Biblical Archaeology Audio Podcast with Dr. Kenneth Hanson
14 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsBiblical Archaeology Audio Podcast with Jerusalem Jones AKA Dr. Kenneth Hanson.The Land of Israel is not just the “Holy Land.” It’s an archaeological mine field, full of contentious debates and controversies that touch the core of faith and identity, across religious and cultural divides. The Bible itself is at stake, along with the events it describes, from Abraham the patriarch, to Moses, to King David, to the days of the Roman empire and beyond. How much is what we might call “history,” and what does the spade of the archaeologist reveal about the timeless characters who occupy the pages of Holy Writ? Grab your fedora, and get prepared for true adventure!
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Episodes
Digging Up Masada #14
September 13, 2020 05:00 - 26 minutes - 22.8 MBDigging Up Masada #14 Along the western shore of the Dead Sea, amid the vast and unforgiving wilderness of Judea, we find a precipitous plateau, isolated by millions of years of erosion that turned it into an impregnable fortress. The Hebrew word for “fortress” is Masada, by which it is still called to this day. Its greatest claim to fame derives from events that transpired at the end of the Great Revolt against Rome, when for three brave years (70-73 C.E.), the freedom fighters on this anci...
Digging Up Jesus #13
September 10, 2020 05:00 - 24 minutes - 21 MBDigging Up Jesus #13 Let’s have a look at some things you might not know about how archaeology weighs in on the historical Jesus, whose real name in Hebrew was Yeshua… Just think. If Indiana Jones could search for the Holy Grail, what do you suppose we can come up with? From Bethlehem to Nazareth to Jerusalem, we’ve got it all covered…
Digging Up Herod #12
September 09, 2020 05:00 - 30 minutes - 28.8 MBDigging Up Herod #12 When we consider the archaeological sites across Israel today, none are more impressive than the remains of ancient structures built by King Herod the Great. With the aid of his Roman allies, Herod conquered the land of Israel, including Jerusalem, and established himself as king in the year 37 B.C.E. Herod has been described as a manic depressive, paranoid schizophrenic, with aggressive tendencies. In his manic state he built some of the grandest structures on earth in...
Digging Up Qumran (Episode 11)
September 08, 2020 05:00 - 27 minutes - 25.2 MBDigging Up Qumran (Episode 11) During the early 1950s the riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls takes a new turn. Father Roland de Vaux, under the supervision of the Jordanian government, organizes a major excavation of the site of Khirbet Qumran. As the diggers meticulously remove the rubble, an entire ancient settlement begins to appear. The amazing thing is that, even after two long millennia, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the legacy they convey still belong to everybody. And with the tools of archae...
Digging Up the Dead Sea Scrolls (Episode 10)
September 06, 2020 05:00 - 30 minutes - 28.4 MBDigging Up the Dead Sea Scrolls (Episode 10) ) The world changes -- silently and without fanfare -- on a particular summer day in 1947. A goat belonging to a Bedouin flock wanders off among the multiple caves that dot the desert hillsides. Young Muhammed Adh-Dhib is a Bedouin lad, responsible for tending these goats, and it should come as no surprise that he becomes more than a little agitated over the fate of this lost animal. He runs off to search among the rocky crags of the Judean wilder...
Digging Up Beit She'an (Episode 9)
September 03, 2020 05:00 - 23 minutes - 22.4 MBDigging Up Beit She'an (Episode 9) It's time to shine a spotlight on one of the most important sites in all of biblical archaeology. It's the Galilean city of Beit She’an, which had important strategic value across multiple historical epochs. This ancient and classical hellenistic city fell into a long slumber, which only the spade of the archaeologists has in the last century awakened once more. There is no single site that spans so many centuries and so many cultures, weighing in so profou...
Digging Up the Two Kingdoms (Episode 8)
September 01, 2020 12:18 - 24 minutes - 22.6 MBDigging Up the Two Kingdoms (Episode 8) One of the most famous of all biblical sites, Megiddo, features prominently in the battle for Solomon, for if Solomon where everything he was made out to be, we would expect to find important traces of his kingdom at this ancient city. But while traditionalists insist that we have such evidence, our minimalist friends beg to differ. In this episode we encounter multiple issues of this sort, such as two tiny silver scrolls bearing the priestly benedicti...
Digging Up Solomon (Episode 7)
September 01, 2020 12:14 - 27 minutes - 24.7 MBDigging Up Solomon (Episode 7) We might go as far as to say that the real history of Israel as a kingdom begins not with King Saul or even King David (the extent of whose kingdom is still very much in debate), but with Solomon, who (for better or for worse) solidified what had been a tribal confederacy into a true monarchy. As with David, the natural place to look for archaeological evidence of Solomon is Jerusalem. Yet, religious restrictions have made digging in the most promising areas ef...
Digging Up David (Episode 6)
September 01, 2020 12:11 - 52 minutes - 47.8 MBDigging Up David (Episode 6) Israel's first great king, whose praises are chanted in the streets of the holy city even to this day, is also the focus of another conflict, this one between competing scholarly camps in the ever changing field of biblical archaeology. As we look for evidence of King David, we need to take a look at “underground Jerusalem,” where the only light is artificial, but the controversies (both scholarly and political) are all too real. That’s because Jerusalem is today...
Digging Up the Judges (Episode 5)
September 01, 2020 12:07 - 24 minutes - 22.3 MBDigging Up the Judges (Episode 5) As Late Bronze Age culture collapsed, culturally inferior settlements arose in place of the earlier ones. That's just what we would expect to find if semi-nomadic tribes were in the process of settling down, and it seems rather consistent with the biblical conquest narrative and subsequent period of the Israelite settlement. Yet, when it comes to the period of the biblical Judges, we find two competing camps, minimalists and traditionalists, each with seriou...
Digging Up Canaan (Episode 4)
September 01, 2020 12:02 - 26 minutes - 23.5 MBDigging Up Canaan (Episode 4) There’s more archaeology being undertaken in Israel and its territories today than in any other location on earth. And yet, the origins of biblical Israel are as murky as ever. Where did the Israelites come from? And when did the Israelites as a people come into existence? Can the biblical record be read as historical, when it declared that they came from Egypt in a mass exodus? Did they drift in from some other location, perhaps as pastoral nomads? Or, are the ...
Digging Up Jericho (Episode 3)
September 01, 2020 11:58 - 28 minutes - 25.3 MBDigging Up Jericho (Episode 3) Can archaeologists with spade in hand verify the biblical version of the conquest of the land of Canaan by the great ancient Israelite commander, Joshua? That at least was the goal of many of the pioneers of biblical archaeology. There are endless debates, and after thousands of years it looks like the battle for Jericho isn't over yet! Dr. Kenneth Hanson, http://drkenhanson.com/
Digging Up Moses (Episode 2)
September 01, 2020 11:54 - 25 minutes - 23.4 MBDigging Up Moses (Episode 2) Can archaeologists with spade in hand verify the biblical version of the conquest of the land of Canaan by the great ancient Israelites commander, Joshua? That at least with the goal of many of the pioneers of biblical archaeology. There are endless debates, and after thousands of years it looks like the battle for Jericho isn't over yet! Dr. Kenneth Hanson, http://drkenhanson.com/
The Battle for Abraham #1
September 01, 2020 11:40 - 36 minutes - 33.1 MBThe Battle for Abraham #1 Can the science of archaeology confirm the earliest stories of the Bible? Can we prove that Abraham existed? What about Moses? Were Israelites ever Egypt at all? These are just a few of the questions addressed in Episode One of this new series on biblical archaeology. Let's have a look at the “founders” of biblical archaeology, going back to the nineteenth century, and recognize how these “diggers in the dirt” changed forever the way we approach “holy writ.” Dr. Ken...