Reverend Historian

Joshua arrives at Jericho, a city already thousands of years old. This episode examines deep time, cultural collapse, and the unsettling idea that history may be moving forward long before anyone realizes it. Meanwhile… Outside the Bible. Listen on Spotify.

The world today stands on the threshold of great change. Technology advances at a pace never before witnessed in human history. Among these advances, artificial intelligence stirs both awe and fear. Some warn that machines may one day surpass us, that an intelligence beyond human control will rise and challenge our place in creation. Others remind us to temper panic with reason, to see not inevitability, but possibility. We must remember: fear is not prophecy. History is our guide, and history teaches that human anxieties often precede understanding. Consider the Socratic philosophers of Athens, condemned not for wrongdoing, but for asking questions that unsettled the established order. Consider the medieval world, where access to knowledge was tightly guarded, and heresy was feared as contagion. Consider the printing press, which placed the Scriptures into the hands of ordinary people, and yet inspired cries of moral collapse. In each case, the tools themselves bore no malice. The...

Episode 3 is now streaming, only on Spotify. Don't worry. You don't need to join. Catch DAVID, GOLIATH, STORM GODS, AND OTHER CAREER MISTAKES.  Listen on Spotify  And, as a companion to that episode, read the following article.  Where Have the Giants Gone? A Reflection on Mystery and Providence By Reverend David Paul Harris For centuries, men and women have marveled at the stories of giants, men of towering stature who walked the earth in ancient times. The Bible speaks of Goliath of Gath, a warrior whose size struck terror into the hearts of Israel. Yet, when we search the soil, when archaeologists dig through the ruins of old cities, we find no skeletons of men so tall. Some may wonder: does this absence of evidence deny the truth of the accounts? Or does it speak to the mystery of God’s creation and providence? Consider first the body God has given us. Every bone, every sinew, every joint is designed with care and purpose. A man of extraordinary height, far...

By Reverend David Paul Harris Independent Researcher davidpaul1970@gmail.com Throughout history, God has raised up leaders in times of great trial, and He has allowed nations to face the consequences of their choices. In the annals of Rome, there is a story that stands apart, a story of courage, defiance, and the human longing for freedom. The Third Servile War, fought between 73 and 71 BC, is remembered not for legions of soldiers, but for the name of one man, Spartacus. Yet, when we look closely, we find a paradox. We know almost nothing of Spartacus’ life. His birth, his family, and his very appearance remain a mystery. His body was never found after his death, leaving only his story to echo through the ages. This raises a question. Was Spartacus truly the sole commander of this uprising, or does his story remind us of how human history often simplifies God’s complex workings? Could it be that the Romans, in their desire to make sense of a vast, multi-ethnic revolt, cast...

Here's a bonus episode of Meanwhile… Outside the Bible, a companion to episode 1. During the Bronze Age Collapse an Olmec family, struggling to survive harsh conditions, must fight off an invasion as they pray to the gods who have long since abandoned them.   LISTEN ON SPOTIFY 

Season 1: The Bronze Age Collapse  Episode 1: Moses and the Olmec  While Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt through plagues, manna, and miracles, the rest of the world is anything but quiet. In this opening episode, Meanwhile… Outside the Bible drops listeners into the chaos of the Bronze Age, where global trade networks hum, empires strain, and entire civilizations begin to unravel. We explore what was happening beyond the pages of Scripture, from the palaces of the ancient world to the mysterious rise and disappearance of the Olmecs in Mesoamerica, whose deeply religious society flourished and then faded into silence. With humor, history, and human stories, this episode sets the stage for the Bronze Age Collapse and asks a haunting question: what does it mean to survive when gods fail and civilizations vanish? Listen on Spotify! 

Historical scholarship often operates under conditions of incomplete, fragmentary, or mediated sources, requiring inference to bridge evidentiary gaps. Distinguishing disciplined speculation from imaginative reconstruction is critical for maintaining methodological rigor, yet explicit criteria for this distinction are rarely formalized. This study proposes a framework for clarifying the boundaries between speculation and imagination, emphasizing four guiding principles: evidentiary anchoring, controlled inferential extension, provisional commitment, and analytical consequence. The framework incorporates the concept of Source-Gap Pressure (SGP), which explains how the density and reliability of sources shape the permissible scope of inference across historical domains. Multi-domain examples from ancient and classical history to biblical, medieval, and protohistorical studies demonstrate how controlled speculation illuminates historical patterns while avoiding imaginative ove...