The Old Testament wasn't written in a cultural vacuum, but who and what influenced its writers.

Today, we're talking about the cultural background of the Old Testament and how the literature

and societies of the surrounding cultures impacted its creation. We also have our bonus segment

at the end, which this week is listeners questions. Welcome to the misquoting

Jesus podcast with Bart Ehrman. But I would like to ask you, when you were growing up in the church,

what picture did you have in your head of where characters in the Bible like Adam and Eve or

the nation of Israel fit into the timeline of world history? Well, Adam and Eve was easy.

They were the first two.

It did create problems because then they have their, you know,

they have their two sons, Kane and Abel,

and Kane goes out and establishes a city.

It's like, huh.

So, but, you know, we didn't think about things like that.

We just, we thought history began with God creating the world in six days.

And that began with Adam and Eve.

And that the history recounted in the Bible is the actual history of the earth.

And that Adam and Eve had Canaan and Abel, and then they had, they had their

others on Seth, and then he, you know, the nation, the people propagated up until the time of

the Tower Babel, where the nations that had to disperse speaking different language, it said,

and everything,

everything came from that. And so we didn't really have this sense that there was a history

going on outside of the history of Israel, you know, we're outside of what's narrated in the Bible.

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