About This Book
The narrow land bridge between Asia and Africa—historic Palestine, today a region divided between Israel and its Arab neighbors—is among the most important geographic areas on earth.
A link between the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, it became the high way for conquering armies, a pawn in the power struggle waged for centuries, even millennia, by the great empires that rose and fell in the Near East.
And today it is almost daily in newspaper headlines as rival nations assert their claims to the area. The true significance of this ancient land, of course, lies outside any geographical or political considerations. For this is the Holy Land—birthplace of both Judaism and Christianity, sacred also to the followers of Muhammad.
To a devout reader of the Bible, it is as familiar as his own neighborhood. He has stood with Abraham at the oak of Moreh and heard the Lord promise, "To your descendants I will give this land."* With Moses he has climbed Mount Nebo, to be shown "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills . . ."
He has marched with Joshua as he "defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes . . .
" He has followed Jesus along the shores of the Sea of Galilee as he gathered his "fishers of men" and accompanied him on his last, fateful journey to Jerusalem. With Paul he has set out for that blinding encounter on the road to Damascus.
As these few examples attest, the Bible is a book of movement, grand and glorious events enacted against the backdrop of a land starkly, awesomely beautiful and taking the reader from "Ur of the Chaldeans" down to Egypt and across the northern rim of the Mediterranean to Greece and Italy.
To provide a deeper understanding of the Bible's immortal stories, Reader's Digest has sought to place them in their proper geographical and historical context.
The result, atlas of the bible, is a unique reference work and a fascinating reading experience.
There are other atlases of the Bible, most of them prepared by scholars for use by other scholars. They provide needed and valuable information and have earned their places on library reference shelves or in bibliographies such as the one on page 244.
The present work, however, was prepared with the general reader in mind. It is a book based on the best contemporary scholarship and with the able assistance of the scholars and theologians listed opposite.
Yet the constant goal of the editors has been to make the volume as clear and precise as it is accurate and up-to-date, atlas of the bible serves to explain, elucidate, and expand on what is already in the Bible but may not always be immediately comprehensible.
It is designed to be read from cover to cover or to be consulted on specific points, as a companion to the Bible.
