For decades, scholars have thought that Matthew and Luke composed their nativity stories separately, perhaps drawing on some underlying material. Yet in this special advent episode, Lloyd Lewellyn-Jones interviews his co-host Helen Bond about h...

How did ancient biographies narrate the births of their subjects? In this episode, Helen and Lloyd are joined in the Time Machine by Dr Caleb Friedeman, who has set out to explore how biographers described their subject’s infancy. Contrary to m...

At the beginning of advent, Helen and Lloyd sit down with Dr James Tabor to discuss the best-known and least-known woman in history: Mary, the mother of Jesus. They explore how second-century Christians reshaped Mary’s story and obscured the hi...

In this episode, Helen and Lloyd step into the fascinating world of women’s health in the New Testament world. With help from Professor Laurence Totelin, they explore who provided care, how medicine related to magic, and what medicinal recipes ...

In this episode, Lloyd fires up the Biblical Time Machine with Professor Nicholas Baker-Brian, and they travel back to third-century Persia to meet one of antiquity’s most fascinating and misunderstood figures: Mani, the visionary behind the gl...

What happened when the laws of Moses were translated into Greek? In this episode, we journey from Sinai to Alexandria with Dr Joel Korytko, whose book The Death of the Covenant Code uncovers how Jewish translators in the third century ...

What if the earliest Christians believed the world around them was teeming with invisible forces waiting to invade the human body? This Halloween, Biblical Time Machine delves into early Christian ideas of demons with

How did Persian mythology seep into the texts of the Hebrew Bible? In this week's Biblical Time Machine, Helen and Lloyd are joined by Professor Mark Leuchter, who has recently argued that the 'dynastic myth-making' of the Persian Achaemenid ru...

What did it mean to call a king “divine”? In this episode, Helen and Lloyd travel back to the ancient Near East — where kings were not just rulers but sacred figures and “sons of God.” They are joined by Dr Dylan Johnson, who explores how ancie...

Since the mid-twentieth century, it has been routine for scholars to see John as independent of the Synoptics – Matthew, Mark and Luke. Yet a recent book by Professor Mark Goodacre suggests that John should be read as the fourth and final 'Syno...

Esau's hairiness, David's ruddiness, Saul's great height. We tend not to pay much attention to these details, but small bodily features in the Hebrew Bible can reveal a character's whole narrative arc. Join Helen and Lloyd in the Biblical Time ...

Exorcisms on the big screen are terrifying – but what did exorcisms mean in first-century Palestine? Join Helen and Lloyd in the Biblical Time Machine as they uncover the strange world of Greek magical papyri, the Dead Sea Scrolls and charismat...

What does it mean to read the New Testament through the lens of disability and mental health? In this episode of Biblical Time Machine, Helen Bond is joined by Professor Louise Lawrence (University of Exeter), whose groundbreaking 2018...

From the royal courts of Babylon to the Acts of the Apostles, eunuchs appear in some of the most intriguing corners of the biblical story. But what did it really mean to be a eunuch in antiquity? Were they trusted chamberlains at the heart of a...

Can modern historians really talk about Jesus’ miracles? Did Jesus expect the imminent end of the world? Was he a new Moses figure? And if memory is so unreliable, how can historians claim to know anything about him at all?There’s no one...

The Time Machine is back... with some changes! Join Helen and her new co-host, ancient history Prof. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, as they discuss what they're working on ...

It's been a while, but there are some big changes in the works for Biblical Time Machine! For more details, check out our post on Patreon.SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE<...

Sadly, the origins of many antisemitic tropes and prejudices can be traced back to the New Testament, in which "the Jews" are cast as the religious "other" against which the Jesus movement is self-defined. As a result, Christians carry around a...

Cyrus II was the founder of the Persian Empire, arguably the greatest empire of the Ancient Near East. Cyrus wasn't only a hero to the Persians. In the Hebrew Bible, Cyrus is the only non-Jew that God calls His "anointed one" or "messiah." But ...

The laws and punishments meted out in the Bible sound pretty harsh. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth—not to mention all of the commandments that are punishable by death! Ancient law expert

According to The Da Vinci Code, all sorts of wild things happened at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, chose the books of the New Testament. The role of women in the Church was suppressed....

Matthew Novenson is back and he's brought some exciting (wild, even) new ideas about our old friend Paul. In his latest book,

With Easter in the rear view mirror, we take a long-overdue look at the next chapter in the story of Jesus: the Second Coming. Scholar Tucker Ferda is making waves with s...

The enigmatic figure of Barabbas appears in all four gospels as a "bandit" or "insurrectionist" who is released from prison by Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus. In this special Easter episode, Helen and Dave explore the (many) theories about Bar...

What does the Bible really say about controversial topics like slavery, abortion, homosexuality, Satan and the Apocalypse? Everybody has their take, but few have the ability to interrogate the texts and their ancient origins with as mu...