You're listening to the Bible for normal people the only God ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete ends and I'm Jared bias.

Well, we have some unfortunate news this is before we get into our podcast. This is our last episode.

For two weeks for two weeks. We're.

I got you going for you people for you.

So we're moving to our every other week schedule here would you do every summer people don't email us how come the episode is a

lot because it's a summertime. No, we will inevitably get someone who's like well, I might think my podcasting is broken my computer broke.

So we're announcing it this year and we do it January just for future reference. Yes, we did this twice a year. Yes.

So today we're talking with who are we talking with Ted Lewis who is a professor of Johns Hopkins University and he is a historian of antiquity

specifically of Israelite origins and who the Israelites were in their context and not only who the Israelites were but as we'll learn today

where did God come from? Yes, the origins also of God right which has to do with Israel so it's all connected.

So so he's interested in what the Israelites how they understood God what they thought about God which is we'll get into that.

There's a slight there's a subtly different kind of question than we typically ask or so. So yeah, so the origins of God let's get into it.

History is messy really messy but so is modern life but if you're an inquisitive person the Bible just gives you this rich

data set to work with and some messy data set and then add in archaeology and inscriptions. I don't see how a person couldn't be attracted to being a historian if you have that type of inquisitive mind where you just have to know.

Well Ted welcome to our podcast. Thank you. Yeah, it's good to have a scholar here of well let's just talk about that a scholar of what what do you actually do you're a historian right?

And what does that mean to be a historian I guess of the Bible or the biblical story or a visual or whatever just help us understand what a historian does with all this stuff.

Yeah, I'm always very clear when I'm teaching to tell people that I wear a historian's hat and what I mean by that is I'm first of all very interested in how do we know what we know.

And we inherit views from our parents our churches our teachers but I love probing why do we believe what we believe.

And as a historian I just see it as a thrill of investigation investigating ideas for ourselves and what they're based on and so having some type of agency there.

And I'm really quick to define what I'm not I'm not a theologian and what I mean by that is I'm not a systematic theologian who tries to weave all the data into a unified whole.

For me a historian is involved in what the history of humans what do humans do what are their ideas and that's really really messy.

So for me it mirrors what I see in our modern society that people have different ideas and that's reflected in as a historian of Israel religion I see all these different ideas and then trying to make sensible.

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