore 1950s classics such as Quo Vadis and The Robe, and see how these ‘epic Rome’ films are later parodied in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.

Monica Silveira Cyrino is Professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico, specialising in classical reception studies. She is particularly well known for Big Screen Rome (Blackwell, 2005), a foundational textbook on Roman epic cinema.

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson. 

We all know the story of the Magi: they were three kings who followed a star to Bethlehem. But what if this common nativity narrative gets it all wrong? To uncover who the Magi really were, Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Biblical Time Machine with Dr Eric Vanden Ekyel, author of the popular tome, The Magi: Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered (2022; Fortress Press). 

Eric Vanden Eykel is a New Testament scholar and Associate Professor of Religion at Ferrum College. In addition to his work on the Magi, he is the author But Their Faces Were All Looking Up: Author and Reader in the Protevangelium of James (2016; Bloomsbury), a book which explores another early infancy story of Jesus. 

SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE

If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers 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, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson.