9a - More geographical help

A BRIEF assessment of the different Bible atlases might be useful before describing some of the more specialist ones you might want to know about, and then some details about the books that have been written about the geography (and history) of the Bible.

General Bible Atlases

In general, the older the atlas the less reliable it is likely to be and the poorer the printing techniques, but they still contain some useful information if that is all you have got.

• Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land
  Designed and edited by George Adam Smith, author of the classic work The Historical Geography of the Holy Land which was published in 1894, this atlas appeared in 1915 and was prepared under the direction of J. G. Bartholomew (of Bartholomew map fame). Based on the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, these sixty large format maps are expressive of the knowledge then prevailing about Bible places and locations. Now hard to find second-hand, if you wanted access to that sort of data, for purely historical purposes, it can be purchased electronically from Todd Bolen.
• Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible
  Published by the Westminster Press in 1956, this large format atlas contains eighteen coloured maps and seventy-seven black and white illustrations.
• Atlas of the Bible Lands
  Published by C. S. Hammond & Company in 1959, this atlas contains thirty-three brightly coloured maps which are often seen at the back of Bibles. They can be accessed in electronic format (under the tab for Maps).
• The Moody Atlas of Bible Lands
  Published in 1985, this comprises 234 pages of maps, illustrations and comment. The first section deals with the Physical Geography of the Holy Land (pages 1-71) before proceeding to the Historical Geography (what happened and where). The maps are clear and uncluttered but are not very exciting graphically as the cartography is flat and lifeless. To give you an idea about detailed coverage, David’s life is covered in four maps – his encounter with Goliath; his time as a fugitive; his later exploits and a map showing his extended kingdom. Ninety-five of the maps in this publication are available as an add-on to the Biblesoft software package.
• Reader’s Digest Atlas of the Bible
  Typical of the RD publications, this atlas published in 1981 has some useful material and some well-drawn illustrations. The material is presented in a popular rather than a scholarly way, which is no bad thing, and there are some good drawings and photographs. The 256 pages also cover things like Animals of the Bible, Coins and Costumes, making this a useful collection of information which should be readily available second-hand, as a large number will have been printed.
• The New Atlas of the Bible
  Compiled by John Rogerson in 1985 and published by Macdonald, this atlas has three sections: The Bible & its Literature, The Bible and History and The Bible and Geography. There are forty maps altogether and many coloured illustrations, of excellent quality. The thirteen historical maps give some indications of where particular events occurred (using arrows rather than annotations) but in the geographical section the emphasis is upon topography and physical features and these are viewed location by location, in a somewhat dislocated fashion.
• Nelson’s “Complete Book of Bible Maps & Charts”
  This is a 500-page paperback of which about only about seventy pages has maps, and all are greyscale. The rest of the book comprises charts and diagrams, some of them very informative and helpful. The maps are basic and useful if you just want a base for your own cartography; they can be easily developed using a good drawing program. Or the entire publication (charts, text and all) is available electronically in a format that is compatible with Libronix software.
• Baker’s Bible Atlas
  This is organised to follow the Biblical narrative and is more of a book than an atlas, with nineteen full colour maps, over 100 illustrations (including many BW maps, a timeline, an Index and a Gazetteer).
• The Lion Atlas of Bible History
  If you want a full colour production with stunning graphics and isometric drawings of selected reconstructions of Bible scenes, The Lion Atlas of Bible History by Paul Lawrence should fill the bill. This is a large format production containing ninety-seven maps, seven panoramic reconstructions, seventeen site plans and over 150 photographs. It was reviewed in The Christadelphian in December 2006 (pages 457,458).
• The Bible Mapbook
  Simon Jenkins has produced “a graphically exciting new way to experience the great events and places of the Bible” (to quote the publisher’s blurb). It is highly coloured and follows a topical theme – starting with a general overview of the Biblical world and then tracing through Bible history until the last journey of the Apostle Paul. Published by Lion in the UK as The Bible Mapbook, it has also been published as Nelson’s 3-D Bible Mapbook by Thomas Nelson Publishers and the maps are available in electronic format as The Logos Bible Atlas which runs independently of the Libronix package. It features more than ninety subject maps covering the entire scope of Biblical history, as well as two highly detailed geographic maps (of Palestine and the Mediterranean region) and a 3D topographical map, built from satellite data.
  You can export this data in BMP or WMF format and edit it, to suit your personal needs, providing you have the necessary additional software. The maps are reasonably basic and don’t provide the same detailed coverage as The Macmillan Bible Atlas. For example, the life of David is covered in just six pages by Lawrence; eleven pages by Macmillan. But the latter is not available electronically and if you have both, and necessary skill, you can use the one as your visual template and add in further data by referring to the printed work.
• The “Oxford Bible Atlas”; the “New Bible Atlas” (IVF) and the “Macmillan Bible Atlas”
  These feature in the article above and represent three of the best available atlases. The Oxford one (4th Edition) has first class graphics, both the maps and the coloured illustrations and photographs. Earlier editions have good maps but the accompanying black and white illustrations are now a bit dated. The New Bible Atlas has a good reputation as a conservative piece of work and the Macmillan one is excellent if you want a blow-by-blow coverage of most significant Bible events. But these maps are heavily, although usefully, annotated and if you are after a source for visual presentations, which you can modify and develop, you may find these a little too heavily annotated.
  If you just want a small atlas, with only maps, try the Student’s Bible Atlas (edited by H. H. Rowley), which is twenty-four pages long. The Essential Bible Reference series covers lots of Bible-based topics, like the People of the Bible or the Story of the Bible. They are nicely illustrated throughout and are excellent value for money. The Bible Atlas in that series, by Tim Dowley, is just thirty-two pages long, well illustrated, with clear and uncluttered maps.

Electronic Bible Atlases

Several packages are available, apart from those already mentioned. Libronix have two products of their own: the Logos Basic Map Set and the Deluxe Map Set. The latter has a wide selection of specialist maps, more than 200 covering the whole of Biblical history. The maps are 3D views of the landscape with blow-by-blow, popup descriptions of Biblical events. They are organized into easy to use categories with thumbnail views of each map and there are also 3D models of the tabernacle and the various temples throughout Biblical history.

If you want more information about available Bible mapping software packages, Todd Bolen, who lectures in Jerusalem, has a useful critique on his Bible Places website.

Specialist Atlases

We have still only scratched the surface in terms of specialist publications for atlases have been compiled for lots of different reasons, wherever it makes sense to present historical data superimposed on a map of where it all happened.

Jewish History Atlas

The historian Sir Martin Gilbert has compiled several useful atlases to chronicle aspects of Jewish History. These are black and white maps which are heavily annotated and they illustrate happenings in a very clear way. The Jewish History Atlas (3rd edition) contains 124 maps which span “Early Jewish Migration 2000 BC” to “The Jewish World in 1983”. He has also compiled map books of The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps (1974); Jerusalem Illustrated History Atlas (1977) and The Holocaust, Maps and Photographs (1978), for use in schools. And, of course, Gilbert has captured such information in books like Israel, A History (1998), which are again illustrated with maps.

Atlases of World History

If you would prefer to get an overview of history in the form of an annotated atlas, rather than in weighty tomes, illustrated or otherwise, a range of such books exists, like The Collins Atlas of World History, Phillips Atlas of World History or the Concise Atlas of World History, published by The Times.

For the ancient world, a set of coffee table books has been produced with lavish illustrations and some useful coloured maps. Published by Phaidon Press in the 1980s, these books like the Atlas of the Jewish World give quite extensive coverage of all aspects of Jewish life, much of it after Bible times. There are atlases of this genre for ancient Egypt, the Greek world, the Roman and the Islamic world.

There are many more compilations of such data to look out for, if this is how you like to study history, or would find such illustrations helpful when explaining what happened. To list just a few:

• The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History by Colin McEvedy;
• The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History by Colin McEvedy;
• The Penguin Atlas of World History (2 volumes) by Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann;
• Ancient History Atlas (1700BC-AD 565) by Michael Grant.

Books about Bible Geography

If you prefer to read about the Lands of the Bible, with a few accompanying maps, rather than see maps with accompanying script, there is a wide choice available, as ever. For physical geography – the layout and configuration of the land – the standard work is by Dennis Baly: The Geography of the Bible, 1957, which has been supplemented by his Geographical Companion to the Bible, 1963.

Most of the atlases we have considered have looked at that aspect first and then have concentrated on the events that took place in different parts of the land, something known as historical geography. The classic work, first published in 1894, is by George Adam Smith: Historical Geography of the Holy Land, which has been published in many subsequent editions. At 744 pages long this is a weighty tome; Smith looks at various parts of the land in turn and then writes about things that happened there. There are some accompanying maps, but they are now dated. When he writes about “recent discoveries”, they were things that were found in the nineteenth century.

If you like the idea of following those discoveries at the time when the Palestine Exploration Fund were surveying the land, and when writers were excitedly conveying the news back home, try books by C. R. Condor, or A. P. Stanley (his Sinai and Palestine was first written in 1856 and was revised in subsequent editions for, as he says himself, new things were being discovered all the time).

Life has changed markedly in the Middle East in recent years so these nineteenth century writers were describing a lifestyle that is much more akin to that of Bible times. If you want background material about manners and customs of Bible times, one standard work is The Land and the Book by W. M. Thompson, first published in 1875. It is illustrated by a few black and white sketches and a couple of coloured illustrations, but no maps. Its strength is in the descriptive writing, all 718 pages of it! Several other authors have written along similar lines, like James Neil, who wrote Palestine Explored and Everyday Life in the Holy Land, as well as several similar books.

There are more recent books of this sort available. Everyday Life in Old Testament Times by E. W. Heaton was first published in 1956 and Everyday Life in New Testament Times by A. C. Bouquet in 1953. They both have some black and white drawings to illustrate people and their customs. More recently, and still available new, are Manners and Customs in the Bible by V. H. Matthews and The New Manners and Customs of Bible Times by R. Gower. These are nicely illustrated and take account of more recent archaeological discoveries, but they don’t have the same flavour of discovery and adventure which you find in the older works. As ever, both genres have something to offer if you fancy a bit of relaxing background reading.

If you prefer a more up to date historical geography as well, try Holy Fields by J. H. Kitchen, an introduction to the subject written in 1955, or The Land of the Bible by Yohanan Aharoni. First published in 1967, and revised in 1979, Aharoni explains in his Preface that he has not tried to replace G. A. Smith’s work (which he describes as “a beautifully and vividly coloured description of the land and its environs”) but to complement it. Rather than describe the land area-by-area, this book reviews the history of Israel period-by-period in textbook style.

Still available in print is the Wycliffe Historical Geography of Bible Lands by Howard E. Vos. This was first printed in 1967, by Pfeiffer and Vos, but was revised in 2003. This presents a modern evangelical coverage of the eleven areas of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world. It blends the historical, geographical, biblical and archaeological data into what is now an 850-page compendium. This has sixteen pages of coloured photographs and ten pages of coloured maps (which are not of the same quality as those in the Oxford Atlas, for example). But the bulk of the work is in black and white (some 500 maps, drawings and photographs).

If you haven’t got the message already, the point is that whatever aspect of Bible study you decide to explore, there is a lot of help available to assist you in a fuller understanding of the word of God.