Histories of the Holy Land Podcast

By Shaiel Ben-EphraimReligion & Spirituality Christianity History Judaism

Histories of the Holy Land Podcast episodes

October 06 64 - Putting Manasseh On Trial
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The Book of Kings calls Manasseh the worst king in Judah's history and blames him for the fall of Jerusalem. So we put him on trial.
The evidence: an Assyrian tax notice from the Ophel. A palace garden with no water. A Jerusalem official with Yahweh in his name and an Assyrian demon on his seal. Cannabis on a temple altar. A workshop that mass-produced goddesses a few hundred meters from the Temple.
The ground convicts him on almost every count. Then we ask why the scribes needed him guilty.
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41 min
September 08 63 - The Curse of Nahum
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Soldiers from Judah were there when an Assyrian army conquered Egypt. But the book of Nahum says that the city was destroyed, when it wasn't. Why? We show how fake news traveled through Assyria, while Egypt proved more resilient than anyone imagined.
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mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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36 min
August 31 62- Assyrian Curses
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When Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria's father was murdered by his brothers, he became a highly paranoid individual and had everyone swear loyalty and risk terrible cruses if they disobeyed. His demand for total loyalty and worship put Manasseh, king of Judah, in a bind. What happened next shaped Judah for a generation and also inspired the writing of the Book of Deuteronomy.
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mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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31 min
June 18 61 - Sennacherib’s Campaign and the Siege of Lachish
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The Assyrian siege of Lachish is one of the best-documented military events in the ancient world, and one of the strangest. Sennacherib dedicated an entire room of his palace to a city most people have never heard of, while saying nothing about Jerusalem. Why? In this episode, we follow the three million stones of the siege ramp, a toilet installed inside a holy shrine, an unexplained chain that puzzled archaeologists for decades, and the silence of a king who couldn't admit he failed.
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mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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32 min
May 02 60 - The Last Philistine
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In 604 BCE, a Philistine king wrote a desperate letter to the pharaoh of Egypt. It was written not in his ancestors' Aegean tongue, but in Aramaic. The letter made it to Egypt. The help never came. Within weeks, Nebuchadnezzar turned Ashkelon into a heap of ruins — a phrase we can verify because the Babylonian Chronicle and the destruction layer match down to the month. But the Philistines didn't really die that winter. They'd been disappearing for centuries, and the latest scholarship reveals a far stranger story than simple conquest. Why did the Philistines increase their ethnic markers for 200 years before suddenly abandoning them? Why did two neighboring cities have opposite relationships with pork? And why, when the Babylonians deported both Philistines and Judahites, did one people survive exile and the other vanish forever?
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33 min
April 23 59 - The Five Lords: How the Philistines Governed a Civilization
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Every kingdom in the ancient Near East had a king. The Philistines said no thanks. Instead, they brought something from the Aegean: five cities, five lords, collective rule. Their rulers weren't called kings. They were called seranim, a word linguists connect to the Greek tyrannos. They met in council, argued, voted, and overruled each other. When the people of Ekron disagreed with their king's pro-Assyrian policy, they put him in chains and mailed him to Jerusalem. When a commoner whose name literally meant "the Greek" seized the throne of Ashdod through popular uprising, the old Aegean identity was still alive after five centuries. But that happened even though their DNA had become completely local. We explore the paradox.
mosaic: Exploring Jewish Issues
mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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41 min
April 14 58 - Philistine DNA: The Infant, the Swan, and 700 Dogs
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In 2013, archaeologists found an infant buried beneath a family's floor. When they extracted DNA from those tiny bones, they found a genetic signature that appeared out of nowhere, and then vanished within a few generations. An entire people's blood, dissolved. And yet the culture kept going for four hundred years. A painted swan. A goddess no scholar can identify. Seven hundred dogs buried with care, and no one can explain why. If the DNA were gone, what exactly would the Philistines be?
mosaic: Exploring Jewish Issues
mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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34 min
November 11, 2025 57 - Graves of the Sea People
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Ever heard of a graveyard where the coffins are shaped like humans—some lifelike, others downright bizarre? In this episode, we dig into the secrets of the Philistines at Beit Shean: a crossroads of kings, conquerors, and cultures. It’s biblical drama, ancient mysteries, and archaeological surprises—buried, literally, in the dirt of the Holy Land.
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mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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33 min
October 21, 2025 56 - Were The Philistines Migrants or Invaders?
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The first portrayal of the Philistines can be seen in the reliefs of the Medinet Habu monument. It shows their warriors, but also their women and children on ox-carts. They came to conquer, but also to live. They fought and contributed culturally, bringing their influences from the Aegean. But were they just a bunch of foreign invaders, or were they migrants integrating into the local culture?
mosaic: Exploring Jewish Issues
mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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33 min
September 10, 2025 55 - The Philistines
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In this episode, we bring the Philistines into the story. Unfortunately, we do not have rich texts that they wrote about themselves. So we have to rely on the Bible for our understanding of the Philistines. But who were they, and how accurately are they portrayed in the biblical stories? We introduce these important players to our story.
mosaic: Exploring Jewish Issues
mosaic is Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's news magazine show, exploring...
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43 min

About Histories of the Holy Land Podcast

From the publisher's feed

The Histories of the Holy Land Podcast has the guts to survey the most provocative historical narrative in the world. Israel and Palestine is a land of immense religious significance. Everyone has…