9 – Biblical geography
If you want to find your way around somewhere new, a roadmap is essential, unless you like getting lost. So, if you really want to know what’s happening in Bible times, both when and where the events are taking place, a good set of maps or a Bible Atlas is essential.
Some Bibles include excellent maps, together with an Index that helps you locate place names, and they usually offer different snapshots of the land at different periods of Bible history – such as when the twelve tribes were apportioned their territory, or when the Herods reigned.
Those maps may tell you all you want to know, but if you want to dig a little deeper a Bible Atlas is the next step.
Maps and pictures
Straightforward Bible Atlases follow the same general trend as the maps at the back of a Bible. They show the various lands as they were occupied and configured at different times, starting with the Patriarchs and ending with the Romans. Then they illustrate those times with suitable pictures of the locality or relevant artefacts. That provides an overview of a particular period – like the sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt, or the conquests of Alexander the Great – and can give you a taste of something you might want to look at in more detail.
Atlases show the configuration of the land in different ways. The older ones, like the early editions of the Oxford Bible Atlas, just used colour to indicate the lie of the land – at or below sea level, or how it rose to form the Hill Country of Ephraim or Judah. As printing and satellite mapping techniques have improved, the depiction of the land in later editions gives you a real sense of its topography. As you progress from the time of Abraham through to the time of the Lord Jesus, you can now get a real sense of the ups and downs of Israel’s progress!
Both the Oxford Bible Atlas and the New Bible Atlas, published by IVP, have very clear maps, including some depictions of Jerusalem through the ages. The former has a lot more supplementary information, about the Wider World of the Bible and Biblical Archaeology, before and after the map section, whilst the latter has more individual maps for things like the “Wars of David’s reign” or “Sennacherib’s Campaign”, with some annotations on the maps and quite a bit of supplementary information alongside.
If you want a step-by-step analysis of particular events, perhaps to illustrate a Sunday School lesson, The Macmillan Bible Atlas, by Aharoni and Avi-Yonah, does just that. It has not got the coloured maps found in the Oxford or IVP ones, for most maps are greyscale. But what it lacks in pizzazz it makes up for in careful analytical detail. After an initial and rather understated assessment of the physical features of the land, it contains a series of small maps from Abraham’s migration, his travels in the land, his battle with the Kings of the North, Jacob and his sons, and so on. Altogether there are 271 individual annotated maps.
Like every Bible study aid, you have to check the suggested routes and comments for yourself, but these visual aids can bring the Biblical record to life. For example, if you are studying Zechariah chapter 9, seeing the way that Alexander the Great swept through Israel, en route to Egypt, can help a lot. The Bible Mapbook by Simon Jenkins does the same thing on a smaller scale, and in full colour and this is also available electronically, as are several atlas packages, some of which can be tailored to your specific visual requirements.