A non religous podcast breakdown of the Bible?

by dustinarden

I'm looking for something like The History of Rome podcast (3 episodes from finishing) that goes through the historical aspects of the Bible and explains them from a perspective of a historian and not a "believer". I don't want spin. I want what history has on record vs the Bible type records. I hope I'm making sense. This human history era fascinates me and I'm looking to become more educated on it.

ScipioAsina

Richard Elliott Friedman (author of Who Wrote the Bible?) has uploaded an entire course of lectures on CourseCraft; it's cheap too! Friedman begins with a overview of biblical history (according to the Old Testament itself) before delving into the Documentary Hypothesis. His later lectures address some of the historical controversies, particularly the extreme views held by the "Minimalists."

Friedman's humorous and engaging, and he offers a great summary of what one might consider the traditional scholarly views on the Old Testament in North America. However, this field is pretty messy, and many would probably disagree with his arguments. Friedman also appears to be a practicing Jew, though this doesn't affect the quality of scholarship, in my opinion.

dstz

Regarding the New Testament, i loved "Introduction to the New Testament" by Dale Martin on Yale Open Courses.

narwhal_

a perspective of a historian and not a "believer"

This is a false dichotomy, but what you mean is you want a historical critical podcast for the Bible. The majority of historians of the Bible are believers who also just play by the rules of regular historians. You will get spin of some kind regardless of any affiliation or non-affiliation, including the Rome series.

Mark Goodacre's NT pod is good, but mostly topical. As someone linked below, Dale Martin's Intro to the NT is also good as is Christina Haye's Intro to the OT, both Yale opencourses. There's also Laura Nasrallah's open course Intro to Paul which is ok. Michael Satlow has one called from Israelite to Jew which is closely related. I also remember Shaye Cohen having one as well. Hopefully this is a start. If these don't fit the bill you may have to turn to books.

gmtnl

The AskHistorians podcast actually has a couple of episodes on the book of Daniel with /u/Husky54 that made for an enjoyable bus ride the other day!