Biblical Time Machine

I love this show. I have a background in biblical studies / religious studies and I teach theology at a Catholic school. This show keeps up me up on the latest research on the field. The hosts are knowledgeable and delightful. They have a great camaraderie and are a joy to listen to.

Excellent show. Love Helen and Lloyd. Great guests and conversations. If you want to subscribe, bonus episodes are actually interesting and not fluffy like other subscriptions.

What a fun way to learn about ancient history — and to hear from expert scholars on all sorts of biblical topics from the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament. I find I am often listening to episodes several times as there’s so much to take in — so different to what I learned in Sunday School!

Helen & Dave beautiful navigate the Bible with grace, humor, clarity, and wisdom. I have learned an incredible amount from the show.

I recently discovered this podcast after a neighbor mentioned it to me and asked a few specific questions. She knows I have a Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University and she often asks me questions related to ‘biblical history’ since I specialize in Hellenistic studies. I’ve since listened to seven episodes and read the transcript of another dozen or so. I’ve listened and read carefully, trying to see if the two hosts ever discuss anything related to historiographic methodology, especially in light of the vast time-gap separating modern Bible readers from the original authors. Historiography is a well-established, rigorous academic discipline with a scientifically-grounded and epistemologically-sound methodology, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to this podcast. I understand this podcast is produced for a general audience, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to neglect any discussion about how historians treat ancient sources and how they go about determining what most likely happened in the past. I realize the hosts are not fundamentalists or literalists. The recent interview with Dan McClellan regarding an overview of ‘biblical history’ (whatever that is!) demonstrates this clearly. The hosts freely admit most of the narrative material in the Hebrew Bible is not historically accurate and many of the bits that are loosely based on some historical events have been heavily ‘theologized’ for obvious reasons. Things become murkier and much more faith-based (almost apologetical in nature) when they approach the New Testament. Perhaps I missed some of the episodes where they take a more critical stance toward the historical reliability of the gospel accounts and Acts, but, on the whole, they seem to accept much of the New Testament material as true at face value. The hosts never discuss what sources the gospel writers used (if any), how the gospel writers fact-checked their sources (if they did at all), how the sources fact-checked their information (if they did at all), or if any of the material in any of the gospels actually derives from verifiable first-person testimony (if indeed it did). No serious scholar (secular or religious) dismisses the various reconstructed New Testament documents as entirely fictional, but neither do they accept them as historically accurate without a sound, consistent methodology. I understand the concept of a ‘biblical time machines’ is wholly metaphorical, but it’s also borderline juvenile and silly - especially in the absence of a clearly articulated methodology. As world renown archaeologist and Hebrew Bible scholar Yonatan Adler said in a lecture about a year ago: “We don’t read any ancient narrative and assume that, if the story sounds credible, it must have happened. We don’t just assume that, if there are no miracles in the story and it doesn’t sound too incredible to believe, we simply believe the story on the face of it. History doesn’t work that way.” This podcast would be much more interesting and helpful if there was a deliberate attempt to lay a solid methodological foundation so its listeners know when the ‘biblical time machine’ is on somewhat solid ground and when it’s mostly faith-based speculation and wishful thinking.