As I’m trying to coordinate various things in terms of timing (and in terms of what series will be next in the podcast), the podcast will be back in January (nothing more for December).  I may be creating a series on “Dynamics of Identity in the World of the Early Christians” (to bounce off my new book) to go before the series on the historical Jesus.

All episodes and series in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcast are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here.   This is one of several posts where I gather together each of the individual series in the podcast so that you can access or link to a specific topic.

This series has not yet been released in the official podcast feed and is not yet complete (one more episode to come).  Here are the half-hour episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in “The Historical Jesus in context” series in playable and downloadable formats:

Podcast 5.1: Studying the Historical Jesus - Sources and Problems, part 1
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Podcast 5.2: Studying the Historical Jesus - Sources and Problems, part 2
Download

Podcast 5.3: Studying the Historical Jesus - Sources and Problems, part 3
Download

Podcast 5.4: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 1 - Crossan
Download

Podcast 5.5: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 2 - Sanders
Download

Podcast 5.6: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 1 - To the Second Temple
Download

Podcast 5.7: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 2 - To the Time of Jesus
Download

Podcast 5.8: Jesus, the Galilean and Judean
Download

Podcast 5.9: Jesus in the Context of Educated Groups and Leaders
Download

Podcast 5.10: Jesus and his Mentor, John the Baptizer
Download

Podcast 5.11: Jesus as Teacher, part 1 - Method and Content
Download

Podcast 5.12: Jesus as Teacher, part 2 - Present or Future Kingdom?
Download

Podcast 5.13: Jesus as Healer and Exorcist
Download

Podcast 5.14: Jesus as Prophet
Download

One more episode (Jesus as Messiah?) to come.

For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

All episodes and series in my podcast (including some that are yet to be released) are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here.   This is one of several posts where I gather together each of the individual series in the podcast so that you can access or link to a specific topic.

This series has not yet been released in the official podcast feed and is not yet complete (more episodes to come).  Here are the available episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in the “Honouring the gods in the Roman Empire: Asia Minor” series in playable and downloadable formats:

Podcast 4.1: Introduction to Honouring the Gods

Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Podcast 4.2: A City and Its Patron Deity - Artemis of Ephesus
Download

Podcast 4.3: Salvation from the Gods - Asklepios at Pergamum
Download

Podcast 4.4: Messages from the Gods - Apollo at Claros and Didyma
Download

Podcast 4.5: Justice from the Gods in Lydia
Download

Podcast 4.6: Honouring the Emperors as Gods
Download

Series not yet released in the official podcast feed.

More episodes to come!

For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

All episodes and series in my podcast (including some that are yet to be released) are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here.   This is one of several posts where I gather together each of the individual series in the podcast so that you can access or link to a specific topic.

Here are all half-hour episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in the “Diversity in early Christianity: “Heresies” and struggles” series (covering the early Christian apocrypha, Nag Hammadi documents, and other non-canonical materials) in playable and downloadable formats:

Podcast 3.1: Introduction to Diversity - A Schism in John’s Community, part 1
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Podcast 3.2: A Schism in John’s Community, part 2
Download

Podcast 3.3: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius
Download

Podcast 3.4: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 2
Download

Podcast 3.5: Diversity in Asia Minor - A Regional Case Study
Download

Podcast 3.6: Sources for the Study of Diversity - Gnostic, Apocryphal, Patristic
Download

Podcast 3.7: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 1 - Ebionites
Download

Podcast 3.8: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 2 - Pseudo-Clement
Download

Podcast 3.9: Marcionites and the Unknown God
Download

Podcast 3.10 Introducing Gnostic Worldviews
Download

Podcast 3.11: Secret Book of John, part 1 - The Spiritual Realm
Download

Podcast 3.12: Secret Book of John, part 2 - Salvation from the Material Realm
Download

Podcast 3.13: The Wisdom of Jesus Christ and Middle Platonism
Download

Podcast 3.14: The Gospel of Philip, part 1 - Ideas of Salvation
Download

Podcast 3.15: The Gospel of Philip, part 2 - Ritual Enactments of Salvation
Download

Podcast 3.16: The Gospel of Mary - Secret Knowledge from the Ultimate Disciple
Download

For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

All episodes and series in my podcast (including some that are yet to be released) are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here.   This is one of several posts where I gather together each of the individual series in the podcast so that you can access or link to a specific topic.

Here are all half-hour episodes (in mp3, about 40 MB each) in the “Early Christian portraits of Jesus” series in playable and downloadable formats:

Podcast 2.1: Introduction to the Gospels as Portraits of Jesus
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Podcast 2.2: Mark’s portrait of Jesus - Suffering Son (part 1)
Download

Podcast 2.3: Mark’s portrait of Jesus - Suffering Son (part 2)
Download

Podcast 2.4: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus - New Moses (part 1)
Download

Podcast 2.5: Matthew’s portrait of Jesus - New Moses (part 2)
Download

Podcast 2.6: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus - Prophet Elijah (part 1)
Download

Podcast 2.7: Luke’s Portrait of Jesus - Prophet Elijah (part 2)
Download

Podcast 2.8: John’s Portrait of Jesus - Son and Word (part 1)
Download

Podcast 2.9: John’s Portrait of Jesus - Son and Word (part 2)
Download

Podcast 2.10: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus - Highpriest Melchizedek, part 1
Download

Podcast 2.11: Hebrews’ Portrait of Jesus - Highpriest Melchizedek, part 2
Download

For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

All of the episodes and series in my podcast (including some that are yet to be released) are available on my podcast collection page on archive.org (in various file formats and sizes) and those already released are available under the podcast category on my own website here.

As usual, Mark Goodacre has good ideas.  Mark has pointed out that it would be good to have a way of linking to all of the episodes of a particular series in my podcast (rather than the podcast as a whole).  This way someone that is wanting to link to historical Jesus material only, but not to Paul or some other topic, would be able to link to a page with just my historical Jesus series.  (This would also help those who are attempting to integrate a particular series in the podcast into a course — I’m talking to you, AKMA).  So what I’ll do is create a single blog post for each of the series which contains all of the episodes in that series in playable and downloadable formats.

To begin with here are all of the half-hour episodes (in MP3, about 40MB each) from series 1, “Paul and his communities”:

Podcast 1.1: Paul in his own words
Download (right click and choose “Save Link As…”)

Podcast 1.2: The Situation at Thessalonica
Download

Podcast 1.3: Paul’s response to Jesus-followers at Thessalonica
Download

Podcast 1.4: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 1
Download

Podcast 1.5: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 2
Download

Podcast 1.6: Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 3
Download

Podcast 1.7: Paul and the situation in Galatia
Download

Podcast 1.8: Paul’s response to the Galatians
Download

Podcast 1.9: Paul and the situation at Rome
Download

Podcast 1.10: Paul’s response to the Romans
Download

Podcast 1.11: Legacies of Paul - Women’s leadership, part 1
Download

Podcast 1.12: Legacies of Paul - Women’s leadership, part 2
Download

For reading suggestions on this topic, please see the course outline.

I have been busy creating a new podcast series, titled Honouring the Gods in the Roman Empire.  This series is somewhat different in style.  Usually I am adapting and editing my recorded lectures (that are performed from point form notes).  Instead, this series involves me sitting down at the computer and microphone for a half-hour or so after I meet with my graduate class on Honouring the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean (course outline, discussion notes).  I then spontaneously discuss some important issues and sources regarding the topic of the week.  This series is already partially available on my podcast archive.org page (but will be officially released in the podcast feed next Fall, before I release the historical Jesus series, which is also available on archive.org now).

Here are the episodes I have created so far, which you will find on my podcast archive.org page, where you can click on browse episodes starting with recent additions:

Podcast 4.1: Introduction to Honouring the Gods
Podcast 4.2: A City and Its Patron Deity - Artemis of Ephesus
Podcast 4.3: Salvation from the Gods - Asklepios at Pergamum
Podcast 4.4: Messages from the Gods - Apollo at Claros and Didyma
Podcast 4.5: Justice from the Gods in Lydia
Podcast 4.6: Honouring the Emperors as Gods

Please let me know what you think of this experiment (I notice about 25 people had already found and listened to several episodes before I mentioned its existence).

A very long strike  has come to an end and my students have a test to be written soon after they return (the second week back, Thursday February 12 at 8:30am, to be precise).  A proposed revised syllabus for HUMA 2830 is now posted for discussion.

In an effort to help them in preparing for that and in refreshing their memories, I have been working hard on preparing as many podcast episodes as possible based on the lectures earlier this Fall, and have made only minor progress (it takes some time in editing and introducing each episode).  I am not completely happy with the shape of these episodes, but they are at least something.  One thing I do really like for sure is the opening music I am using, which is “Paradise Lost” by Namgyal Lhamo of Tibet (used under a creative commons-type license from “Podsafe audio”).

The podcast series will be “The Historical Jesus in Context” and below is a preview of the first 13 six, ten or so episodes, each of them about 30 minutes long (to be officially released in 2010 — I’ll see if I can prepare more and add them to this post soon):

Podcast 5.1: Studying the Historical Jesus - Sources and Problems, part 1

Podcast 5.2: Studying the Historical Jesus - Sources and Problems, part 2

Podcast 5.3: Studying the Historical Jesus - Sources and Problems, part 3

Podcast 5.4: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 1 - Crossan

Podcast 5.5: Scholarly Portraits of the Historical Jesus, part 2 - Sanders

Podcast 5.6: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 1 - To the Second Temple

Podcast 5.7: Jesus, Galilee, and Israelite History, part 2 - To the Time of Jesus

Podcast 5.8: Jesus, the Galilean and Judean

Podcast 5.9: Jesus in the Context of Educated Groups and Leaders

Podcast 5.10: Jesus and his Mentor, John the Baptizer

Podcast 5.11: Jesus as Teacher, part 1 - Method and Content

Podcast 5.12: Jesus as Teacher, part 2 - Present or Future Kingdom?

Podcast 5.13: Jesus as Healer and Exorcist

Podcast 5.14: Jesus as Prophet

UPDATE: There is just one more episode to edit in this series (on the role of Messiah).  I have changed this to series five (rather than four), since series four will be “Honouring the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean” (on Greco-Roman religions generally).

The podcast has been doing fairly well with an ever increasing listener base.  I noticed today that subscribers to the podcast (through iTunes and such) have now reached the “number of its name” (666).  Browsing through all episodes on the archive.org page for my podcast (where the actual audio is hosted), I can see the number of times that each episode has been heard (including and beyond the subscribers).  Most fully released episodes have been listened to 1500-2000 times, with the champion being the episode on Paul’s response to the Romans, coming in at 3342 (what’s so special about the letter to the Romans?).  So I’m finding that this is a valuable use of my time and effort, and will continue for now.  Thanks to all you listeners!

You can subscribe to the podcast here, if you haven’t already.  Or you can simply listen to them on this site by clicking on the podcast category or you can go to the archive.org page (where you can also listen to episodes before their “official” release.)  Three easy ways to learn about early Christianity in order to impress your friends!  Join now;)

Starting in October (this coming week), the third series in the podcast will begin.  This series looks at the variety of Christian groups that existed in the first to third centuries, especially marginalized groups and those traditionally labelled “heresies” (e.g. Gnostics, Marcionites, Ebionites, etc).  This series is more advanced and assumes some knowledge of the history of early Christianity, so it is suggested that you first listen to series one (Paul and his communities) and two (Early Christian portraits of Jesus).

For those who would rather not wait for the staggered release of episodes over the next few months (through iTunes or the feed), I should remind you that all episodes are currently accessible on my archive.org podcast page (click on “Browse episodes starting with recent additions”).

Here is an overview of the episodes:

• Podcast 3.1: Introduction to Diversity - A Schism in John’s Community, part 1
• Podcast 3.2: A Schism in John’s Community, part 2
• Podcast 3.3: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 1
• Podcast 3.4: Docetic and Judaizing Opponents of Ignatius, part 2
• Podcast 3.5: Diversity in Asia Minor - A Regional Case Study
• Podcast 3.6: Sources for the Study of Diversity - Gnostic, Apocryphal, Patristic
• Podcast 3.7: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 1 - Ebionites
• Podcast 3.8: Jewish Followers of Jesus, part 2 - Pseudo-Clement
• Podcast 3.9: Marcionites and the Unknown God
• Podcast 3.10: Introducing Gnostic Worldviews
• Podcast 3.11: Secret Book of John, part 1 - The Spiritual Realm
• Podcast 3.12: Secret Book of John, part 2 - Salvation from the Material Realm
• Podcast 3.13: The Wisdom of Jesus Christ and Middle Platonism
• Podcast 3.14: The Gospel of Philip, part 1 - Ideas of Salvation
• Podcast 3.15: The Gospel of Philip, part 2 - Ritual Enactments of Salvation
• Podcast 3.16: The Gospel of Mary - Secret Knowledge from the Ultimate Disciple

Some good news for me this past week:  I’m now associate professor with tenure at York University.  I’m very happy about that process being behind me now.

The podcast has been going well and it will now be a hiatus on episodes for July and August.  There are two more episodes (on the book of Hebrews) in the “Early Christian Portraits of Jesus” series to come in September, and then a new series on “Diversity in early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and struggles” (’gnosticism’, Apocrypha, etc) begins in October. Thanks for the emails of encouragement about the podcast.  Episodes now generally get about 1200 or more downloads per episode, which makes that work seem really worthwhile.  What is up with my episode on Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is at 2,438 downloads, I will never know (there are other ancient writings people!).

Regarding regular posts on this blog, I’ve been extremely busy lately trying to complete a book on Dynamics of Identity in Early Christianity for T & T Clark, which is occupying virtually all of my work time and more (and rightly so as we are expecting a new baby in the Fall!). Once I feel I am getting a handle on that project, I hope to do some regular posts here and there this summer on the blog.  Time with the family is very important in the summer as well, though.  So please be patient.

I am enjoying creating the podcasts and have found that subscriptions and downloads are more than enough to continue (about 400 ongoing subscribers and over 1000 downloads for certain episodes). What began as a mere experiment at the prodding of my web-savvy wife, is now what I would consider a relative success. Thanks to those who are listening and making my preparation of material seem even more worthwhile. I love to teach, so it’s great to have a larger audience (even though it would be nice to interact more in person with the listeners — and you don’t get to hear all the jokes, or the “ah’s” and “um’s” which are edited out).

I have been hosting the individual audio mp3 files for my podcast on archive.org all along. Now the people over at archive.org have been nice enough to establish a “collection” page which gathers together all of my podcast audio into its own independent sub-section on archive.org: Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean Podcast collection page (accessible from archive’s “Podcasts” and “Religion and Spirituality” sections under “Audio”). This does not change anything about the main feed for my podcast and the access through iTunes, which still remain the same (with a new half-hour episode being released bi-weekly).

There are some advantages to this added venue for my podcasts. Let me explain. Currently, I stagger the release of episodes (organized into series) which are broadcast twice a month through my blog and feed (which also gets sent to iTunes). So far I have been releasing series 1 on “Paul and his communities” (completely released) and series 2 on “Early Christian portraits of Jesus” (part way through). Sometime next Fall, I will officially begin posting series 3 on “Diversity in Early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and struggles” (which deals with things like the Ebionites, Marcionites, “gnostics”, Nag Hammadi writings, and early Christian apocrypha). All of the episodes that have been officially released so far are of course also accessible here on this site under the podcast category.

The advantage of the archive collection page is that it leaves it up to you, the (potential) listener, to get episodes when you want them and to jump ahead a series if you would rather. You can now access some episodes (or series) of my podcast before they are officially released on my blog (in the event that I have them ready and uploaded to archive.org — I’m not a machine;). This means that if you know quite a bit about Paul or the Gospels, and therefore haven’t been listening to the first two series, you can now jump forward (on archive.org) to a future, more advanced series on “Diversity in early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and struggles”. This also means that if you happen to be finding the bi-weekly process too slow and are often waiting for a podcast to listen to during the commute, then you can move ahead and get them now in some cases. But if you do jump ahead, you may use a couple of years worth of releases up in no time (I won’t be able to officially release new ones any faster than twice a month to ensure consistency over large spans of time).

Another nice thing about my archive.org collection is that it tells you the number of downloads and which episodes were downloaded most in the last week, in the past month, and since the beginning of the podcast (look at the right column on that page and scroll down).

I hope some of you find this helpful. Let me know what you think, or if you have other suggestions.