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PODCAST

Oldest Stories

History and myth of the Cradle of Civilization, bronze age Mesopotamia, beginning with the dawn of writing. The show will cover the full history of Mesopotamia, from Gilgamesh to Nabonidas, a span of some 2500 years, with myths of heroes and gods, and tales of daily life peppered throughout. Sumer, Akkad, Old Babylon, Hittites, and Israel have all been covered in depth, current episodes get deep into the Assyrian Empire. New episodes every other Wednesday. Online at oldeststories.net.

history

All Episodes

00:41:04

OS 119 - Israel's Young Shepherd

Oldest Stories ·

2023/06/07

We begin the tale of young David's rise to power, looking at the three origin stories of the young shepherd, warrior, and poet, and then noting that as he began to rise in fame and power, Saul was absolutely not insane to be jealous and worried of him rebelling and usurping the throne. After all, that is exactly what he ends up doing. But in addition to just the narrative of King David's rise, we take a nice long look at some of the historical and archeological issues surrounding this entire

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00:38:06

OS 118 - Israel's First Failed King

Oldest Stories ·

2023/05/24

Today we get some serious military history as we look at the main chunk of King Saul's reign. We deliberately avoid David as much as possible today, because it is far too easy for King Saul to get upstaged in his own chapters by history's favorite king, and so we end up with a surprising amount of often quite detailed military history, and a bunch of interesting details about the time period itself. Finally, we get to see how Saul is super desperate to be a good Yahweh worshipper, and then

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00:38:50

OS 117 - Israel's First King

Oldest Stories ·

2023/05/10

Today we properly start the career of King Saul, or at least Saul as he makes his bid for kingship. This story is important as a piece of ancient literature, it is important through the question of whether or not the bible is valid as history, but most of all it is important because this is one of the only windows we get in the entire near east for military history details during the crucial transition from late bronze age chariot warfare to the massed imperial warfare of the iron age. Thanks to

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00:54:08

OS 116 - Israel's United Monarchy

Oldest Stories ·

2023/04/26

Today we look at the lead up to King Saul, and how Israel made the transition from a collections of tribes to a unified kingship. Why is the Old Testament so ambivalent on the matter of kingship? Most interestingly, there is a universally applicable political lesson here, in what may be history's earliest commentary on the nature and source of effective governance. Also, why do the Israelites cut up animals as messages so often in this period? We look at Gideon, Abimelech, Micah and the Danites,

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01:02:42

OS 115 - The Place of Faith in Biblical History

Oldest Stories ·

2023/04/26

Just to give an overview of this episode to see if you want to listen all the way through, the topics I am going to discuss are: Why do I believe that Israel entered Canaan as outsiders violently invading, when so much of academia believes that these invasions never happened, and that the Isarelite emergence was largely peaceful? Why do I believe that the bible, as we have it today, is a worthwhile historical record, at least worthwhile enough to go over it so extensively on a history podcast? Why

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00:42:21

OS 114 - Israel's Judges and Defeats

Oldest Stories ·

2023/04/12

The institution of Judges, as described in the book of Judges, is an English translation of the word Shofet, a political position which doesn't really exist in modern times, and as such is often poorly understood even in the study bibles and commentaries that I have read. And yet, there are reasons to think that whether or not the stories themselves within this book are true or not, there really was a class of Shoftim prior to the monarchy. That, plus issues of chronology among the judges, get

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00:39:59

OS 113 - Israel's Settlements and Philistine Neighbors

Oldest Stories ·

2023/03/29

Today we go full archeology on everyone, looking at what makes a settlement more or less likely to be Israelite as opposed to Canaanite or whatever based purely on the archeological record. Also, a brief overview of the entire history of the Philistines, because I introduced them as a brief tangent and ended up telling their entire story all at once. Archeology by itself is just a bunch of broken clay pots, and serious archeology really has a tendency to put me to sleep, especially once they start

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00:47:25

OS 112 - Israel's Conquest and Integration in Canaan

Oldest Stories ·

2023/03/15

When did Joshua conquer Canaan for Israel? Did Joshua even exist, as described in the Book of Joshua? We continue our march through the Old Testament as the people of Israel march through Canaan. We spend some good time discussing the Canaanite genocide in the context of ancient warfare, and the things that are and are not remarkable about it. We look a bit at settlement patterns in archeology and destruction layers and what they mean for the entry or emergence of Israel in the holy land. Also, we

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00:38:54

OS 111 - Israel's Wandering and Settlement

Oldest Stories ·

2023/03/01

What does it mean that the people of Israel are the biggest whiners in recorded history? It may mean that a lot of the people were not actually on board with the theological mission of the Yahwist religious leaders. It may also mean that we are knee deep in the book of Numbers. My favorite Old Testament story, Balaam son of Beor, gets a mention here, as does some points where the people of Israel may well have left some actual historical evidence. And finally we get to the first actual mention in

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00:36:14

OS 110 - Israel and the Hebrews

Oldest Stories ·

2023/02/15

Today we obsess over the word Hebrew and go deep into what it means, who was and was not a Hebrew, whether it was a social or ethnic designation, what that implies about the religious and cultural mission of Israel, and what that might mean for the historicity of the Bible. In a sense, this is kind of a tangent from our wider story, but I think this is one of the really core issues that most people either wonder about, or are ignorant of and should be wondering about. If you really want to skip

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00:35:59

OS 109 - Israel's Numbers Problem

Oldest Stories ·

2023/02/01

Today we look at possibly the oldest section of the entire Bible, Exodus chapter 15, the Song of Moses, as well as the issues with the census listed in Numbers and what that might mean for biblical historicity. These are some pivotal chapters today, not so much for the narrative itself but for keying in how we are going to interpret the bible and a whole in historical context. I think one of the most important questions for our own personal understanding of the bible is "How would this look in a

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00:43:00

OS 108 - Israel's Formation and the Historical Exodus

Oldest Stories ·

2023/01/18

We begin our big series on the historicity of the bible with Genesis. Unfortunately, nearly the entire book is beyond the purview of history, for reasons we will discuss. But with the tale of the Exodus, we have a narrative which could, in theory, have left some historical evidence to confirm its existence. Unfortunately, we don't actually have any evidence of the exodus narrative. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absense, and the far more interesting question is what we can look at to not

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00:35:00

OS 107 - The Bible as History and Skeptical Views

Oldest Stories ·

2023/01/04

Here it is, the part of ancient Near Eastern history that excites the most passion and interest. There is no doubt that there were kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and there is no doubt that after they were conquered by the Babylonians there was a class of Judahite priests who assembled the collection of texts we now call the Old Testament, but before that pretty much all bets are off. Today begins what will be a bit of a series on Israel, and we will go over briefly the four main points of view on

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00:33:13

OS 106 - The Fate of Anatolia

Oldest Stories ·

2022/12/21

After the Hittite Empire fell during the bronze age collapse, Anatolia became a Mad Max style wasteland with tribes crossing the hills and fighting for survival. Amidst all this, we have the fateful arrival of the mysterious Sea Peoples, and out of this mess emerged not a whole lot for a long time, but eventually we get the Phrygians in the northwest and the Neo-Hittites in the southeast, as well as a whole host of more peripheral people who will merit more mentions as our story progresses. The

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00:43:49

OS 105 - Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad

Oldest Stories ·

2022/12/07

Animals in ancient Mesopotamia. From sheep, goats, horses, and other domesticated animals to wild beasts like lions, elephants, insects, birds and fish, the ancient world was surrounded by animals. But in our history we are usually so focused with humans that we don't get a chance to focus on the four legged companions of the ancient world. So today we rectify that with an overview of all the animals that the Old Babylonians cared about and a look at how they interacted with each. --- Send in a

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00:46:54

OS 104 - Arameans Everywhere

Oldest Stories ·

2022/11/23

Today we look at pretty much everything we know about the Mesopotamian dark age following the bronze age collapse, and manage to cover about 120 years of history in about half an hour. After that is a discussion about chronologies and why we know when all these things happened, with a reference to lost time and other alternate chronologies, both legitimate and silly. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/message

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01:03:43

OS 103 - The Babylonian Aristotle, Esagil-Kin-Apli

Oldest Stories ·

2022/11/09

Today we are going to look at the reign of Adad-Apla-Iddina, the fact that he was hit by some brutal Aramean invasions and that he built a ton of stuff despite the times being pretty awful. But the star of our show today is the first great scientist in human history whose name reached great levels of fame. Esail-Kin-Apli may be forgotten now, but for a thousand years after his own time his name carried the same cachet as Einstein does to a modern lay person. It isn't wholly clear that he existed, or

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00:41:46

OS 102 - A Bit More Tiglath-Pileser

Oldest Stories ·

2022/10/26

This week, Tiglath-Pileser is going to kill more people, just like last week. But now he is going to branch out into killing animals, too! But when he pauses to catch his breath between killing, he is also going to build up Assyria domestically and fund a bit of an intellectual renaissance. Then he will die and things will get grim again for a while. But that is the rollercoaster of ancient Mesopotamia, it is great. --- Send in a voice message:

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00:39:28

OS 101 - A Short Assyrian Burst of Activity

Oldest Stories ·

2022/10/12

Today we see Assur rise mightily with Tiglath-Pileser I, and we see the seeds of another century of decline sown in the climate change that drives the Aramean invasions. Meanwhile, Babylon has to deal with the same set of problems, but without the same sort of vigorous leadership. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/message

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00:40:34

OS 100 - The Babylonian Theodicy

Oldest Stories ·

2022/09/28

For a Babylonian polytheist, the gods are worshipped with the explicit expectation that divine veneration will avert bad fortune and attract good fortune. Yet as long as there have been people, we have seen that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good fortune finds bad people. Religious explorations of this are called Theodicy, and we have already see a number of Mesopotamian attempts to wrestle with this, back in Episodes 26 and 53. The genre appears to culminate in one of

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230 results

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