Today’s post is different from our usual news reports or scientific explanations. A member of our congregation recently passed away, and his widow gave us some of his books. One of the books is like none I have never seen before. The book is titled Bible: Then and Now by Jenny Roberts.
In our quarterly printed journal, we have a section where we generally review current books relating to Christian apologetics. While this is not a recent book or a book on apologetics, it helps us understand the geographic world of Jesus’ day and what that same place looks like today.
The book has modern pictures of 14 ancient cities as they are today. Facing each picture on transparencies is an artistic work of what the city would have looked like during biblical times. You can lay the transparency on top of the modern picture to see what is left today and what was there when the biblical events took place. The book describes each city’s history with numerous photographs of the major archaeological discoveries.
I found this to be a fascinating book for learning Bible history. It gives you an understanding of how what you see now reflects what happened in the past and the setting in which it occurred.
Bible: Then and Now was published in 2001. It may be out of print, but used copies are available on Amazon. If you are interested, just go to Amazon.com, select the “books” category and enter this ISBN number 0-7858-1445-0.
–John N. Clayton © 2019