Biblical Mapping

Biblical mapping relates to the various uses that have been made of maps in seeking to understand or explain the Bible. It embraces maps found in [Page 196][Page 197]bibles, in special biblical atlases, stand-alone maps, and maps in tracts explaining biblical passages. Given that (a) the narratives that compose, and the events related within, the Judeo-Christian scriptures took place in, or are located within, the areas of Palestine, the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia and that (b) most of those religious texts present their story within a historical form, it is not surprising that they have attracted attempts at mapping since a very early period after their canonization among both Jews and Christians. When events, places, pieces of land, and movements of individuals (e.g., Jesus going from Galilee to Jerusalem) or groups (e.g., the story of the “exodus” from Egypt) have deep significance to a group, those places will be mapped; and, thereby, the place of the narratives’ audience is related to the events (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 This map by C. Conder, typical of those in many early-20th-century Bibles, is a summary of 19th-century Holy Land research. It combines the topographical precision of surveyors with the onomastic conjectures of biblical scholars.

Source: Original is in the Founders’ Library, Lampeter.

Whether or not the authors of the Bible used maps in creating their texts is uncertain—several use language that closely coheres with ancient extant maps—but since Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–ca. 340 BC), maps have been used to represent, clarify, or explain the biblical scenes: the 6th-century mosaic map in Madaba, Jordan, being an example inspired by Eusebius. With the passing of time, among both Jewish and Christian scholars, maps became an integral part of the exegetical process whereby geography was called on to solve textual problems (e.g., the 9th-century map in BNF [Backus-Naur Form, a context-free syntax] lat 11561 explicating the Book of Joshua); and later maps became part of biblical apologetics. With the arrival of print, maps became part of the apparatus of Bibles, while biblical/historical maps became a fixed feature of atlases from the time of Ortelius.

Still today maps are almost invariably included in printed Bibles, while biblical maps in atlases have evolved to become the specialist subcategory of atlases: the “Bible atlas.” These atlases range in style from works for children to elaborate coffee-table books and in perspective from sectarian propaganda to works of critical scholarship. One common feature of most biblical mapping is that the maps combine the best available physical information (nowadays derived from geodetic survey and satellite imaging) with scholarly conjecture as to locations and distributions, working on the assumption that the world as we map it is the world as their ancient authors imagined it.