HarperCollins Concise Atlas of The Bible
For centuries a knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Greek has been the prime requisite for biblical scholarship. This continues to be true, Yet recently, approaches other than linguistic have come to play an increasing role, First came the discovery and decipherment of texts written by neighbouring Egyptians and Assyrians; then there was the archaeological recovery of how Israelites lived and worshipped; and most recently science has come to be used increasingly in getting at the biblical past, In 1987 The Times Atlas of the Bible sought to make use of these new approaches and grew into a large volume, About fifty specialists from a variety of fields contributed.Understandably there are different levels of interest in detail among students and readers of the Bible. in the concise edition we have been able to produce a more compact atlas, Much of the text has been rewritten to exclude some peripheral matters and to present others in shorter form, New maps have been produced to combine information formerly given on two or more maps, The concise atlas has been designed to serve the reader or user who wants to get as quickly as possible to what is currently known about the historical geography of the Bible.The general aim remains essentially the same as that of the larger work, it is to provide the geographical setting of such dramatic events as wars, military campaigns, destructions, rebellions; chart the routes of conquerors and exiles; mark the rise and fall of empires and the divisions of kingdoms; and locate the heroic deeds of patriarchs, judges and prophets.in the process of condensing we have assumed that the Bible itself is of primary interest, What sheds light on its narratives is of major importance, We have introduced an index of biblical references, and another index to personal names found in the text of the atlas, A short bibliography is also a new feature.For the sake of consistency we have made use of the dates given in the third edition of The Cambridge Ancient History, a widely used book of reference, We have followed the Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 4, edited by M. Avi-Yonah and E. Stern, 1978, for terminology and dates for archaeological periods from the Bronze Age onward.The maps in this atlas have been specially designed in order to present the material in a clear and dynamic way, Many of the maps are based on recessive or unorthodox projections, and it is therefore not possible to provide scales for them -- the distance between two places in the foreground, for example, will be considerably greater than that between two places near the horizon. in order to help the reader to interpret the maps, most of them carry longitude and latitude lines, in addition to an indication of the north-south axis. Further, an index of distances between principal biblical sites appears on page 138.Again we are indebted to our former contributors, as wellas to new ones, for their help in the production of this conciseatlas, which, while resembling its parent, is not cast directly fromthe older mould,J. B. PritchardSeptember 1990