History in the Bible

My Epiphany special tells the story of the nativity as related by the gospel of Matthew. Matthew tells a different tale to the gospel of Luke.

Second Temple Judaism (530 BC-70 AD) was a lush forest of beliefs, factions, and sects: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Sicarri, Zealots, the Fourth Philosophy and more. All were swept away in the First Roman-Jewish war that ended with the destruction of the temple. From this forest, two new religions emerged: Rabbinic Judaism, and Christianity.

My Christmas special relates the story of Christmas as told by the gospel of Luke. With lots of canticles: the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and the Nunc Dimmitis. Luke has many unique stories. He concentrates on Jesus' mother Mary and her relative Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. The angel Gabriel makes two cameo appearances. My next special episode, on Epiphany, relates the gospel of Matthew's version of events of the nativity.

King of the Jews, Saviour, Son of Man, God, Son of God, Messiah and Christos, and Lord. The New Testament has many titles for Jesus. Let's investigate them.

The gospel of John is nothing like the other gospels. John defines Jesus as a cosmological figure, not the man adopted by God at his baptism that the other gospels talk about. John has a quite different biography of Jesus. I throw in an introduction to some of the ideas that the gospel used: from Platonism, from Philo Judeaus, and from Gnosticism. I finish with the Gospel of Thomas, another Gnostic-influenced gospel.

The gospel of Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels. He insists that his readers must follow Jewish law. Yet his gospel contains the infamous blood cry. Luke is the most polished of the gospels. Uniquely, Luke recounts some of our most beloved stories: the parables of the good Samaritan and the tax collector, the annunciation of Jesus and John the Baptist, the shepherds and their flocks, and Jesus' ascension to heaven.

The gospel of Mark is a crudely-written biography, where Jesus hides his identity, and the disciples are idiots. The gospel of Matthew brings Jesus out of the closet, reveals him as the Davidic king of the Jews, and gives us the Sermon on the Mount.

I explore the relationships between the synoptic gospels: Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Mark was the earliest gospel. Both Matthew and Luke stole from Mark. But Matthew and Luke have material in common, material not found in Mark. Where did that come from? Most scholars say it was the mysterious source called "Q".

Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest surviving document of Christianity. We drop in on the Thessalonian Jesus-club to discover how a pagan newcomer would have reacted to the club and the letter. The newcomer is befuddled by the strange words used by club members, and confused about Paul.

I introduce the latest academic theories about the New Testament: the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, and the New Perspectives approach to St Paul.

The New Testament circulated in three different textual traditions: the Byzantine, the Alexandrian, and the Western. Modern Protestant and Catholic bibles rely on the Alexandrian manuscripts, represented by Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.

Unlike the Jews, Christians preserved many versions of their scriptures. The invention of printing spurred European scholars to revisit ancient Greek manuscripts in an attempt to create one single version of the sacred books: the Textus Receptus

The Jesus-clubs reacted against Marcion's tiny list of sacred works. The invention of the codex, the book, brought the issue of the canon to the forefront. Melito, Tatian, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and Athanasius made the first attempts to list a sacred canon. The Christians struggled against Marcionites, Montanists, and Gnostics to define what they believed. I introduce the Shepherd of Hermas.

Christians in the first two centuries did not have a sacred canon of books. In this first of four parts, I discuss what the earliest church fathers Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias were reading. Marcion spurred the Jesus-clubs into action.

We all know of the biblical hero Samson. In this bonus episode, three award-worthy history podcast writers and producers bring Samson to trial for mass murder. As chief justice is Ben Jacobs, of the Wittenberg to Westphalia podcast. As defence attorney is Steve Guerra of the two podcasts History of the Papacy, and Beyond the Big Screen. Steve is the originator, creative talent, and editor of this episode. And I, Garry Stevens of the History in the Bible podcast, am God’s prosecutor, haSatan.