Jesus in History with Helen Bond

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Helen Bond (0:29)

The author sort of keeps the beginning and the end of something and sort of loses the bit in the middle. And you can sort of see the way he works with his source material there.

Dan McClellan (0:40)

And just it reads the introduction and the conclusion. We don't do that with the books that guests on the show have sent us.

Daniel Beecher (0:51)

Just to be clear, that has never ever happened.

Dan McClellan (1:01)

Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (1:02)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:03)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (1:15)

Things are wonderful.

It's the weather here in Salt Lake gets springtime and then winter and it doesn't know what it's doing. And that's always fun. You never know what you're going to be going out into.

Dan McClellan (1:27)

It's very similar to where I grew up in Colorado, where you have all four seasons in one day. And it is enraging.

Daniel Beecher (1:35)

Yeah, exactly.

But better yet, we have a guest that is going to answer some of the main questions that we get asked all the time or answer. She's going to address some of the main questions. Why don't you introduce our guest?

Dan McClellan (1:50)

Absolutely. Today we're very happy to welcome to the show Professor Helen Bond, who is professor of Christian origins at Edinburgh University and also currently the president of the British New Testament Society, that August and venerable institution. And also one half of the Biblical Time Machine podcast, Dave Roos is the other co-host.

And they do things very similar to what we do here. So we're bringing in a little competition to size it up today. And Helen, you mentioned that y'all release your episodes every Monday, just like us, right?

Helen Bond (2:30)

Yes. Yes. I didn't realize you were Monday, too. But yes, every Monday there's a new one on Apple or Spotify. And I think we do have similar content, but we're very much about the history. So very much kind of getting in our time machine and going back to the past. Awesome.

Dan McClellan (2:46)

Yeah.

Helen Bond (2:47)

Interviewing people about their work and smelling and feeling the first century and further back, too.

Dan McClellan (2:56)

Well, when I first got the email from Dave, I remember seeing the cover image for your podcast. And I was like, hey, I see that all the time on Twitter. So I recognize that. And I was like, I don't know who Dave Roos is, but...

Helen Bond (3:11)

Dave is the most excellent person. I mean, he's just amazing. He's really, really clever. And he's got a background in religion and journalism and stuff. So yeah, I know he's the kind of the power engine of the whole thing.

I'm just there for the ride.

Daniel Beecher (3:31)

That was Dan's mistake. Dan should have gotten a clever cohost to do his show.

Dan McClellan (3:38)

Yeah. What I did was take the first one that came out, so.

Helen Bond (3:42)

I should have interviewed, yeah.

Dan McClellan (3:44)

But yeah. Well, next time, next time. Yeah, when it's time to re-up.

But Helen, you've done an awful lot of work with the historical Jesus, which I think is a term that probably not a lot of people are familiar with. We get, Dan and I on the show, and then I on my other social media channels get asked all the time about what we know about Jesus, but I don't think a lot of people know there's a whole field of research out there on this. Can you tell us a little bit about what historical Jesus means, what this refers to?

Helen Bond (4:17)

Yeah, that's a good point that scholars get so used to sort of talking about these things that they don't always think, you know, these are not sort of publicly accessible terms. So I suppose scholars make a distinction between the historical Jesus, who is, you know, the man who walked the Galilean Hills in the 30s CE and was executed on a Roman cross and the Christ of faith, as he's known in the churches, as he already is in the gospels, really, you know, they're already interpretations through the lens of Easter and, you know, several decades of trying to work out what it means to be a Christ follower.