Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.

Thank you. Episode 1.33.

From Gangster to King Before we start this episode, I have an announcement.

I originally planned a podcast of 20 episodes covering the entire Bible, both old and

New Testaments. Here I am at episode 33, more than a year later, and nowhere near done with the Old Testament, let alone the new.

I always planned two series, but had no idea where to split the two. I decided to finish

this first series with the exile, when the Judeans are taken to Babylon in 586 BC. The last

episode in the current series will be in March 2017.

Series 2 will start a year from now in June 2017.

Why end series 1 at such an odd place?

At the beginning of the exile?

The Jewish and Protestant traditions end the Old Testament after the

exile with the return from Babylon. They finish with the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and last of all,

the prophet Malachi, all written in the Persian period after 500 BC. Along the way, they include the two major prophets of Ezekiel

and Daniel, and two also ranns. Why not finish my series with the end of the Old Testament,

the Tanakh? I think to do so will be to disguise the great rupture that fractured the ancient religion of the

Israelites. After the return from Babylon, the religion of the Jews followed paths that the patriarchs,

or Moses, or David, or the kings, or most of the prophets, could not, would not have understood. The Jewish tradition holds that

the canon was closed after Malachi. The Christian division into Old and New Testaments

pretends that nothing happened between Malachi and the Letters of Paul, a period of 500 years. That time between theachi and the letters of Paul, a period of 500 years.

That time between the return and Paul is called the Second Temple period.

...