Biblical Archaeology Audio Podcast with Dr. Kenneth Hanson

Sep 12 2020 14 ep. 29 mins 85

Biblical Archaeology Audio Podcast with Dr. Kenneth Hanson artwork

Biblical 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!

Religion & Spirituality

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

Digging Up Masada #14

Sep 12 2020 26 mins

Digging 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

Digging Up Jesus #13

Sep 09 2020 24 mins

Digging 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

Sep 08 2020 30 mins

Digging 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 sch

Digging Up Qumran (Episode 11)

Sep 07 2020 27 mins

Digging 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 mi

Digging Up the Dead Sea Scrolls (Episode 10)

Sep 05 2020 30 mins

Digging 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 lit

Digging Up Beit She'an (Episode 9)

Sep 02 2020 23 mins

Digging 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 aw

Digging Up the Two Kingdoms (Episode 8)

Sep 01 2020 24 mins

Digging 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 e

Digging Up Solomon (Episode 7)

Sep 01 2020 27 mins

Digging 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 archaeologica

Digging Up David (Episode 6)

Sep 01 2020 52 mins

Digging 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

Digging Up the Judges (Episode 5)

Sep 01 2020 24 mins

Digging 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 t