Blog RSS Feed

Plotting Bible Places over Time

A recent post on the Inside Google Book Search blog plots the locations mentioned in books over time. Let’s do the same thing with the Bible geocoding data. Bible book order corresponds (very) roughly to historical order, so I’ll use books as an approximation for historical periods. The bigger the dot, the more often the books mention the place.

Genesis to Deuteronomy

Here you can trace the patriarchs’ and the Israelites’ journeys to lots of places that aren’t the promised land.

Joshua to Ruth

The conquest and early rule of Canaan.

1 Samuel to Esther

The rule of the kings and subsequent exile.

Job to Malachi

These books cover a good period of time, much of it preoccupied with the exile.

Matthew to John

The gospels focus on the life of Jesus in Palestine.

Acts to Revelation

The church spreads beyond the Middle East.

Whole Bible

Here it’s all put together.

7 Responses to “Plotting Bible Places over Time”

  1. Geocoding the Bible…

    The folks at OpenBible.info have geocoded the Bible. In other words, they went through the Bible and found the latitude and longitude of nearly all the places mentioned. They’ve produced satellite maps and KMLs (for Google Earth) for every book…

  2. The folks at OpenBible.info have done a real service to the Christian community by tagging every identifiable location in the Bible for Google Earth. You can download the KZM file and explore any place in the Bible. They even give you all of the passages where each location occurs, hyperlinked to the ESV…

  3. […] cool. Here’s an example of all the locations in Galatians. And here’s a neat post that traces the locations in the Bible through six historical periods. […]

  4. GoogleEarth Google Maps ESV = OpenBible.info…

    Remember those old maps in the backs of the Bible? The ones that always fell out after a few years of use? The ones that traced the path of the Israelites or Paul’s journeys? OpenBible.info has developed a very cool online tool aligning GoogleEarth wi…

  5. worship.com says:

    Very cool work…

  6. […] also have an intriguing blog post (with pictures!) that highlights the changing geography over time in the […]

  7. […] out this link and see graphical illustrations of where the action was taking place during various periods of […]