Product Description

The New Bible Atlas combines the geography of the Holy land with the history of the Holy Bible in a colorful, large-format book that will delight the eye and inform the mind.

[ ^Top ]

Great Single Source for Bible Study Maps        Rating:

The `New Bible Atlas', assembled by a team sponsored by the UK company, Inter-Varsity Press of Leicester, England, with two distinguished `contributing editors', two equally distinguished `consulting editors', and an `organizing editor employed by the publisher is the kind of book which makes me wish I could pull a few stars from my ratings of similar books containing Biblical era maps and historical tables. My previous favorite source for maps was the Hammond `Atlas of the Bible Lands', which still wins the prize for their lushly colored physical maps underlying the political boundaries of the era being represented. Distant second places go to the Holman and Rose companies' offerings of maps, charts, and timelines, although the Rose `Book of Bible Time Lines' is a great source for teaching children and teens.
This `New Bible Atlas' has two things which put it head and shoulders over the nearest competitor, Hammond, and at least one or two things which make it stand out even better from Rose and Holman. The first virtue is the fact that there are many, many more different maps, covering in far greater detail the various periods of Hebrew history covering the time Joshua conquered Canaan to the period of Jesus' Apostles' travels. For someone like me who needs a plentiful supply of maps covering all the events and books of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, this is, if I may say so, a Godsend! There are literally maps covering every change in political organization and most major military operations in ancient Palestine. The second virtue over Hammond is that almost all the maps are exactly the right size to scan into a document for a Bible Study class. There are many good maps in Hammond or in study Bibles which are too big, spread across two pages, or too small and lacking in detail, all of which make them inconvenient to scan on a home scanner, without destroying the book's binding. The third virtue, which sets it apart from Rose and Holman, is the level of detail. While the physical representations may not be as lush as Hammond, they are still excellent, giving a good sense of the geography of the stage on which the action took place. A second virtue over Rose and Holman is that the accompanying historical graphics are also superb for scanning, with a clean presentation and excellent details. There are many other Biblical atlases available, and I have not examined all of them; however many larger volumes called `atlases' are really picture books with lots of archaeological reconstructions and narrative history. This is great, but these volumes are also short on high quality MAPS! And when I buy an Atlas, I want MAPS, lots of them! And this book has got them. Thankfully, it also has a fair share of auxiliary information, but somehow, this stuff seems to be a perfect complement to the primary task of understanding history and geography of the region. Most interesting are those things which commonly appear in atlases covering geology, climate, rainfall, and agricultural use.
Getting back to maps, one of the few things I could not find is a map of the Roman empire showing which provinces where senatorial and which were imperial, or a map of population centers in the empire (although knowing that the three largest cities were Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, in roughly that order, goes far to understanding population distribution in the time of Jesus.).
For a list price of under $30, this book may be worth more than `atlases' of the same period which have twice the heft or price. For Bible study, you may need maps from other sources for some purposes, but not many. This is great, if you can only own one book of Bible history maps!

[ ^Top ]