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From Nazareth to Hollywood
How are Jesus and early Christianity portrayed on the big screen? To answer this question, Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Biblical Time Machine with Dr Monica Cyrino, an expert on the reception of the classical world in film. Together,
Who were the Magi, really?
We all know the story of the Magi: they were three kings who followed a star to Bethlehem. But what if this common nativity narrative gets it all wrong? To uncover who the Magi really were, Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Biblical Time M
What are the Non-Canonical Gospels?
Many people only know the version of the non-canonical gospels popularised by Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. The Church did away these 'lost' texts, and their recovery promises to reveal a more primitive version of Jesus that Orthodoxy suppress
Jesus' Physical Appearance
The physical appearance of Jesus is more widely known and distinctive than any other. Yet this familiarity can lead us to overlook a curious fact: in the Gospels, it is never described. This week on the Biblical Time Machine, Helen and Lloy
Did the Beloved Disciple Exist?
The Gospel of John presents itself as rooted in the testimony of 'the disciple whom Jesus loved'. But who was this disciple? Over the centuries, scholars have proposed a baffling range of explanations, from John the son of Zebedee or a 'Joh
Asherah: The Forgotten Wife of God?
This week in the Biblical Time Machine, Helen and Lloyd travel back to a time when God had a wife named Asherah... or did he? To help them answer decipher the ancient goddess, our co-hosts enlist the help of Dr Steve Wiggins, a world-leadin
How Christmas Carols Retell The Nativity
Every Christmas, Christians sing a nativity story shaped as much by hymnody as by the Gospels themselves. In this Christmas special, Helen and Lloyd take a closer look at four of their favourite Christmas carols to ask the question: how do
How Luke Rewrote Matthew's Nativity
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 abo
Birth Stories in the Ancient World
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
How Mary Was Lost
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 th
Women's Health in the New Testament World
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 reci
Manichaeism – An Ancient Faith Rediscovered
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 th
How the Death Penalty Came to Die
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 BCE r
The Haunted House of Early Christianity
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 Dr Travis Proctor (htt
Persian Myth-Making in the Hebrew Bible
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 Achaemeni
When Kings Were Gods
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 a
John – The Fourth Synoptic Gospel?
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 '
Heroic Bodies in the Hebrew Bible
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 T
Jesus the Exorcist
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 chari
Bible & Bedlam – Disability, Sanism and the Gospels
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 book
Eunuchs in the Bible & Beyond
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
Interpreting Jesus – Miracles, Moses & Memory
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 b
Meet the New Team
The Time Machine is back... with some changes! Join Helen and her new co-host, ancient history Prof. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/llewellyn-jonesl), as they discuss what they're working on at the moment: every
Where are Helen and Dave? A BTM Update
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 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/where-heck-are-135034278). SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE If you enjoy t
Let's Talk About "Judeophobia" in the New Testament
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 arou
Why the Bible Loves Cyrus the Great
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."
Biblical Law—Was 'Eye for an Eye' Really Enforced?
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 Bruce Wells (https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mes/fa
What Was the Council of Nicaea (Really)?
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. And
The End of the World According to Paul
Matthew Novenson is back and he's brought some exciting (wild, even) new ideas about our old friend Paul. In his latest book, Paul and Judaism at the End of History (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/paul-and-judaism-at-the-end-of-histor
A Second Look at the Second Coming
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 (https://www.religiousstudies.pitt.edu/people/tucker-s-ferda) is making waves with some comp
