You're listening to the Bible for Normal People,

the only God ordained podcast on the internet.

Serious talk about the sacred book.

I'm Pete Ends.

And I'm Jared Bias.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bible

for Normal People.

And our topic today is what archaeologists do and why it matters.

And our guest today is Cynthia Schaefer-Eliott.

She is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible,

which is just another way of saying Old Testament.

Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Archaeology

at William Jessup University in California.

And she digs in the ground in Israel and she finds things.

And it's really interesting to uncover artifacts

that tell us about culture and history

about the ancient Israelites that the Bible just doesn't get to.

Yeah, and I was really excited about this simply because

I think it's a term we maybe grew up with a lot in the church,

archaeology, but not even me going to seminary

I still learn some things in this conversation about exactly

what it is they do and how it intersects with reading

...