Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 64:1 (Mar 2021)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

The Harvest Handbook of Bible Lands: A Panoramic Survey of the History, Geography, and Culture of the Scriptures. Edited by Steven Collins and Joseph M. Holden. Eugene, OR: Harvest, 2019, 397 pp., $39.99 paper.

Experiencing Israel: Walking with Jesus in the Holy Land. By Tony Evans. Eugene, OR: Harvest, 2020, 144 pp., $29.99 paper.

I have been teaching online biblical geography for the Israel Institute of Biblical Studies for the last five years. Most of my students are not seminarians but regular church members from all over the world who are very interested in the land of the Bible. They want to learn how the discipline of cultural geography influences the understanding of the biblical text, and I constantly recommend books about the land of the Bible. Recently Harvest House has published two books on biblical geography that I review here.

The Harvest Handbook of Bible Lands is more technical, while Experiencing Israel is an inspirational guide to the places of the Gospels. Both of them deal with the land of the Bible but have different purposes. The Handbook follows the well-known structure of historical atlases of the Bible: a chronological approach to the Bible from Genesis and the Patriarchs to Paul and early Christianity. The material of the Bible is narrated in ten chapters as a linear history with addenda from archaeology and ancient historical sources alongside the narrative. Pictures of ancient artifacts and maps aid the reader to see the story with more precision, contextualizing spatially and materially the distant characters of Scriptures.

When the Harvest Handbook is compared with others such as IVP Atlas of Bible History (IVP Academic, 2006) or A Visual Guide to Bible Events (Baker, 2009), it is clear from its length (about 400 pages) that it offers more information than its competitors that average about half its size. Throughout the book, readers will find boxes entitled “Breakout” that feature short discussions of a particular subject (e.g., “Egyptian Map Lists,” p. 115; “Rosetta Stone,” p. 252). The Handbook also brings a more detailed discussion of subjects barely elaborated in biblical atlases, like the “architecture and infrastructure” of ANE cities (pp. 74–76) or the Greco-Roman period (pp. 254, 256–57), and “weapons and warfare” (e.g., pp. 77, 257–58, 296–97). These add to the value of the material by offering discussion on matters of ancient lifestyle with images that are often lacking in more popular biblical atlases. With contributions from different renowned scholars such as Edwin M. Yamauchi and Wayne House, the breakouts bring reputable and up-to-date information on biblical archaeology.

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