Bible Bard - English

In the literature of the Bible the ancient Hebrews enter into a covenant (legal) relationship with God. The core of this agreement is called the 10 commandments. In this episode the 10th command against Coveting or Envy. This last command is about your personal feelings, which Jesus described as the origin of evil actions (see Mark 7: 20-21). The literature of the Bible also provides a list of fee...

In the literature of the Bible the ancient Hebrews enter into a covenant (legal) relationship with God. The core of this agreement is called the Decalogue . It is these 10 commandments as described in Exodus 20:1-7 and Deut 5:1-22 that form the basis of the national relationship between the nation and God. This podcast episode provides a list of the episodes that cover the 4 commands about your re...

Various names for God are given in the literature of the Bible. The text provides both stories about people and transmits revelations about God in which his names are declared. This podcast provides the biblical texts that explain who God is in brief, unambigious sentences or paragraphs that are based upon his names. Download the transcript to see 20 names of God, where they are found in the text,...

We can analyze the three great monothestic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by their approach to their scriptures. Many people do not understand that each religion is divided by how their various denominations or sects approach to their sacred texts. This episode names and compares these divisions in denominational approaches to their own scriptures - sometimes to the point of actually...

In today’s podcast we are interested in what the Bible teaches about the power of unbelief, mistrust, uncertainty or doubt, and skepticism. Unbelief as something active and not merely the absence of faith. This episode discusses the power of unbelief that lies in its movement from the mere lack of faith to the defiant, aggressive denial or physical opposition to the content of faith.

The God of the Bible is described as a moral Beling. Of course, detractors like to suggest that the God of the Bible is a hypocrite, arbitary, self-serving, and inconsistent in his claimed moral and ethical nature. What the Bible Bard does in this podcast is examine the main moral claims about God given in the Bible, so listeners who do not read the Bible, can have a good idea of what the Bible ac...

Today's podcast looks at what the Bible says about women. As those of you know who have listened to more than one Bible Bard podcast, our view is that the Bible is both literature and a holy book. It is a holy book when it reveals things about God we could not otherwise know, and it is literature when it tells stories and makes pronouncements about humanity. In our times there has been a rise of f...

This podcast is part 3 of the discussion of metaphors in the literature of the Bible began in podcast BB-27 and BB-48 . We look at how the Bible uses metaphor to help us understand our relationship to God. The biblical story is not a secret text meant to hide its meaning from you. Rather, the Bible is a literary (as well as sacred) text, meant to communicate to you something the author (the Holy S...

People who are not religious find it difficult to understand, but most of the great religions of the world are looking for a messiah, a great person (usually a man) who comes, saves the world from destruction, institutes their religion worldwide, and brings peace and (their kind of) morality to human beings. There are various ways individuals qualify as a messiah. Most have to do with performing s...

Where does the Bible say the devil came from and how did his opposition to God come to be? This episode discusses the history of the devil according to the literature of the Bible.

The Bible Bard podcast has reached another milestone. We have published 75 podcasts in English and Chichewa, and will be increasing the content of Spanish, Urdu, and Swahili from 52 to 75 podcasts. Checking our statistics, the podcast receives more than 1,000 listens a month! There are two major needs: 1.    We need translators so we can put the English content into more languages....

Critics of the Bible contend that certain biblical passages seem to condone, regulate, or fail to explicitly condemn the practice of slavery. The idea critics promote is that if the God of the Bible is so good, why didn’t he 5,000 years ago condemn the human practice of slavery; or at least, once Jesus arrives, why didn’t he condemn it 2,500 years ago? The Bible Bard is interested in what the Bibl...

Texts about Jesus are difficult, not because the words are hard to understand, but because what they say is shocking and either totally made up and a lie, or totally true. If false, we can ignore this message. If true, a response is required, because a lack of response has consequences. The Bible Bard is interested in what the Bible actually says, not in what critics say it says. These New Testame...

In today’s podcast we look at what the Bible teaches about its alien ideas that originate with the ultimate alien, God. I am providing what the Bible literally teaches about who God is, who Jesus is, and who believers in the Bible are according to the text I recite. Jesus declares himself to be an alien. But the Bible also declares that those who follow the biblical Jesus are also transformed into...

The Bible Bard details texts in the Bible that clearly state the God is an alien, Jesus is an alien, and believers in Jesus are partially transformed into aliens. What is so strange is that at the moment a person actual believes in Jesus, their previous old human nature is not expunged ; instead, a new god-oriented nature is added. This is a very strange idea from the Bible that leads to some seri...

The phrase "the long game" is used in American culture to describe strategies or plans that require patience and time to come to unfold and have their success understood. There are many people in our world who have little good happen to them. They are born with genetic defects that allow them to live but they are terribly disabled. Others are born to irresponsible parents, in terrible circumstance...

The Bible's God is not like anything that you've ever seen in a movie, read in a book, or encountered in any other literature. After you hear the verses from the Bible quoted in this podcast and the descriptions of God you might be frightened. This Alien God is not in another galaxy far far away. This episode looks at Biblical texts that literally describe the strange, alien being of the God of th...

The first Christians had a major disagreement of what to believe and how to live in this new religion. These people were not always a happy lot. They argued a lot. This episode discusses the first important disagreement that divided the early church into two warring camps.

In the early 16th century (1,500s) to the 19th century (1800s) various church groups attempted to missionize the native American Indians of Canada, the United States, and Central and South America. The driving force behind these early attempts was not what we call now Christian evangelism. The motivating force for many of these religious efforts was a historic error in Christian understanding of a...

Zombies are supposed to be the dead who are still walking around searching for brains to eat. There are people in the Bible who died and the were raised from the dead and so could continue the life they had been living that was interrupted by death. This episode discusses the texts that tell these stories.

Jesus is the center of the New Testament. He is the subject of the New Testament story. We expect certain things of the narrative, yet, in the midst of the story, Jesus says the unexpected. This episode lists six events in the text that we find shocking.

When we talk about the surprising knowledge of Jesus we also must mention the surprising power of Jesus. There are things the Bible mentions that Jesus should not have known and there are things that Jesus should not have been able to do. For the Bible Bard, the question (without theological, doctrinal precepts) is what does the New Testament teach?

What is not often said in churches is that God has regrets about what has happened to humanity over its history. How can it be that the God who has all power, the God who has all knowledge feels regret? Some systematic theologians believe that God cannot be opposed because his power and his knowledge are absolute. Yet the Bible provides direct textual evidence that in our time this assertion is no...

Social justice has been a human desire ever since the first city state developed during the Bronze Age, about 5,500 years ago. In the U.S.A. social justice warriors sought to end slavery (1,700- 1,800 ad, get women the right to vote (1920), end child labor (1938), end segregation and racial discrimination (1950s-1960s), and then broadened in our times to include seeking rights and protections for...

There is a term in the New Testament that Jesus created called born again . Alive today, 2.38 billion people claim to be Christians. This number is about 31% of the global population. Within that group of Christians, and within the evangelical and historically black Protestant traditions in the U.S.A., only 28% to 35% of US adults (about 50 million adults) consider themselves "born-again." Statist...