Take the Bible off the Beaten Path
Created by an engineer, WiderBible is a podcast of Bible stories for anyone who likes history, archaeology, geography, chemistry, physics, and the word ‘unabridged.’
About WiderBible
The Bible can be confusing.
Bible stories come from a different culture. They tell of strange customs, unfamiliar geography, and some history that no one else remembers.
WiderBible is one attempt to figure it out.
In the last 200 years, advances in science, discoveries in archeology, ever better evidence from history, and improvements in linguistics all offer new information about the Bible. WiderBible is a collection of articles and podcasts that cross-reference that new information with things we already know to see what we can learn. Maybe, by getting everything to overlap, we can look at the stories in a new way and better understand what the people who wrote them were trying to say.
If you're curious about the sources I use, you can find details in the footnotes to each article or the show notes for each episode of the podcast. I try to link to online references when I can, and where the source isn't online, there’s a citation to help you search out a hard copy. If you see something that doesn't make sense, notice a broken link, or think I've done some bad math, feel free to send me a note from the contact page.
About the host
I don’t have a degree in theology or history.
My education is in chemistry and engineering.
That might not seem like an asset, but I think it is one. Chemistry and engineering are all about how the real world works, about interactions and relationships, and since the world of the Bible was just as real as our world today, chemistry and engineering apply to those stories, too. We’ll see, but I think adding a little math to a Bible story can help us understand it even better.
As for religion, I am a Christian, but with 2.3 billion of them, I know that can mean a lot of things. More specifically, my background and perspective is Seventh-day Adventist. Admittedly, that viewpoint influences my understanding of the Bible, but it doesn't change the Bible stories. Those stories are the same for everyone. WiderBible is my attempt to understand them better and share them with anyone else who might be interested.