S8 Episode #5- Amanda Hope Haley
THE ONE WITH Amanda Hope Haley
This week on The Collected Podcast, Jes welcomes Amanda Hope Haley—archaeologist, theologian, and author of Stones Still Speak—for a rich conversation that bridges ancient history with modern faith. With warmth and insight, Amanda invites us to explore the layers of meaning behind the biblical text and discover how historical context can illuminate timeless truths. She explains how archaeology doesn’t aim to prove the Bible, but to illuminate it—revealing God’s tender-hearted nature, His desire to be known, and His preparation of ordinary people for extraordinary callings. It’s a rich, thoughtful dialogue that encourages us to hold Scripture higher than our interpretations and to embrace the questions that lead us deeper into truth.
MORE ABOUT AMANDA
Amanda Hope Haley is a lover of the Bible—its God, words, people, and history. Writing and speaking as the Red-Haired Archaeologist®, she teaches how artifacts contextualize Scripture. She hopes to see Bible lovers work together to learn history, interpret Scripture, and apply God’s Word to their lives. Amanda earned an MTS in Hebrew Scripture and Interpretation from Harvard University. She contributed to The Voice Bible as a translator, writer, and editor, and she has been a collaborator for popular Christian authors. She and her husband live in Tennessee.
ABOUT THE BOOK
[Press Release] When we first encounter the Bible, we are taught its stories—Adam and Eve, Moses and the Red Sea, David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, and more. When a story lacks the details we crave, we fill in the blanks—with what we've seen in movies, read in books, and been told by our Sunday school teachers.
In Stones Still Speak (Revell, Sept. 2025) Harvard-trained archaeologist and theologian Amanda Hope Haley shows how we've inherited a version of Scripture that’s often been filtered through cultural assumptions. After all, Adam and Eve’s infamous apple wasn’t really an apple. This is just one small way centuries of artistic interpretation and oral retellings have shaped—and distorted—our understanding of biblical narratives.
Through archaeological evidence, Amanda shows readers there's a better way to encounter the whole story of Scripture: uncovering and understanding the ancient world and the people who experienced and recorded biblical events.
Scraping back more than 2,000 years of misguided cultural interpretations, Stones Still Speak reveals God's Word in its historical, archaeological, and literary contexts. Revitalizing the Scripture you thought you knew, Amanda explains how our misunderstandings developed with the greater purpose of encouraging a more intentional, rigorous study of the Bible in our daily lives.
Far from a dry academic exercise, Haley’s insights will help Christians discover and appreciate the world of the Bible and grow in their relationship with Jesus along the way.
Haley uses her archaeological expertise to illuminate what the Bible actually says versus what traditions & Sunday School stories have popularized.
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SHOW NOTES
BACKGROUND
From an early age, Amanda always had a love for the Bible and reading Scripture. In college she took a Biblical Archaeology course and absolutely fell in love with the field of study. She continued studying at Harvard and she became very passionate about bridging the gap between what archaeologists are studying in the field and what is being taught in church on Sunday mornings.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Throughout Amanda’s study of Biblical Archaeology, she has discovered many things that shine a new perspective on the ways that she originally read Scripture. For example, at a dig site in Ashkelon, Israel (one of the five royal cities of the Philistines) she saw an ancient Israelite lamp for the first time and it was shaped like a flower pedal or a cupped hand. This changed the entire way that she was able to envision the descriptions of the temple.
Adjacent to Ashkelon is Tel es-Safi (the ancient Philistine city of Gath), a layer of the city was discovered that would have been from the time of Goliath. Discovering the way the city was built helps to explain why Goliath may have been considered to be a “giant”. No evidence of actual giants has been found, however, you can see from the material culture that the Philistine’s lived very differently. They had a Mediterranean way of life, which was often misunderstood by their neighbors. They were also professional warriors, which led to them being feared.
Biblical archeology does not exist to prove the Bible, it exists to contextualize the Bible and help us understand the ancient world and the people who lived then. It is not about tearing down beliefs, rather it's about filling in the gaps to help people understand what was really going on in that period of history.
THE GOLDEN CALF
Aaron and the Israelites are in the desert, Moses is up on Mt. Sinai and the people are trying to follow an invisible God.
The Israelites have been wandering through the desert, surrounded by various Canaanite villages. A common Canaanite practice at the time was to build a mount on which the statues of their god(s) would be placed.
Perhaps, when the Israelites built their golden calf, they were not building an idol to worship, but rather a mount for their unseen God.
The next thing that happens in the story is that God gives the people directions for building the Ark of the Covenant. And what is the Ark of the Covenant? It’s a mount! It is God’s footstool on earth. Anywhere the Ark is, God is there.
God recognized the Israelite’s need for something tangible, and He provided it to them, but in the right way. This doesn’t excuse what the Israelites did, but it changes our interpretation of the story. Originally we might have approached the story with an air of superiority, thinking “I would never build an idol.” However, with this new understanding, we might also realize that we’ve been guilty of trying to entice God to us, trying to make deals with Him… ect..
Archaeology allows us to identify the lenses that we are currently using to understand The Bible and helps us to take them off.
This different interpretation also allows us to see different aspects of the character of God. God wanted to be known by His people, so He met them right where they were. This story shows the tender-hearted nature of God.
We need to broaden our understanding of the full story of The Bible, rather than chunking it up and only looking at one chapter without the context of what happened before and after. When we look at the story of the golden calf, we see that this is more than a story of the people being smited for doing something terrible. It’s also a story about God showing compassion to His people and providing for their needs.
DAVID + GOLIATH
Understanding what happened and why we think Goliath was a giant requires taking a look at how different translations of The Bible developed.
The first complete Hebrew Bible that we have is from 1,008 AD. However, the first Greek translation is from the 3rd century B.C., so as translators were working on our modern translations they were working from the newer Hebrew translation and the older Greek translation. If a disagreement took place, the translators would mostly lean on the Hebrew. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1948, they were in Hebrew AND also almost as old as the Greek Septuagint. Finally in the 1950s, we had a 3rd rail by which to solve disagreements. In almost every instance where the translations originally seemed to disagree, the Deadsea scrolls agreed with the Greek.
One of the places where the first two disagreed was on Goliath’s height. Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know he was roughly 6’5”. He was still a tall guy, but not a mythical giant. He was also a Philistine. The Philistines were incredible warriors with the strongest weapons. They were feared by most other civilizations that they came in contact with.
David on the other hand is often viewed as a scrawny pre-teen. However, if we actually look at the full text, we see that David was a shepherd who was extremely skilled with a slingshot. This was a proper tactical weapon that could hit a hair’s breath from a far distance. At this point in David’s life he has already killed a bear and a lion with his sling and his bare hands. The years that David spent being a shepherd were preparing him for this battle.
If you just carve out one little story about a “little kid” who happens to hit a giant on the head, then you have the making for a miracle. However, nowhere in the text does it say that this was a miracle. It was a young, healthy man in the prime of his life who was prepared by God for this moment and then to lead the Israelites as their King.
The story becomes not about a miracle, but about how God prepares us for the future that He has for us. How God picks people who on paper should never have been able to accomplish what they did. Society at the time said that there was nothing spectacular about David, but God knew differently!
This makes the story more about God and how He cares for us and prepares us for incredibly challenging moments.
BRIDGING THE GAP
Scripture does not change. It was divinely given and God-breathed. God gave us Scripture as the tangible thing that we have of Him. Scripture has not changed, but our societies have changed, languages have changed, time has moved on. If you ever discover that you have believed something or been taught something that does not align with Scripture… Scripture will be right every time.
God is not afraid of your questions. He wants a relationship with you. He wants you to encounter Him in Scripture.
It’s also ok to admit you don’t know something. We don’t have to always understand how God did something, but we can understand why.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The church has become very divided over the years, but what we disagree on is often not about Scripture, but rather our interpretation of it and the things we say about it and add to it. We need to hold Scripture higher than our own thoughts and opinions about it.
Instead of clinging to the words of theologians who have come before us, we need to cling to Scripture and allow that to be the thing that unites us, the thing that binds us.
NEXT STEPS
Here are a few action steps to help you dip deeper this week!
Pre-Order Stones Still Speak to explore more archaeological insights and biblical reflections from Amanda Hope Haley.
Revisit familiar Bible stories (like the golden calf or David and Goliath) and ask: What cultural or historical context might I be missing?
Journal about how this new perspective shifts your understanding of God’s character.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please remember that everything we do is funded by those who benefit from our ministry. Our ministry a 501(c)3, so your contribution is tax-deductible.
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The Collected Podcast is a production of Collected Ministries, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping disciples of Jesus discover and live from their true identity in Christ, recognize and walk in their divine purpose within the Kingdom of God, and experience growth in their capacity for mature, healthy relationships.
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The Collected Podcast is produced by Jes French and edited by Jacob Early. Cover art designed by Ben Biondo.