Books of Kings

13/07/2025

Could the biblical House of David had ruled a vast world empire?

The biblical Hebrews were a small nation that successfully resisted great empires. But, for one brief window in history, the Hebrews themselves had a shot at conquering the Ancient Near East.

Instead of an Assyrian Empire or a Babylonian Empire, there would then have been an Empire of Jerusalem.

In the 700s BC, this came closer to happening than you might expect. Ian explains how in Episode 30 of Books of Kings.

Assyria and Babylon—as you can see in this map—were about the same size as a reunited Hebrew kingdom would have been at this time. Had the two kingdoms reunited under the Davidic monarchy, they would have been a territorial competitor of the Assyrians and Babylonians. Additionally, Israel and Judah also had key strategic advantages.

During the Second Golden Age of the 700s BC, Israel and Judah were each at a zenith of military and political strength, ruling over many satellite nations. Israel’s territory even included the major Aramaean city of Damascus. Between them, they could’ve called up an army of Edomites, Ammonites, Arabs, and Aramaeans. At the same time, all other major powers in the Near East were in crisis.

Egypt was weakened, fractured, and about to be taken over by Nubian adventurers. A united Hebrew kingdom might’ve moved in and grabbed a slice of the Nile—a superweapon of economic production. Next, the Hebrews could’ve turned their attention to Aram. Already beaten into near-oblivion by Israel and Assyria, what remained of Aram could have been squeezed between the two powers like Poland.

After that, a renewed Davidic state might have played either Assyria or Babylon against the other before attacking the weakened victor. A Hebrew victory in this scenario could have been similar to the Arab conquest of Persia and Byzantium during the period of Heraclius.

In this scenario, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar never would have ruled the Ancient Near East. Instead, a Hebrew Empire would have ruled the land from the Nile to the Euphrates from Jerusalem, fulfilling the offering of Genesis 15:18: “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.”

Reading the prophets from this period also hints at this possibility. The prophets constantly rebuke Israel for worshipping Yahweh in Samaria instead of Jerusalem. If Israel had indeed started worshipping in Jerusalem, as the prophets demanded, the two kingdoms likely would've reunited under the Davidic monarchy.

In this sense, the eventual destruction of the Kingdom of Israel at the hands of the resurgent Assyrian Empire could be described as a worldly result of its theological heterodoxy as well as a metaphysical divine judgment.

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else podcasts are found.

09/01/2025

On a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Podcast, historian Wesley Huff gifted Rogan a facsimile of P52.

P52, pictured here, is generally considered the oldest New Testament papyrus fragment. It is sometimes dated to as early as 100 AD. If that date is correct, it is old enough to be a copy of John's original manuscript.

It includes a fragment of John 18:37-38, consistent with the text found in our Bibles. In full, 18:37-38 reads:

"Then Pilate said to him, 'So you are a king?' Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.' Pilate said to him, 'What is truth?'"

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else podcasts are found.

28/10/2024

Our profile picture is a rendition of the famous "Lion of Megiddo," an 8th century BC Israelite seal used by Shema, a minister under the Jehuide Israelite king Jeroboam II. The original inscription reads “Shema” on top and “Servant of Jeroboam” on the bottom. It is occasionally, but rarely, hypothesized to date to the time of the first Jeroboam.

Jeroboam II is himself not a descendant of Jeroboam I. Instead, he came from the line of Jehu—the usurper who overthrow the Omrides, the extended family of Jezebel, with the backing of Elijah and Elisha. As king, Jehu led a monotheistic revolution in Israel and dramatically rolled back the cosmopolitan syncretism that Jezebel and her family had promoted. He then established the most stable dynasty in the Kingdom of Israel’s history, the Jehuides.

That an Israelite seal would use a lion might seem unusual, as lions are popularly associated with the Kingdom of Judah. When blessing his sons, Jacob told Judah: “Judah, your brothers shall praise you. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father's sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's cub.” In Revelation 5:5, John is told that “the Lion of the tribe of Judah [Jesus], the Root of David, has conquered.”

Yet lions are also associated with the land of Israel, where they repeatedly appear as instruments of God’s wrath. In fact, God used lions to create the Samaritan culture and religion which inhabited Israel during the lifetime of Jesus.

In 2 Kings 17, after the Assyrian Empire had conquered and systematically depopulated Israel, the Assyrians resettled the country with Babylonians and other Ancient Near Eastern peoples. The Deuteronomist writes that, in response to the brazen polytheism of these settlers, God “sent lions among them, which killed some of them.”

This inspired the settlers to adopt the monotheistic “Samaritan” religion found in the New Testament. As the Samaritan woman in John 4 tells Jesus, “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain [as part of the Samaritan religion], but you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

Pictured here: a bronze reproduction of the original Lion of Megiddo seal.

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere podcasts are found.

27/10/2024

After defeating Josiah at Megiddo, the pharaoh Necho uses duplicity to consolidate his control over the Levant. Meanwhile, the waxing Babylonian Empire begins to take the place of Assyria.

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us anywhere podcasts are found.

After defeating Josiah at Megiddo, the pharaoh Necho uses duplicity to consolidate his control over the Levant. Meanwhile, the waxing Babylonian Empire begins to take the place of Assyria. 

20/06/2024

Botanists in Israel have harvested hundreds of dates from Judean date palms which were extinct from late Roman antiquity to the present day. The palms, which were renowned at the time of Christ, were grown from millennia-old seeds recovered at Masada.

The seeds did not require genetic engineering to grow. Botanists essentially planted the seeds, which had been falsely presumed to be lifeless rocks after sitting unplanted for numerous centuries.

Although the first of these trees sprouted in 2005, it was male and could not bear dates. To grow dates, the botanists needed to cultivate and fertilize female date palms, as s*x is not a social construct. This process took several years.

Botanist Elaine Solowey, who worked on the project, reports that the dates are “dry and have a lovely honey after-taste. If they’d tasted terrible, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.” 1 Corinthians 15:42

16/06/2024

The Assyrian Empire is reduced to a rump state in Anatolia. Seeing an opportunity to return to its former glory, Egypt launches a lightning mission to rescue Assyria.

In a move that has mystified biblical commentators, Josiah of Judah—despite having seemingly no stake in the fight—ambushes and attacks the Egyptian forces at Megiddo. The event proves to be Josiah’s Waterloo, making the word “Megiddo” a byword for disaster.

What was Josiah thinking?

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us anywhere podcasts are found.

The Assyrian Empire is reduced to a rump state in Anatolia. Seeing an opportunity to return to its former glory, Egypt launches a lightning mission to rescue Assyria. In a move that has mystified biblical commentators, Josiah of Judah—despite having seemingly no stake in the fight—ambushes and a...

02/06/2024

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02/05/2024

If you host a Bible podcast focused on personal devotion, militant atheists will completely ignore you—even if you have tens of millions of listeners.

But if you host a podcast about how the Bible is historically true—even a small podcast with just a few thousand listeners—atheists will engage in coordinated, angry spamming of your social media and your listener reviews.

Why is this?

27/04/2024

If you’re a student of the Bible and ancient history, you may have been struck by an uncanny concurrence: it is Phoenicians who were the great spiritual antagonists of both Judah and Rome. This parallel is all the more striking because it is the Roman Empire that would one day spread the worship of the God of Judah throughout the world.

The Carthaginian Empire, which sprouted from a Phoenician city in North Africa, nearly overcame and conquered Rome in the person of Hannibal. Rome’s turnaround victory over Carthage led to the creation of the Roman Empire.

Likewise, the Levantine Phoenicians—most famously Jezebel and Athaliah—were the great enemies of the prophets of Yahweh. These queens were so infamous that, in Revelation 2:20, Jesus would use the name “Jezebel” to refer to an archetypal deceiver.

What you might not know is that Virgil’s Aeneid—the Roman Empire’s great masterwork of mytho-literature—contains a known historical kernel which intersects with biblical events from the time period of Elijah.

The Aeneid tells the story of a romance gone wrong between Aeneas, the mythological founder of Rome, and Dido: a Phoenician queen who came from the Levant to found Carthage. While Virgil’s narrative is heavily fictionalized—Aeneas, if he was a historical person, lived centuries before Dido—Dido was a real historical princess who did travel from the Levant to found the colony of Carthage in North Africa.

Dido’s historical existence, as well as her place in the Phoenician royal family tree, are known to us from Menander of Ephesus—a Greek historian in the 2nd century BC who had access to Phoenician records. Menander’s historical accuracy has been independently verified through Assyrian inscriptions. The royal family tree provided by Menander also includes Jezebel’s father Ithobaal I—mentioned in 1 Kings 16:31—and brother, Baal-eser II.

From this family tree, we know that Dido lived and founded Carthage in the same general period that great biblical figures like Elijah, Elisha, Jehu, and Jehoiada were engaged in religious wars against Levantine Phoenician royalty. Jezebel, the greatest of these Phoenician rulers, was also the great aunt of Dido—that is, the sister of Dido’s grandfather. Athaliah was the first cousin of Matgenus, Dido’s father, and the first cousin once-removed of Dido.

In a real sense, then, Yahwist Judah and imperial Rome were both forged through unlikely victories against the same civilization, the same culture, and the same family.

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us on iTunes, Podbean, or anywhere podcasts are found. For more on Jezebel, Athaliah, and Dido, check out Episode 26- The Horses’ Gate.

21/04/2024

Does the Pentateuch convey genuine historical information? The Deir ‘Alla Inscription is the strongest single piece of evidence that it does.

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us on iTunes, Podbean, or anywhere podcasts are found.

20/04/2024

As Assyria disintegrates, Manasseh’s grandson Josiah declares a holy war against idolatry and invades Samaria. Ian and Caleb explain why the enigmatic “Book of the Law” brought to Josiah is thought to be Deuteronomy.

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us anywhere podcasts are found.

As Assyria disintegrates, Manasseh’s grandson Josiah declares a holy war against idolatry and invades Samaria. Ian and Caleb explain why the enigmatic “Book of the Law” brought to Josiah is thought to be Deuteronomy.

26/02/2024

Manasseh of Judah offers the most legendary story of personal transformation in the Old Testament. A loyal Assyrian vassal and fanatical pagan who burned his own children as a human sacrifice, Manasseh ultimately returned to the God of Hezekiah and led a Yahwist revival.

Books of Kings is the first narrative history podcast on the Bible. Find us anywhere podcasts are found.

Manasseh of Judah offers the most legendary story of personal transformation in the Old Testament. A loyal Assyrian vassal and fanatical pagan who burned his own children as a human sacrifice, Manasseh ultimately returned to the God of Hezekiah and led a Yahwist revival.