Uncovered: The Bible as Historical Document

We arrive at the end of our journey of investigating the Bible as a Historical document, as a Historian would any other set of evidence.  In our concluding episode, we take a look back at our episodes, offering insights that each of us gleaned. We also answer a couple of listener comments, hopefully satisfactorily. We even talk about zombies!! If you enjoy the King Arthur story (legend?, history?,...

The Resurrection of Jesus, the man from Nazereth, stands at the center of the Christian faith.  It is the core historical event, either in support of the claim or in denial of the claim.  From the earliest evidence, we see all of the supporters of Jesus and the story around the resurrection, place that Resurrection at the center of their claim that this person Jesus was also the "Son of God." Thro...

A fair question to ask about writings from antiquity is about the many variants within all the various copies of the one document in question, or to notice that the evidence that we have about an event can seem to present contradictions to said historical event or narrative.  So this episode will examine both issues, starting with the work of textual scholars. Those scholars spend their lives beco...

In episode six, we dig even deeper into the process, or the concerns about, the canon of the New Testament. We saw in episode five that Christian leaders in the 2nd-4th century affirmed a specific list of writings that were consistently in use by the first Christian followers of the 1st century.  It is fair, though, for us to challenge the fact that those leaders said "these are in the canon."  Di...

Episode 5 continues the study of the Canon of the Bible.  That concept "canon" is a term to describe what is and what is not officially part of X thing, such as "the Shakespeare canon" or "the Star Wars canon." Others may write or contribute things if they wish (so, like fan fiction), but those works are not usually part of the canon. So last episode we examined the concept of "canon" for the Jewi...

Do you remember the bruhaha when Disney bought Star Wars?  When they did, they declared the old Star Wars Expanded Universe as "Legends."  They couldn't obviously destroy all of these old works but they could, and did, declare that NONE of those earlier works was "canon." But what exactly does that mean?  The word "canon" emerges from both Hebrew and Greek thought in which the word literally means...

In Episode 2 we examined the concept of what History is and what Historians do within the field in order to know the veracity of an event, person, or place.  That concept is what is understood as historicity.  Back in Episode 1, we explained that "fancy word" as determining how, or the quality of said event, person, or place as being real, not fiction...not a myth or legend. So, in this episode we...

If we are going to examine the Bible as historical document, then its fair to spend time examining what exactly is history. And that of course links to the work that Historians do. In episode 1, we talked about whether or not I, Carl, am a Historian, so hopefully you did listen to the first episode (or go back to catch it). And I am equally as prone to say that I am a Professor (somewhat linking t...

Welcome to Uncovered: The Bible as Historical Document.  Episode One sets out to explain the overall concept of the podcast, giving you an overview of the journey to come. This podcast is a follow-up, a sort of "season two" behind my first podcast which was based on my doctoral research.  That podcast, "Unmoored: America Adrift in Historical Forgetfulness and Finding Our Way Back" argued that for...

Carl and Matthew are back in the studio with this next, but new, podcast. This "episode 0" is an overview intro of the coming podcast.  Episode 1 will come out in mid-September, with the following episodes coming weekly after that.   This podcast does have a link back to the first podcast, Unmoored as that podcast argued that the US founders believed that to make this governing idea work ("governm...