Biblical Time Machine

As All Hallows' Eve fast approaches, Helen and Lloyd turn their attention to the spookiest episode in the gospel tradition – a story in which the dead are raised and enter Jerusalem (Matthew 27:52-53). The little episode has vexed scholars for centuries and raises many questions: what happened to the saints in between the crucifixion and resurrection? Who were these ‘holy ones’ who went into the city? And how do they fit into Matthew’s narrative as a whole? 
To find out what this episode really means, Helen and Lloyd are joined by Dr Nathanael Vette, who has a spooky new theory about the 'resurrected saints', and why Matthew includes them in his gospel. In his forthcoming article, 'Noon of the Living Dead' (CBQ), Nathanael proposes that Matthew's saints should be seen against the backdrop of the 'shades of the dead', a Roman omen that preceded several national calamities, including the brutal murder of Julius Caesar. 
Dr Nathanael Vette is Lecturer in New Testament, Gender and the Arts at King's College, London. He is the author of Writing with Scripture: Scripturalized Narrative in the Gospel of Mark (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2022) and co-editor of A Theology of Gratitude: Christian and Muslim Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson.

For many contemporary readers of the Bible, C.S. Lewis is looked to as an inspiration and authority. The 20th century Oxbridge don, Christian essayist and author of The Chronicles of Narnia wove the Bible into all of his works. But was Lewis a good reader of the Bible? How did Lewis respond to the challenges of New Testament scholarship? And in what ways did Lewis put the Bible to use in his legendary chronicles? 
To find out, Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Time Machine with New Testament Professor, Leslie Baynes, whose recent book, Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible (Eerdmans, 2025) is the first full-length treatment of how C.S. Lewis engaged the Bible. 
Leslie Baynes is Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University and a translator for the Catholic American Bible (CAB, 2027). She earned her PhD at the University of Notre Dame and is the author of The Heavenly Book Motif in Judeo-Christian Apocalypses 200 BCE – 200 CE (Brill, 2012), among many other contributions to New Testament studies.  
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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson.

'O Assyria, the rod of my anger!' So declared the prophet Isaiah of one of the most feared and imposing empires of the ancient world. But who were the Assyrians, and how did they become the world's first empire? 
To find out, Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Time Machine with Professor Eckart Frahm of Yale University, the author of Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire (2023, YUP). From warfare and imperial ambition to religion and everyday life, they discover together what made Assyria such a formidable civilisation, and how its history sheds new light on the world of the Hebrew Bible.
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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson.

1st October marks the UN's International Day of Older Persons. So this week, Helen and Lloyd took a trip in the Time Machine to visit the Bible's 'Golden Oldies' –  some of its oldest, wisest and most memorable characters. They consider what the Bible has to say about growing old, unpack theological readings of old age, and raise the age-old question: how old was Jesus when he began his mission? 
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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson.

It is impossible to study the Bible without crashing into the word 'Hellenism', the spread of Greek culture across the ancient world by Alexander (the Great). But who was Alexander, and what do his successors have to do with the Bible? To find out, Helen and Lloyd take a trip in the Time Machine with Dr Stephen Harrison, an expert on Alexander the Great. 
Dr Stephen Harrison is Senior Lecturer in Classics at Swansea University, and a historian of ancient Greece and the ancient Near East, focusing on the sixth to the second centuries BCE, the era of the Achaemenid Empire, Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kingdoms. He is the author of Achaemenid Kingship, Alexander the Great, and the Early Seleucids (EUP, 2025) as well as a popular life of Alexander, Alexander the Great: Lives and Legacies (Reaktion Books 2025). 
Support the show
Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 + 5 produced by John Nelson.