Wholly Buyable

This is a special edition of Wholly Buyable. From now on, at the end of each season, I'm hoping to interview people outside the church about their take on God, the Bible and religion.  I’m keen to hear what outsiders think of what has always been seen as property of the church. Shaun McIlrath  is Global Chief Creative Officer of thew advertising agency network, iris. We talk about growing up...

Chapters covered: Leviticus 25-27 Season 3 Finale. Let's face it. Leviticus is not a book that is often read for pleasure, it's more one that is seen as useful to keep on the shelf to be consulted where needed. Rules follow rules and if you get nothing else out of this episode, it’s good to know that - if you’re not a practicing Jew - you are among the very few people on earth to have a...

Leviticus 22-24 Drama in the desert. After what seems an eternity of lawgiving, the Bible bursts into the kind of action. we were spoiled with in the books of Genesis and Exodus. But let that not detract from the glory of what is a fabulously detailed book of legal code- one of the oldest surviving examples on the planet. How have these pages survived the millennia? Because for millions of people...

Episode 31: Leviticus 20-21 Is this the most divisive topic in Christianity? You'd think Christians would be concerned with injustice, the global poor, self improvement, kindness, generosity. Loving one another. But no.  Many Christians remain obsessed with what consensual adults get up to in a bedroom, especially of those adults are of the same sex. Regardless of all the sins listed in the B...

Episode 30 Leviticus 16-19 After deep diving into the world of rashes, boils, nocturnal emissions and other seepages, the Bible now outlines the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur. It also covers off who a man may or may not take as a sexual partner before rattling through some apparently random rules. However, the big picture here is that God seems to want his people to be the polar oppos...

Chapters covered:  Leviticus 13-15 Ooh! Skin diseases. Boils. Blemishes. Burns. Mould. Nocturnal emissions. Menstruation. Bodily discharges. It's all in this medically explicit section of the Book of Leviticus and you'll find that Bronze Age medicine is surprisingly ahead of its time as priests double up as doctors and isolation and quarantine are central part in disease control. Convers...

Episode 28 Chapters covered: Leviticus 8-12 Drama! 10 chapters into the Book of Leviticus, something happens. It's all the more shocking because of the almost complete absence of activity that precedes it. Also this week, the tabernacle is consecrated, the Jews are told what they may or may not eat and Moses shares some post natal rulings with Israel's women. Enjoy some of the least read...

Chapters covered: Leviticus 1-7 Season 3 begins! If religion is what you're after, Leviticus spreads it on thick. This is pretty much as religious as the Bible gets. Moments of action are rare, but when they jump out from the endless legalese, they are shockingly brutal. For the main part though, Leviticus is a man standing by a tent while channeling what he believes are the words of God. God...

Episode 26 Chapters covered: Exodus 34-40 Join us for the season finale of Exodus. It's hard to imagine a marquee as fabulous as the one described here, and even harder to appreciate the effort involved in project managing such a grand design. All materials are those which the Israelites were able to carry or drag out of Egypt, and under the watchful eye of the creative directors, they are as...

Donkeys? Camels? Stables? Innkeepers? Snow? Angels singing? Goodwill to all men?3 kings? What Nativity have you been reading? Some see the entire shebang as myth, but over the years the embellishments to the biblical account of Jesus' birth appear to have gone unchecked. This special bonus episode takes listeners through the events immediately before and after Jesus' birth. Plot spoiler:...

Chapters covered: Exodus 32-34 Finally, Moses returns from his 40 day sojourn up the mountain with God.  Little does he know that the rabble down at base camp have given up all hope of ever seeing him again. having written off God as a lost cause, they default to the next best thing and cobble together a god that reminds them of the religion back in Egypt. It's a terrible move, and there are...

Chapters covered: Exodus 29-31 It’s hard to know what Moses must be thinking. God may have an extensive shopping list but he appears to not be taking into account the reality of the Israelites’ current situation. The Israelites are in a desert in a landlocked nation having fled Egypt, but somehow need to provide dyes made from sea snails and hides from seacows as well as sourcing some of the rares...

Episode 23 Chapters covered: Exodus 25-29 God details the buildings, furnishings and accoutrements which his people need to make in order to worship him appropriately. And they are fabulous. Only the finest materials and the most skilled craftsmen suffice. The blueprints impress on the people that God has high standards.  He is God.  Only the best will do. There are no short cuts And there’s no on...

The laws flow relentlessly, one by one, a bit like a tele printer, each one filed away and cherished, and each one adding to the big picture that the Israelites are beginning to see of God. God it appears, has chosen them to be special and set apart from other tribes and nations. While many of the rules appeal to basic decency and common kindness, some seem arbitrary, legality just for the sake of...

The Hebrew slaves are slowly being converted from mass labourers in the brickyards of Egypt to a refined, humane, respectable and modern nation. They achieve this by listening attentively to their leader, Moses who they believe is channelling the actual words of God. These words inform them of a new way to live that has morality and compassion at its centre. In this episode, slaves are given right...

They may have made it safely out of Africa. They may have food. but now the Israelites are thirsty. Here in the Book of Exodus, the people set out from the Desert of Sin, following wherever God leads them.  With nothing to drink, they vent their frustration at Moses.  Moses too is unhappy: he wishes that they would simply trust God and not test him by these outbursts of anger. Seriously worried th...

Pharaoh cannot believe that a single moment of weakness has lost him his entire Hebrew workforce.  He has his chariot prepared for battle and gathers his army.  He commissions 600 chariots which gallop out of Ramses toward the Israelite camp.  When the Egyptians are almost on top of them, the terrified refugees cry out to God  What happens next is one of the most epic events in the Bible and one w...

Egypt has been utterly battered by plagues and meteorological disasters. Only Pharaoh’s ego and pride are to blame and the Bible's readers have been regularly reminded that it is God who has made the king so stubborn. But all of the ravages visited on the country pale into insignificance when compared to plague number 10. Worse that locusts, hail, pestilence and darkness, God’s raw fury is ab...

Unlikely as it may seem, Moses is now the leader of over a million Hebrew slaves.  What happens next is one of the most incredible sequences of events in the Bible, and one which cements in the Israelites’ minds that God is a) powerful and b) very much has their backs.   Over and again, later books in the Bible turn their readers minds back to these events that play out in the Nile Delta as Moses...

Tongue tied and completely out of touch with the race of people who he was born into, Moses is also still a fugitive. Yet God has asked him to confront the most powerful leader in the known world and ask him to set free an enslaved workforce of millions of people. Hundreds of miles to the west, the crushing toil of these Hebrew slaves continues under a relentless Egyptian sun. But Moses is immovab...

Season Two is here! And with it, the Bible leaps forward 400 years. The bucolic idyll of Egypt under Joseph’s benign rule is a distant memory and the white noise that permeates the dust and clay of the Nile Delta is the groaning of a million Hebrew slaves. Credits Written and produced by Chas Bayfield Music by Michael Auld and Jon Hawkins Music Cover art by Lisa Goff Chapters covered: Exodus 1-3

Egypt is still suffering from a complete absence of harvests.  The famine is so severe that even when the people have spent all their money, they still don’t have enough to eat.  Having brought his family safely out of Canaan, the threat of starvation is still uncomfortably real. Has Joseph done enough to prepare for the tough times ahead?  And with his father now old and weak, will he finally tur...

  Jacob believes that Joseph is dead and knows that Simeon is a prisoner is Egypt.  Now the only way of rescuing his son and bringing home much needed grain is to risk losing his precious son Benjamin. The old man’s world is unravelling. He has no idea that Joseph is alive and readers are yet to find out whether Joseph is plotting revenge or redemption. Out of options and with everything to lose a...

Episode 12 Having been sold by his brothers, carted to Egypt and bought by a high ranking member of Pharaoh's household, Joseph has no choice but to do what he is told.  At 17, he is a young man in his physical prime and his foreign birth possibly adds to his exoticness. As a slave, he is a forbidden fruit but Potiphar’s wife seems attracted to danger and invites him into her bed.  Willing to...

Episode 11 Just when things were beginning to look settled for Jacob, adversity has come his way again. Suddenly vulnerable, he knows that he cannot remain anywhere near Shechem. The family retreats and the Book of Genesis begins to build to its epic finale as one last hero steps into the spotlight. Jacob’s eleventh son may be known for the multicoloured coat gifted to him by his father, but the a...