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OS 108 - Israel's Formation and the Historical Exodus Jan 18, 2023

Show notes

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 refute or affirm, but merely to support or weaken the narrative as presented in the bible.

OS 107 - The Bible as History and Skeptical Views Jan 04, 2023

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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 Israelite history, which I call the Biblical Literalists, the Accomodationists, the Pure Archeologists, and the Radical Skeptics. Then we will look in a very bare bones way at what is the bare minimum we can say about pre-kingdom Israelite history to set the stage for future episodes.

OS 106 - The Fate of Anatolia Dec 21, 2022

Show notes

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 Phrygians we will look at briefly, but the Neo-Hittites, who are the same as the Biblical Hittites, are fascinating and poorly understood, and we will emerge from our time with them still fascinated and still not understanding much, but maybe a bit more than we started with.

OS 105 - Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad Dec 07, 2022

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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.

OS 104 - Arameans Everywhere Nov 23, 2022

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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.

OS 103 - The Babylonian Aristotle, Esagil-Kin-Apli Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

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 that he wrote the whole corpus with which he is credited, but there is a chance that he really did write the great catalogs of wisdom which constitute the first great body of scientific knowledge under a single known author. The significance of him as an historical figure and what his scientific catalogs looked like are discussed here. This episode is long, because I got a little too excited about the theoretical foundations of Babylonian thought.

OS 102 - A Bit More Tiglath-Pileser Oct 26, 2022

Show notes

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.

OS 101 - A Short Assyrian Burst of Activity Oct 12, 2022

Show notes

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.

OS 100 - The Babylonian Theodicy Sep 28, 2022

Show notes

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 the most impressive technical and philosophical works of ancient Mesopotamia, in the Babylonian Theodicy. Also, after looking at the Theodicy, we compare it to another Babylonian writing from an old man who is simply miserable with life.

For more on this, check out episode 26, where we discussed the Sumerian "A Man and His God" and episode 53 where we discussed the Old Babylonian "Poem of the Righteous Sufferer", both of which are thematic precursors to this and almost certainly were at least indirect references for the author of the Babylonian Theodicy.

OS 99 - The Legend of Nebuchadnezzar Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

Nabu-Kudurri-Usur, the first Nebuchadnezzar, rescued the statue of Marduk from Elam after a grueling adventure beset by intense heat, low supplies, and enemies on all sides. And yet, even though this event would be celebrated in later generations, it is unclear if it was highly celebrated in his own lifetime. Today we look at the cult of Marduk, how it may have developed within the city of Babylon, and some more of Nebuchadnezzar's life.

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