Monday, June 11, 2012

A Visual Guide to Bible Events

book cover
A Visual Guide to Bible Events
by James C. Martin,
John A. Beck, and
David G. Hansen


ISBN-13: 9780801012853
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Baker Books
Released: September 1, 2009

Source: Bought through Half.com.

Book Description from Back Cover:
Why did Jesus pick Samaria as the place to announce his messianic identity? Why did God lead Moses and the Israelites to Mount Horeb after they fled from Egypt? Why did the apostle John receive God's revelation on the island of Patmos?

A Visual Guide to Bible Events illuminates the fascinating connections between Bible events and Bible locations. This beautiful, full-color book is filled with photographs, maps, and easy-to-read commentary. By exploring the relevance of place within biblical stories, this engaging volume brings the Bible alive to modern readers in a way no other book has done before.


My Review:
A Visual Guide to Bible Events is a companion book to A Visual Guide to Gospel Events (which focused only on gospel events, and the events it focused on were different than those covered in this book).

A Visual Guide to Bible Events takes different events throughout the Bible (Genesis to Revelation) and examines the significance of where each event happened. The authors pointed out previous Biblical events that happened on the site which brings new depth of meaning to the event or explained the significance of the terrain. They also explained cultural background information and included pictures of what the scene and location would have looked like. The plentiful full-color pictures and maps help the reader visualize the scene and location.

The book was written with a formal tone, but it's easy to follow. The majority of the authors' insights were solidly based in Scripture. While they did put some speculation in, it remained in the realm of the plausible. They did take the events of Genesis 1-10 as historical, but they also tried to locate Eden on the current world map so they apparently didn't accept that Noah's Flood was terrain-reforming. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting book.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


Excerpt: Read an excerpt using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature.