Misquoting Moses with Joel Baden
Sep 11, 2026 · 1 hr · 13 segments
There is a scene in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus walks into a synagogue in Nazareth, stands up to read, and someone hands him the scroll of Isaiah. He finds his place and begins… "The Spirit of the…
Joel BadenHost
Megan CraigHost
But Joel, how trustworthy are the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings historically? How can studying these books from a critical historical approach reveal Israel's true history?
Well, you know, they are increasingly reliable, just in the general principle of, like, the earlier you get in the Bible, the less likely it is to, like, Joshua is complete nonsense.
And, you know, lots of stuff that happens at the end of Kings is like pretty accurate to what we know.
But how they explain why what happened happened is, that's where the fun comes, right? Like, because these are historical books, but it's not history like we think of history.
This is history that is really shaped by an attempt to understand why things happened.
So one of the great fun parts of studying these books and of the course is getting to sort of peel back the explanations and the theology to see what might be underneath that we could say, like, that probably happened, but maybe not that way.
But Joel, how trustworthy are the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings historically? How can studying these books from a critical historical approach reveal Israel's true history?
Well, you know, they are increasingly reliable, just in the general principle of, like, the earlier you get in the Bible, the less likely it is to, like, Joshua is complete nonsense.
And, you know, lots of stuff that happens at the end of Kings is like pretty accurate to what we know.
But how they explain why what happened happened is, that's where the fun comes, right? Like, because these are historical books, but it's not history like we think of history.
This is history that is really shaped by an attempt to understand why things happened.
So one of the great fun parts of studying these books and of the course is getting to sort of peel back the explanations and the theology to see what might be underneath that we could say, like, that probably happened, but maybe not that way.
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