OpenBible.info Geocoding Topical Bible Realtime Labs Blog

Bible Geocoding

The location of every identifiable place mentioned in the Bible.

Complete Bible

Google Earth (KMZ)

Also available: KMZs arranged by book and by chapter. Turn book or chapter layers on and off to see patterns across the Bible.

Individual Books

Use Google Earth to open KML and KMZ files.

Atlas

The atlas lists all the places alphabetically, complete with thumbnails, verses, and photos (when available).

Overlays

Overlays for Google Earth let you see how maps of ancient and modern Jerusalem fit satellite imagery.

Bodies of Water

Download a KML with outlines of the most of the bodies of water in the Bible. (It’s too big to preview in Google Maps. Sorry!)

Photos

About 10,000 photos of places in the Bible. These photos use the Flickr and Panoramio APIs and are thus of varying quality—many of them just happen to be of people or places near the ancient locations. But a lot of the photos are quite helpful: see Beersheba, Capernaum, and Ur, for example.

I recommend BiblePlaces.com for professional-quality photos of places in the Holy Land. Todd Bolen has done a fantastic job taking and collating photos.

About

These files map all the places in the Bible whose locations I could find.

What Are Your Sources?

The main data source was the Morrish Bible Dictionary, which contains the coordinates for many locations. Other sources were the ISBE, Easton’s, Smith’s, and Nave’s—in other words, all the usual public-domain sources. (The NET Bible folks have helpfully made these works easily accessible.) I consulted in-copyright sources from Logos Bible Software.

The satellite imagery comes from NASA (Blue Marble NG, March) overlaid with shaded relief from the USGS.

Crossway Bibles created and published a comprehensive list of place names in the ESV Bible, which served as the starting point for my work. Thanks also to the Google Earth community who identified about 200 places.

What Are Your Qualifications?

I don’t have any special qualifications, only a lot of free time. I graduated from Wheaton College, Illinois (2000), where I took a class that involved some Bible geography (in addition to traveling to many of the places listed), as well as a number of geology courses, but that’s it.

Can I Use These Files?

Absolutely! That’s why they’re here. All the data and maps are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, meaning that you can use them for any purpose you want as long as you credit OpenBible.info.

Where’s the Raw Data?

Take your pick: there’s the tab-delimited raw version and a somewhat more useful merged version. The raw version contains a number of notes and other miscellania that haven’t made it into the maps or the KMLs.

What if I Find Errors?

There are almost certainly errors. Contact me (email address below or leave a comment on the blog) if you find any.

Unless otherwise indicated, all content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Contact me: openbibleinfo (at) gmail.com.