Baruch Halpern: Judaism Unbound Episode 266 - Digging Up Biblical History
Baruch Halpern, the Covenant Foundation Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about Biblical history and Biblical archaeology. They explore how those two realms relate to one another (get it? "DIGGING" up Biblical History!), along with what these ancient texts and discoveries have to do with us today.
[1] Learn more about Baruch Halpern here. You can purchase any of his books at this link.
[2] If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy our weekly series on jewishLIVE, hosted by Richard Elliott Friedman and entitled Return to Torah. Check out past episodes (and watch future episodes) at www.jewishlive.org/returntotorah.
[3] Halpern refers to a moment in the book of Jeremiah, in which some Judahites, exiled to Egypt, assert that they will continue expressing devotion to the “Queen of Heaven.” Check out this narrative, one of the only moments in Bible where readers hear directly from polytheists, in Jeremiah 44 (44:17 for the explicit invocation of the queen of heaven).
[4] For two brief articles that explore some myths and facts related to the theme of exile in the Bible, see “How Bad was the Babylonian Exile” and/or “Exile in the Hebrew Bible.”