Aug 29, 2023
The Christian faith is rooted in the belief that Jesus died for the sins of the world and was then raised from the dead. But is this what Jesus himself preached during his public ministry? In the Gospels Jesus certainly predicts his coming death, on numerous occasions. But are those saying historical? How would...
Aug 22, 2023
Even though millions of people read the Bible, few know what experts who have devoted their lives to historical scholarship on it have to say or, even more important, why they say it. In this episode we talk about how scholarship on the New Testament has developed over the centuries, decades, and recent years,...
Aug 15, 2023
Christianity started out with a handful of followers in 30 CE - Jesus' remaining disciples and a few female supporters. But within 300 years there were some 2-3 million Christians in the world, including the emperor of Rome. How did *that* happen? How did an offshoot of Judaism come to take over the world, to the...
Aug 8, 2023
The idea of the Trinity - that God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit are different from each other and are all God, but there is only ONE God, is a central tenant of Christianity. But most Christians don't actually know what the doctrine really says, let alone where it came from (is it in the Bible?). In...
Aug 1, 2023
The conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity is often pointed to as a turning point in the history of the religion - but would Christianity have continued on its upward trajectory without this conversion? Was Constantine’s conversion one of genuine religious conviction, or was it motivated by something else?...