Shows / Oldest Stories
Oldest Stories
History and myth of the Cradle of Civilization, bronze age Mesopotamia, beginning with the dawn of writing. The show will cover the full history of Mesopotamia, from Gilgamesh to Nabonidas, a span of some 2500 years, with myths of heroes and gods, and tales of daily life peppered throughout. Sumer, Akkad, Old Babylon, Hittites, and Israel have all been covered in depth, current episodes get deep into the Assyrian Empire. New episodes every other Wednesday. Online at oldeststories.net.
Episodes
- Oldest Stories
OS 146 - How Assyria Operated
Today we look at the psychology and genius of Assurnasirpal and get a good look at both the strengths and weaknesses of the Assyrian terror-based governance…
- Oldest Stories
OS 145 - The Early Neo-Assyrian Army
Today we pause and look at the early Neo-Assyrian army itself, the arm of the empire that was doing all the conquering. It is an infantry focused force, but we…
- Oldest Stories
OS 144 - Call of Calhu
Calah, Nimrud, Kalhu - the new city of Assurnasirpal which will serve as imperial capital for the next century and a half has many names, but is built on a…
- Oldest Stories
OS 143 - Assurnasirpal Has Too Much Energy
Is Assurnasirpal II, king of Assyria, a relentless narcicisstic psychopath? Or is he a profoundly competant, ruthless tyrant? Can he be both, and does it…
- Oldest Stories
OS 142 - The Assyrian Empire Takes Shape
King Tukulti-Ninurta II slows down the pace of conquest for a crucial decade. Conquest still happens, and at a breakneck pace, but compared to what we have…
- Oldest Stories
OS 141 - The Unintended Aramization of Assyria
Today we see Adad-Nirari bring huge quantities of Arameans into the Assyrian empire. This will change the linguistic fabric of the entire near east in time…
- Oldest Stories
OS 140- The Dawning of a New Assyrian Empire
The king today is Adad-Nirari II, but we have a lot to discuss in the background as well. The Nairi get their spotlight right before they get destroyed, and we…
- Oldest Stories
OS 139 - An Iron King for an Iron Age
Today we talk about iron working, economics and climate change. Then we watch Assur-Dan II flay his enemies alive and hang their skins from the city wall. The…
- Oldest Stories
OS 138 - Erra and Ishum Threaten Destruction
Most of our modern end of the world literature is set in the future, but the Babylonians, in the midst of a dark age, set their end of the world literature…
- Oldest Stories
OS 137 - The Oldest Dreams
Do dreams count as literature, are the dream records we have an accurate depiction of ancient dreams, and does reading a dream account from a man 3000 years…
- Oldest Stories
OS 136 - The Fifty Shades of Marduk
The thrilling conclusion of the Enuma Elish is an extended hagiographical top-50 list extolling the virtues of Babylon's patron god. As we are now well into…
- Oldest Stories
OS 135 - Middle Class Demons of Mesopotamia
Today we look at Pazuzu, Lamashtu, Samanu, Mushussu, and Lamassu. These are not the great gods of myth, nor are they the personal gods that would have absorbed…
- Oldest Stories
OS 134 - Poverty, Pessimism, and Comedy in Ancient Mesopotamia
Today we read through the Dialogue of Pessimism and the Poor Man of Nippur. Both are comedies with a bit of edge to them, though in very different formats…
- Oldest Stories
The Theology Within History
Today we overview the historical portions of the bible and look at the fallibility of heroes, resolving moral conflicts with God, and the historical problems…
- Oldest Stories
Isaiah 55
Christmas Special! We are reading Isaiah chapter 55, a pretty short one, partly because it is nice, and partly because it illustrates the theological maturity…
- Oldest Stories
The Witness of Lamentations
Today we read through the five poems of Jeremiah's Lamentations over the destruction of Jerusalem. We look in particular at the historical context and the…
- Oldest Stories
The Book of Job in a Near Eastern Context
Today we go on a wide ranging survey of the Near Eastern predecessors to the Book of Job, including the biblical books that also speak to the same themes…
- Oldest Stories
OS 133 - Jerusalem Falls
Today we ask the question - Who put the "Deuteronomic" in the Deuteronomistic Histories? Plus thousands of people die, so all in all a pretty jam packed…
- Oldest Stories
OS 132 - Judah Ascends
Israel has been destroyed by the Assyrians, and Judah very nearly follows. But Jerusalem never does fall to the Assyrians, and the re-emergence of the southern…
- Oldest Stories
OS 131 - Israel's Brutal Judgement
The first Oldest Stories Book is available for purchase: https://a.co/d/64mxp6w Today, we go in depth with what it might have been like as the Assyrians…
Oldest StoriesOldest Stories is now a Book!
Celebrating 1 million downloads and my birthday, the first Oldest Stories book releases on November 24th, 2023. Pre-order is available only for the digital…
- Oldest Stories
OS 130 - Israel Runs Out of Names
Today we are in a mad gallop through decades and kings, each of them having pretty short, one or two episode lives, and also mostly having the same or…
- Oldest Stories
OS 129 - Israelite and Phoenician Prosperity
Today we talk about Phoenicia, overviewing where it has been since we left our bronze age Canaan series, discussing the nature of the economic prosperity it…
- Oldest Stories
OS 128 - Israel's Moabite Neighbors
One of the most important extra-biblical confirmations of biblical history is the Mesha Stele, written by king Mesha of Moab. But it is not only interesting…
- Oldest Stories
OS 127 - Israel's First Historical King
Today we look at King Ahab and the Battle of Qarqar, or Karkar, a hugely important event in which we see the emergence of a large number of new peoples and…
- Oldest Stories
OS 126 - Israel's Great Confusion
Today we examine no fewer than three types of confusion in ancient Israel. First is the very standard political confusion of unsettled times, as king after…
- Oldest Stories
OS 125 - Israel's Divided Kingdoms
Today we talk about God's opinion of ecumenicism, the historical issues around prophecy, and also the careers of Jeroboam, Rehoboam, as kings of Israel and…
- Oldest Stories
OS 124 - Israel's Wisdom and Wealth
Today, King Solomon may or may not write a good chunk of scripture, and is definitely the inspiration of a massive collection of fun legends. He is wealthy…
- Oldest Stories
OS 123 - Israel's Great High Priest
Today we ask the question, how many temples did God authorize, and why did he authorize some but not others. Then we ask, was David a priest of God, and why he…
- Oldest Stories
OS 122 - Israel's King David
Today is King David and War. Lots of war. Some diplomacy, which turns into war, some rebellion, which becomes war, some more rebellion, which becomes a double…
- Oldest Stories
OS 121 - Israel's Favorite King
Today the shepherd David becomes King David. This involves violence. Indeed, most of his career is violence, and we take a nice look at some of that violence…
- Oldest Stories
OS 120 - Israel's Habiru King
David comes in for a bit of criticism today, for probably being a murdering bandit, but these issues are an important part of this story. We look again at the…
- Oldest Stories
OS 119 - Israel's Young Shepherd
We begin the tale of young David's rise to power, looking at the three origin stories of the young shepherd, warrior, and poet, and then noting that as he…
- Oldest Stories
OS 118 - Israel's First Failed King
Today we get some serious military history as we look at the main chunk of King Saul's reign. We deliberately avoid David as much as possible today, because it…
- Oldest Stories
OS 117 - Israel's First King
Today we properly start the career of King Saul, or at least Saul as he makes his bid for kingship. This story is important as a piece of ancient literature…
- Oldest Stories
OS 116 - Israel's United Monarchy
Today we look at the lead up to King Saul, and how Israel made the transition from a collections of tribes to a unified kingship. Why is the Old Testament so…
- Oldest Stories
OS 115 - The Place of Faith in Biblical History
Just to give an overview of this episode to see if you want to listen all the way through, the topics I am going to discuss are: Why do I believe that Israel…
Oldest StoriesOS 114 - Israel's Judges and Defeats
The institution of Judges, as described in the book of Judges, is an English translation of the word Shofet, a political position which doesn't really exist in…
- Oldest Stories
OS 113 - Israel's Settlements and Philistine Neighbors
Today we go full archeology on everyone, looking at what makes a settlement more or less likely to be Israelite as opposed to Canaanite or whatever based…
- Oldest Stories
OS 112 - Israel's Conquest and Integration in Canaan
When did Joshua conquer Canaan for Israel? Did Joshua even exist, as described in the Book of Joshua? We continue our march through the Old Testament as the…
- Oldest Stories
OS 111 - Israel's Wandering and Settlement
What does it mean that the people of Israel are the biggest whiners in recorded history? It may mean that a lot of the people were not actually on board with…
- Oldest Stories
OS 110 - Israel and the Hebrews
Today we obsess over the word Hebrew and go deep into what it means, who was and was not a Hebrew, whether it was a social or ethnic designation, what that…
- Oldest Stories
OS 109 - Israel's Numbers Problem
Today we look at possibly the oldest section of the entire Bible, Exodus chapter 15, the Song of Moses, as well as the issues with the census listed in Numbers…
- Oldest Stories
OS 108 - Israel's Formation and the Historical Exodus
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 107 - The Bible as History and Skeptical Views
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 106 - The Fate of Anatolia
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 105 - Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad
Animals in ancient Mesopotamia. From sheep, goats, horses, and other domesticated animals to wild beasts like lions, elephants, insects, birds and fish, the…
- Oldest Stories
OS 104 - Arameans Everywhere
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 103 - The Babylonian Aristotle, Esagil-Kin-Apli
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 102 - A Bit More Tiglath-Pileser
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 101 - A Short Assyrian Burst of Activity
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 100 - The Babylonian Theodicy
For a Babylonian polytheist, the gods are worshipped with the explicit expectation that divine veneration will avert bad fortune and attract good fortune. Yet…
- Oldest Stories
OS 99 - The Legend of Nebuchadnezzar
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…
- Oldest Stories
OS 98 - Nabu-Kudurri-Usur
In Babylon rules Nebuchadnezzar the first. He isn't the Nebuchadnezzar that we remember today, but he was certainly the more famous king of that name for most…
- Oldest Stories
OS 97 - Ashur-Dan and the Isin Dynasty
Welcome to the iron age. Though the international system of the late bronze age has collapsed under the weight of countless invaders, the Babylonians and…
Oldest StoriesAn Overview of Bronze Age Mesopotamia
This is a summary of the bronze age in ancient Mesopotamia, covering the years about 3000 BCE to 1200 BCE. This is a review of about 119 episodes of the oldest…
- Oldest Stories
Industry 5 - The Bronze of the Age
Today we have a history of metals, mining and metalworking in the bronze age near east. The story telling style of the last few industrial episodes didn't…
- Oldest Stories
Industry 4.5 - Last Century's Fashions (pt 2 of 2)
This is part 2 of our look at clothing and how it was manufactured in the bronze age near east. If you haven't yet listened to part 1, The Fabric of…
- Oldest Stories
Industry 4 - The Fabric of Civilization (pt 1 of 2)
Clothing is foundational to civilization. In the bible, it is humanity's first invention. In Mesopotamian philosophy, it is the thing which separates humans…
- Oldest Stories
Shamash, the Sun
Nowadays we tend to give Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god, a bit less respect than he is probably due. After all, for modern folk, the category of "sun god"…