Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

On this episode, we are talking about not history, but a crucial part of history, geography.

And we're going to start not with church history, but biblical geography, which again is essential to understanding biblical history.

And I've had this book since college, and I loved it in college, and I continue to pull it off the shelf and look at it.

It is the McMillan Bible Atlas, and this is the completely revised

third edition. I was always drawn to the maps from the very first Bible I had and the maps in the

back, then to atlases, and when I got this as a textbook, I pretty much devoured it.

In the preface, the author state historical geography putting the Bible on the map as an

attempt to understand the biblical events in their ecological and socio-cultural context.

It is an essential component of biblical studies if we truly desire to empathize with the ancient

people whose religious experience we claim to share.

To truly enter into the biblical story, the narrative, we need to enter into the history and the geography.

The editors go on to say this wonderful description of the land of Palestine.

To the north, the winter-bound, snow-covered mountains of the Lebanon. To the south, the semi-arid Negev.

To the east, the wide desert, and to the west, the great sea. These are the natural borders

of Palestine. Within their confines was enacted the history of Israel from the days of the patriarchs on.

A look at the landscape, its roads, its ancient settlements, and the countries surrounding it

are a prerequisite for a proper understanding of biblical history.

The editors also point out the Bible does not, as a rule, give many

descriptions of settlements, their location and character. These matters were taken for granted,

then. Only a few verses diverge from this rule, and they go on to mention the site of Shiloh

as very specifically located in Judges, chapter 21, verse 19.

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