The History and Archaeology of the Bible

Unfortunately, I stopped watching the moment the phrase "climate change" was mentioned.

After going through just four lectures I'm thoroughly disgusted with this "historian's" perspective (He's NOT an archeologist nor a Biblical scholar). The title of the series is grossly misleading, as Mr. Isbout seems to know nothing about the Bible and apparently doesn't know who God is, either. His approach is purely secular and any coorelation he finds between the Bible and archeology seems to amaze him. The Guidebook reads: ". . . It does not conform to any particular theologi‑ cal orientation but treats the biblical texts as historical documents." This is an outright lie. In the very first lecture he states that the early Bible accounts are NOT historically accurate. Don't waste your money.

I have 286 courses from the great courses. I finished one lecture of this course and called for my money back. After Drs. Daniel Robinson and Bart Ehrman, it is hard for anyone to teach religion or philosophy. This guy is extremely biased and has an agenda. Enough.

Simply put, most of these lectures are just Cliff's Notes to the Bible, with a few references to archaeological evidence which are dismissed when they interfere with the story. If you're truly interested in an introduction to the history and archaeology of the Bible, get Jodi Magness' course, "Holy Land Revealed". It is a wonderful class, akin to what Freshmen or Sophomore archaeology students at a university would take. She is an engaging lecturer, an active researcher and respected expert in the field, and encourages critical thinking. Isbouts' class is, honestly, just slightly above the level of Sunday School.

This is the worst Great Course I have seen. NO Illustrations and NO Archaeology. Instead he just tells ancient tales and tries to justify them as somehow telling true tales of the past.

Although the speaker makes his bias clear in the introduction, he fails to separate fact from fiction throughout the videos. This is entertainment and primarily confirmation bias, not the educational course I expected.

It's inappropriate to teach a course on a bible with a hidden agenda.

This really is just awful. There is virtually no archaeology involved in the presentation and this fellow reinterprets history and the Bible to meet his own conjecture about what really happened. Don't bother with this material since there is very little archaeological content and the bias in the presentation is unacceptable.

We’ve purchased several courses that we really liked but this presenter isn’t very compelling. We were disappointed and requested a refund.

I enjoy a good romp through biblical text with literary analysis and contextualization within the times that the stories came into being and were later written down. I do not appreciate the implication that Temple Judaism is closely related to modern practices, and I do not appreciate the notion that modern Judaism is an artifact of the history of Christianity. That attitude has historically been followed up with rather ugly attempts to convert and then justify violence towards Jews. I'd have liked to hear more about how and why Temple Judaism transformed into rabbinic Judaism and the ways in which early Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism sought to differentiate themselves from each other and from the many other religious cults and practices that were occurring at the time.