The Dirt Under Jesus’ Feet: What Archaeology Reveals About His World w/ Dr. Jodi Magness

Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody to the Dig In Podcast. I am your host, Pastor Johnny Ova, and today I have a very special guest with us, Dr. Magness. Dr. Magness, thank you so much for joining us today and taking some of your time to be with us.

Dr. Jodi Magness: Well, thank you for having me.

Johnny Ova: Awesome. Let's jump right into the conversation. You've spent decades excavating in Israel and have become really one of the foremost voices in biblical archaeology. What first drew you to dig in the dirt of the Holy Land, and how has that journey shaped the way you see the ancient world?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Well, I actually wanted to be an archaeologist since I was 12 years old, thanks to a seventh grade history teacher who introduced us to the ancient world. I fell in love with ancient Greece, particularly with Athens, and from that point on my interest was always in the classical world. Then I ended up finishing high school and doing my undergraduate degree in Israel. So I ended up specializing in the classical periods in Israel, the Roman, late Roman and Byzantine periods. That's how that came about.

Johnny Ova: That's amazing. So you were a little kid digging around your backyard, digging stuff up?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Well, no, but actually my dad used to send me out to work in the garden and say, well, you want to be an archaeologist, right? It'll be good practice for you. And I was like, nah, that's not the same thing.

Johnny Ova: He tried to get one on you. He gets an E for effort for that. You want to be an archaeologist? Go weed the garden for me. Too funny. So for someone who has only read the Bible and never really thought much about archaeology, why should they care about what's buried beneath the ground in Israel? How does archaeology change the way we read Scripture?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Let me divorce it from Scripture for a minute and ask, what does archaeology add to our understanding of the human past? Like history, archaeology is a discipline concerned with the study of the human past. But historians focus mainly or entirely on texts, literary sources, and you asked about Scripture. Archaeology is the study of human material culture. That means anything humans manufactured and left behind that has survived is what archaeologists study to learn about the past: buildings, pottery, coins and so on. By the way, archaeologists also dig up things that are not human material culture but are studied to learn about the past, like animal bones, human bones or paleobotanical remains, ancient plant remains. There are specialists in those particular fields. But archaeology is the study of anything humans manufactured and left behind.

Dr. Jodi Magness: Both archaeology and literary sources, and here I'll include Scripture broadly speaking, can inform us about the past, but they generally give us different kinds of information. First, literary sources, whether it's the Bible or Josephus or whoever else, were pretty much all written by men, and pretty much all by elite men, wealthy and highly educated. The writings reflect their particular point of view and their interests. So it's not necessarily a complete or accurate representation of the past. Even if it is accurate, it's not complete. If you think about the way Josephus presents the events leading up to the first revolt, he skews things in certain ways. That's not to say it's always inaccurate, but there's spin sometimes, even in the best historical sources. And it gets much more problematic when we talk about Scripture, about the Bible, which was not written to be history. It was written for different purposes. That's not to say you can't get historical information out of the Bible. You can. But it's a matter of what kind of information, and it has to be very carefully evaluated.

Dr. Jodi Magness: When archaeologists dig up a site, we find all different kinds of remains. We find buildings that belonged to wealthy people, palaces, temples, big fortifications. But we also find the houses of everyday people and the poor. We find artifacts that tell us about their lives and lifestyles, sometimes about people who otherwise don't really appear in literary sources, like women or slaves or children. So archaeology in many cases supplements the information we get from literary sources, and sometimes it provides our only information, because the literary sources we have, and I'll include the Bible, are not complete in their coverage. They don't tell us about every time, every place, every site, every group of people.

Dr. Jodi Magness: One of the best examples I can give is that one of my fields of specialization is ancient synagogues. I've been excavating an ancient synagogue in Galilee that is paved with spectacular mosaics depicting an array of biblical stories. Our main source of information for Judaism in the period of these ancient synagogues, basically the fourth to sixth centuries AD, is the writings of the rabbis. The rabbis were a group of elite men, and their writings tell us little to nothing about ancient synagogues. From their writings we would never have guessed there were synagogue buildings decorated with these kinds of figured mosaics. So archaeology really helps fill out our understanding of the past. And sometimes, if we're fortunate, we can bring archaeology into conversation with the literary records we have. One great example would be Masada, with Herod's palaces and the famous, quote unquote, mass suicide story Josephus tells. There we can take what Josephus describes together with the archaeological remains and gain a better understanding of the site. That's not to say archaeology always supports the literary sources. Sometimes it does not. But that's a case where you have information from both kinds of sources and can see how to fill out the picture.

Dr. Jodi Magness: I know you're interested in one of the books I wrote, which is about daily Jewish life in the time of Jesus. Again, we don't get a lot of information about that from our literary sources. What kinds of foods did people eat at that time? How did they prepare their foods? How did they dine and serve their food? What kind of clothing did they wear? What kind of toilet facilities were available to them? All these everyday things might be mentioned in our literary sources or in the Bible, but only very incidentally. From archaeology we can get a much fuller picture.

Dr. Jodi Magness: One of the things I like to say is that I'm often approached by TV documentary programs producing yet another program on the Shroud of Turin or the Holy Grail, some artifact connected with Jesus. What I always try to explain is that we do not have a specific artifact associated with Jesus. We don't have the Holy Grail. And there's a very good reason for that. Jesus was not a member of the elite. He was apparently a member of the majority of the population, poorer people, not destitute, but certainly not elite. The kinds of people who left identifiable remains in the archaeological record, where we can associate remains with a specific individual, are almost always elites, people who left their names on monuments or had monuments dedicated to them. We have Herod's tomb at Herodium because Herod was a king. But the majority of the population didn't leave remains we can identify with certainty, because they didn't have monumental structures with inscriptions on them.

Dr. Jodi Magness: So, as I like to say, it's possible we have actually found the Holy Grail. It's possible that in archaeological excavations we have dug up a cup which was the cup out of which Jesus drank at the Last Supper. It's possible, but how would we know, unless it had an authentic ancient inscription on it that said, this is the cup out of which… How would we know? So what I always try to explain to these documentary programs is that it's useless to focus on a specific artifact like that. But what we can do with archaeology, and this is really important, is to reconstruct the world of Jesus with a very high degree of accuracy. We know what Galilean villages looked like in the time of Jesus. We know what people wore, what they ate and how they prepared their food. We know all kinds of aspects of their everyday life. We know what the Jerusalem temple looked like in the time of Jesus with a very high degree of accuracy, so what the city was like when Jesus spent his final days on earth. We know what Jewish tombs looked like in that period. All of that is really valuable, and reconstructing the world of Jesus gives a context for understanding what he was trying to say. I think it's really important to convey that that is the value of archaeology. I know I'm going on about archaeology, but I'll say one more thing.

Johnny Ova: No, it's amazing. It's a perspective not many people focus on. You have to think the elites are writing this stuff, because most of the non-elites weren't able to read or write.

Dr. Jodi Magness: They didn't have the leisure time to do it, even if they did know how. So the elites are presenting their description from their point of view, of things that interest them and things they think are important, and we don't get a lot of information about what the majority of the population was doing. The other thing people have to realize is that archaeology is a science, but it's not an exact science. It can't be, because in the exact sciences the goal is to replicate the experiment, and in archaeology you can't replicate the experiment. Archaeology is a destructive process. We retrieve the data by digging up the material we hope will provide the information we're looking for. But once you've dug it out of the ground, it's gone. You've destroyed it in the process, and you can never put it back the way it was. So in archaeology, unlike in the exact sciences, you only get one bite of the apple. That's why documentation and publication are so important in archaeology.

Dr. Jodi Magness: And it's important to recognize that, like every science, archaeology has limitations. It is equipped to answer certain types of questions but not others. To give an example, I might dig up a house, and if I'm lucky, based on what I find in the different rooms, I might be able to suggest that this room was used for storage and this room was used for cooking. At least at the end of the life of that house. The house might have been occupied for 100 years, and over time they may have remodeled. But at the moment that house ceased to function, whether it was destroyed or abandoned, I can maybe suggest what the rooms were used for based on what I find. But barring inscriptions, I can't tell you who lived in those rooms, whether they were men, women, children or slaves. And I can't tell you what those people were thinking or what they believed, unless you find some very clear indication of a religious belief or orientation associated with those rooms. Literary sources might tell you what people were thinking, or at least what the authors were thinking. So it's a matter of asking the right questions and recognizing the kind of information archaeology can provide, and that there are certain questions archaeology cannot answer.

Johnny Ova: Makes sense. So your book, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit. What a title.

Dr. Jodi Magness: I know. It was not my title. My title was far more boring. The publisher gave it that title, and I have not heard the end of it ever since.

Johnny Ova: What was the title you had?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Aspects of Jewish Daily Life in Late Second Temple Period Palestine. And then one day they emailed me and said, we decided this is going to be the title of your book.

Johnny Ova: Listen, it catches your attention for sure. What were some of the most surprising things you discovered about how ordinary Jewish people lived, ate and practiced their faith?

Dr. Jodi Magness: There are a lot of really interesting things. I'm not even sure what I'm going to say is in that book, because I've done so much work over the years I can't figure out what's where. But I'll give you an example with food, a really interesting little food item. One of my fields of specialization is ancient pottery, which usually bores people to death. My dissertation was on pottery. But pottery is really interesting, because aside from being used to date things, which is how archaeologists use it a lot of the time, it can also tell us about diet and dining habits. How did people set their table? What kinds of foods did they prepare? If you go into the kitchen of somebody who's Italian versus somebody who's Chinese, they're going to have completely different kinds of cooking pots and dining dishes, because they prepare and eat different kinds of foods.

Dr. Jodi Magness: One of the very interesting things I found, and this is a well-known kind of pottery, is that in Galilee, during the lifetime of Jesus, a very distinctive kind of cooking pan appears and becomes universal. It's a very shallow, flat-based circular pan made of cooking ware, with two little handles on either side, and they tend to be quite large. It's clearly a local imitation of, or inspired by, a very common Roman cooking pan called a patina or patella. We know a lot about Roman cooking and dining, because the Romans had a very sophisticated culinary culture and wrote a lot of cookbooks that have survived. You can actually go online and look up adapted Roman recipes. I think if we could go back, we would find Roman cooking really gross in many ways. But among other things, the Romans really liked eggs. They had all kinds of preparations with eggs, and one of the most common dishes was one where you took meat or fish or fruits or vegetables, chopped it up, put it in this shallow pan, beat eggs and poured them over, and then cooked it on the stove or in the oven. So you get either a quiche or a frittata, depending on how you cook it.

Dr. Jodi Magness: What's really interesting is that this local imitation of these Roman pans, which are used to prepare this specific kind of dish, appears in Galilee in the time of Jesus and very quickly becomes ubiquitous. They're found in huge numbers all over Galilee, and they remain popular, evolving a little over time, for centuries afterward at Jewish settlements. They were even produced in Jewish workshops in Galilee. And in Judea, the area around Jerusalem, there's nothing like this. So somehow in Galilee this kind of egg dish becomes very popular and common beginning in the time of Jesus, and for whatever reason it didn't become popular in Judea. So I think we can actually say that Jesus ate quiche.

Johnny Ova: Nice. So he's either a quiche or a frittata guy, one of the two.

Dr. Jodi Magness: Exactly. Who knew, right? You think about the loaves and the fishes, but now you have to add eggs to that. And by the way, the loaves and fishes are also really interesting, because the dietary staples in the eastern Mediterranean, from Greece eastward, were bread, olive oil and then a relish that went with them. You'd have a vegetable or a dip, like hummus. In Greece, and I assume also around the Sea of Galilee, the item that went with your bread and olive oil was fish. In Greek it's called opson, which is the root of the modern Greek word psari, which means fish, because it was a staple. So the loaves and the fishes actually represent the dietary staples of the local population.

Johnny Ova: Very interesting. We read about places in the Gospels like the Pool of Siloam and the Pool of Bethesda. Have these sites been found?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Yes. In fact, it's funny, I teach an undergraduate class titled New Testament Archaeology, and yesterday we actually talked about the Pool of Siloam, because we do have the Pool of Siloam. There are actually two pools of Siloam next to each other at the southern end of the City of David, to the south of the Temple Mount. The one most people might be familiar with is at the outlet of Hezekiah's Tunnel, but that one is a later pool. The earlier, original pool from the time of Jesus is slightly to the south, slightly lower down in the valley, and it is enormous. It's been under excavation by Israeli archaeologists for a number of years. It's a huge pool surrounded by steps on all sides. It was basically a giant mikveh, a giant ritual bath. So yes, it's very interesting.

Johnny Ova: And does it show anything about the accuracy of how the Scriptures locate it? I'm sure there are discrepancies and a lot of debate about the Bible saying this place is here and that place is there. How do these findings confirm, or I don't want to use the word deny, some of the things the Bible locates?

Dr. Jodi Magness: You really have to go case by case. You can't do one size fits all. The reason I'm hesitating is that that reference, and a few others, are only in the Gospel of John, the fourth Gospel. I've actually written about this. Let me qualify that I am an archaeologist and not a New Testament scholar, even though I use the New Testament in my research. I think the New Testament in general and the Gospels in particular, especially the Synoptic Gospels, are really valuable sources of information on Jewish daily life in the time of Jesus. But the fourth Gospel is different from the others, with different information, a different presentation and a different theological agenda. It's also thought to be the latest of the Gospels and the most far removed in time and space, probably dated to around 100, and maybe whoever authored it was in the area of Ephesus or Asia Minor. So when I look at the Gospel accounts, I tend to gravitate more toward Mark, maybe Matthew and a little Luke, and not so much toward John, because I'm more interested in the historical Jesus. That's my thing.

Dr. Jodi Magness: All of that said, and a number of scholars have pointed this out, John does have a number of references to sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere around the country that are not mentioned in the other three Gospels. The question is whether he is drawing on an independent source of information that goes back to the historical Jesus or not. I've looked at some of these, and one of them was this business with the Pool of Siloam. I have been unable to conclude that this information does go back to the historical Jesus, and is not something John picked up and added for theological reasons. To give an example, you have the incident at the Sheep's Pools, where Jesus does a healing. We have the actual Sheep's Pools in Jerusalem. They're in the Old City, north of the Temple Mount, and you can go there. They were again a giant mikveh, a giant ritual bath used for purification. John describes this healing where a man is healed, picks up his bed and walks away. Maybe this is somehow connected with the historical Jesus. But the problem I have is that we have no evidence that mikvaot, ritual baths, were associated with healing in ancient Judaism. That's not to say they weren't, but there are no references to them as healing sites. Whereas after 70, when Jerusalem became the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina, the site of the Sheep's Pools became a healing sanctuary under the Romans. So is that tradition in John actually reflecting the post-70 reality?

Johnny Ova: I gotcha. So is it possible that, post-70, he's merging what it became with what it was before?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Exactly. That's just one example. I went through a number of these instances in the Gospel of John, not all of them. I can't rule out the possibility, but I was unable to conclude that they are authentic pieces of information that go back to the historical Jesus. Again, I think that looking at the Gospels in total, and especially the Synoptics, the earlier Gospels, there is interesting and valuable information. But with John, and with the Pool of Siloam you mentioned, I just could not conclude that in that case.

Johnny Ova: Now that we mentioned the Pool of Siloam, I have to mention Masada. You've excavated Masada, one of the most dramatic sites in all of Israel. My audience is newer Christians, newer, more critical thinkers walking themselves through the Scriptures. So, at a base level, for those unfamiliar, what happened there, and why does Masada continue to captivate scholars throughout the world?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Sure. I wrote a book about Masada, published in 2018. It's a trade book, so it's written to be accessible to non-specialists, in case your listeners are interested.

Johnny Ova: Great. I'll link all these books up in the descriptions.

Dr. Jodi Magness: Thank you. And let me qualify, since you said I excavated Masada. Masada is a mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, with a fortress and palaces built on top by King Herod the Great in the first century BC. Those remains on top of Masada were excavated in the 1960s by a very famous Israeli archaeologist named Yigael Yadin. Those are not my excavations. I co-directed excavations in 1995 at the foot of Masada, in the Roman siege works. So I can't take credit for that. So in the first century BC, Herod fortified the top of Masada and built palaces up there. The palaces are magnificent, and people who go to Masada now are impressed by how beautifully decorated they are in the middle of this very barren wilderness overlooking the Dead Sea. But the reason Masada is famous is that 70 years after Herod's death, the first Jewish revolt broke out against the Romans.

Dr. Jodi Magness: When the revolt broke out, the top of the mountain was taken over by Jewish rebels, who held out there even after the revolt officially ended in 70 AD, when the Romans took Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Masada held out and was not taken by the Romans until three years later. The story of the siege and fall of Masada is told by the Jewish historian Josephus, who lived at the time of the revolt, though he was not present at the siege. He wrote a massive seven-volume work about the revolt called the Jewish War or the Judean War, and he concludes it with the siege and fall of Masada. He says that at the end, the Romans besiege the mountain, and again, I was involved in excavating the Roman siege works at its foot. The Romans go up and are about to take it, and the rebels all decide to kill themselves instead of giving themselves up alive to the Romans. There's this mass suicide, a whole procedure. That's what has garnered so much attention.

Dr. Jodi Magness: Thanks to Josephus' story, very early in the history of the state of Israel, Masada became a symbol of the state: this isolated country surrounded by enemies on all sides, Masada shall not fall again, that kind of thing. Then it was excavated by the legendary Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin, who was also chief of staff of the Israeli army at one point in his life. So it all becomes tied up with the mythologizing of the modern state of Israel, and the story of Masada becomes very famous. Until today, Masada is, I think it's accurate to say, the second most visited archaeological site in Israel. The first is Caesarea, another of Herod's sites, on the coast, which gets more visitors because it's very close to Tel Aviv. Masada is just behind it, so a lot of people visit Masada when they go to Israel.

Dr. Jodi Magness: In fact, I have an old newspaper clipping stuck to the corkboard in my office of Bill and Hillary Clinton on top of Masada when he was president. And when Trump was elected to his first term, you may recall, at the very beginning he went to Israel for something like a 22-hour visit. I happened to be in Israel at that time, and the Israelis were going nuts trying to figure out what to cram into the 22 hours. What's the most important thing we need to show President Trump? I was really surprised that Masada was one of the sites. Of all the sites, they're going to take him to Masada. It just goes to show the symbolic importance of Masada. In the end, you may even recall this, he never went to Masada. There's a cable car that goes to the top, but he didn't want to take the cable car. He wanted to go by helicopter. And the Israelis, rightfully, would not allow a helicopter to land on top of Masada, because it would have damaged the archaeological remains. So he ended up not visiting Masada. But it was on their list.

Johnny Ova: That's funny. Just a couple more questions. I think I've got this right: you're currently directing the excavations at Huqoq, is that correct?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Yes, that's the ancient synagogue I mentioned, with the mosaics.

Johnny Ova: What has your team uncovered there, more specifically than the mosaics, if anything? And what do you think is so significant for our understanding of Jewish life during this time?

Dr. Jodi Magness: Great question. Huqoq is a really weird name. I know it looks very strange when you spell it in English, H-U-Q-O-Q. But it's right in the middle of Jesus central. It's just a couple of miles from Capernaum, the base of Jesus' Galilean ministry, and a couple of miles from Magdala, Migdal, the hometown of Mary Magdalene. It's not mentioned in the New Testament, but given its location I think it's not unlikely that Jesus was familiar with the village. It was a Jewish village in the time of Jesus, and who knows, maybe he even wandered through it at some point. But my interest in Huqoq has always been not in the remains from the time of Jesus but in the centuries afterward, specifically the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, when the Roman Empire became a Christian empire and Jewish villages like Huqoq came under Christian rule.

Dr. Jodi Magness: I started the excavations hoping to answer the question, what was the fate of these Jewish villages under Christian rule? Many of my colleagues, especially in Israel, think Christian rule was oppressive to Jews and that these settlements declined, and some were even abandoned. My impression from the archaeology was always exactly the opposite, that these villages continued to prosper and flourish in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. That's why I started excavating at Huqoq, and our results support my point of view. That doesn't mean it's true of every village in the area. But at least at Huqoq, we have a monumental synagogue building with extraordinary mosaics that was built around the year 400 AD, and the dating is pretty secure. So right in the middle of this period of supposed decline, the villagers are constructing this extraordinary synagogue building, which reflects a very high level of wealth. And it is a village, not a town, so it's pretty surprising, and again it supports my point of view.

Dr. Jodi Magness: What has garnered all the attention are the mosaics paving the synagogue. People can go online. We have a big website, huqoq.org, with photographs of the mosaics, publications and media coverage. All sorts of biblical stories are represented: scenes with Samson, scenes from the book of Daniel, Noah's Ark, Pharaoh's soldiers drowning in the Red Sea, Jonah and the fish, the building of the Tower of Babel. It goes on and on. We have an extraordinary array of biblical stories depicted in our mosaics. We also excavated some houses in the ancient village from the time of the synagogue. And we have later remains above the synagogue, including a very important but generally overlooked rebuilding of the synagogue as a synagogue in the late Middle Ages, the 14th century AD. So we've found all sorts of important remains, but what's gotten the most attention are the mosaics, and once people see the pictures, they'll understand why.

Johnny Ova: I'm going to put that link in there too. All right, real quick. What's one thing you've uncovered that dramatically changed the way you understand the world of the Bible? Something you saw and went, wow, this changes what I think of the historical Jesus or the world Jesus lived in.

Dr. Jodi Magness: That's an interesting question. I'd have to give some thought to that. Right off the top of my head, I would say something connected with my current research project, which involves Herod: the discovery of Herod's tomb at Herodium, which occurred in 2007 but I think has not gotten the attention it deserves. It turns out Herod was buried in a mausoleum that indicates he was representing himself in the line of Alexander the Great, connected to Augustus, as a kind of deified figure. It's also very interesting because of the proximity of Herodium, the mausoleum, overlooking Bethlehem, which of course brings all sorts of associations with Davidic messiahs. I'm exploring the possibility of claims of Herodian messianism, that Herod claimed to have fulfilled the expectations associated with the Davidic Messiah. I think the placement of his tomb, literally towering over Bethlehem, is trying to make that claim. It's a hypothesis a couple of other scholars have suggested, mainly in relation to his rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple, again connecting himself to David and Solomon and even outdoing them.

Dr. Jodi Magness: I actually think the discovery of Herod's mausoleum or tomb at Herodium is the most important archaeological discovery in the region since the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nearly all of our information about Herod comes from Josephus, and Josephus was born about 40 years after Herod died. He never met Herod. He's drawing on other sources, and for various reasons most of his presentation of Herod is pretty negative. That's not to say Herod wasn't a bad guy. He was a bad guy. But Josephus' presentation is very negative. And the main other way we think about Herod is the story of the massacre of the innocents in the Gospel of Matthew, where he becomes infamous because he tries to have the Messiah killed. What's important about Herod's mausoleum at Herodium is that it reflects how Herod represented himself and how he wanted to be remembered for posterity. It's the closest we come to hearing directly from Herod about himself, and we don't have that from other sources.

Dr. Jodi Magness: I also think about the story of the massacre of the innocents. One of the points it keeps reiterating is David being born in Bethlehem, and the real Messiah being born in Bethlehem, the true Messiah because he's descended from David. Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Bethlehem. And this guy has his mausoleum overlooking Bethlehem. So I'd like to suggest it's a kind of reaction: Herod is not the Messiah, Herod is not descended from David, and in fact he tried to have the real Messiah, who is descended from David, put to death. So there are all sorts of interesting things to play with there.

Johnny Ova: Fascinating. Really, for real now, last question. Archaeology sometimes confirms what we read in the Bible and sometimes complicates it. How do you navigate that tension, and what advice would you give people of faith who want to take both the Bible and the evidence seriously at the same time?

Dr. Jodi Magness: I don't know if I'm the right person to ask that question, because my approach is not a faith approach. It's a historical, archaeological, scientific approach. I'm not reading the Bible out of faith. I'm using it to try to get information that might be helpful in understanding the past. So I don't really have good advice, except to say this. I always say my goal is not to undermine anybody's faith or beliefs. My goal is to educate and inform, and people are welcome to believe whatever they want. But I would say that the Bible, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, were not written as history books in the modern sense of the word. Even books written as history books, like Josephus' works, have no concept of objectivity in the modern sense, and many scholars today don't believe objectivity is even desirable or possible. But that was not the goal of the writers. So to take these works at face value and reconstruct history from them, that was not the purpose of the writing.

Dr. Jodi Magness: Far be it from me to say how people should reconcile their personal beliefs in Scripture with archaeological evidence. I would just add, and this goes back to the beginning, that archaeology is not intended to, nor should it ever be used to, verify what's in the Bible. We can use them as complementary sources of information when we can, in a critical way. But using archaeology to verify the Bible is not a correct use of archaeology.

Johnny Ova: Dr. Magness, thank you so much. This was so fun, and I learned a ton. I truly appreciate your time today.

Dr. Jodi Magness: Thank you for having me.