Discovered in 1946 in abandoned caves in Israel, the Dead Sea Scrolls are by far the oldest copies we have of books from the Hebrew Bible. The ancient horde of scrolls — more than 1,000 — also sheds light on the mysterious community called the Essenes who retreated to the Dead Sea wilderness around the time of Jesus. Helen and Dave are joined by Dead Sea Scroll expert Charlotte Hempel, who challenges some of the conventional assumptions about the Essenes and explains why the millennia-old scrolls are still a really big deal.

Everybody knows what Jesus looked like—the beard, the flowing locks, the tunic, and of course, the sandals! But incredibly, the Bible doesn't include a single physical description of Jesus... So where did the standard Western image come from, and is any of it historically accurate? Dave and Helen welcome back guest Joan Taylor, who makes a strong case that Western art painted a distorted picture of the real Jesus.

The Book of Genesis is packed with iconic stories: the Creation, Adam & Eve, Noah's Ark... but where did those ancient tales come from? Yale Assyriologist Eckart Frahm joins Helen and Dave as they set the time machine all the way back to the "Beginning" to explore the intriguing connections between ancient Mesopotamian myth and the "Primeval History" recorded in Genesis. Did ancient Israel borrow some of its origin stories from Babylon? Hear the evidence and decide for yourself.

Magi and mangers and murderous kings — it must be Christmas! The New Testament tells two very different stories of Jesus's birth, but why? Helen and Dave set the Biblical Time Machine to December 25, Year 1 to discuss why the authors of Matthew and Luke chose to write their own particular versions of the Nativity story, each with important theological and political undertones. And was Jesus even born in Year 1? We'll answer all your Christmas questions.

With Christmas just around the corner, Helen and Dave piece together a picture of the woman who was there from the start — Mary, the mother of Jesus. Betrothed at 12 or 13 to a much older man, what would life have been like for a Galilean peasant woman and mother (and widow, perhaps?) in the 1st century? And what did Mary make of her unusual son and his radical mission?

In the Bible, Herod is a power-hungry, paranoid King who orders the execution of all boy babies in Judea. But did any of that really happen? Join Helen and Dave as they discuss Herod's historic legacy and catalog the people that he definitely did kill (including his favorite wife).

According to the Bible, Paul was once Saul, a Christian-persecuting zealot who "converted" to Christianity. But did Paul, the earliest author in the New Testament, see himself as anything other than Jewish? Special guest Matthew Novenson joins Helen and Dave to discuss which of Paul's letters are legit, and what life would have been like for a diaspora Jew like Paul in the 1st century.

Did you know there's not a single mention of God, prayer, or prophets in the Book of Esther? So how did this entertaining tale of beauty contests, banquets, and impaled bad guys make it into the Hebrew Bible? Special guest Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones joins Helen and Dave to discuss the ancient Persian origins of the Book of Esther.

The Second Temple in Jerusalem was a wonder of the ancient world and the center of Jewish life. In this episode, Dave and Helen describe the grandeur of the Temple complex after a major upgrade under Herod the Great, how Temple sacrifices worked, and why money changers played an important role (even if Jesus wasn't a fan).

What were the Jewish origins of baptism? Did people really wear camel hair and eat bugs? According to Josephus, was John the Baptist a "bigger deal" than Jesus? Special guest Joan Taylor joins Helen and Dave to discuss how John the Baptist fits into the 1st-century world of the New Testament.

Women played a hugely important role in Jesus’s inner circle and in early Christianity, but the New Testament only gives us a few tantalizing clues. In this episode, Helen and Dave fill in the forgotten stories of Jesus’s female disciples.

The New Testament wasn't handed down from on high as a complete and fully formed text. The books of the NT were written by different individuals at different times to meet the spiritual needs of different communities. Join Dave and Helen as they explore the historical roots of the "Good Book" and the people who wrote it.

Dave and Helen dive into the biggest Bible history question of them all — who was the real Jesus? Lucky for us, Helen wrote a whole book about it, so there's plenty of fascinating clues to discuss.