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2 weeks ago
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The first ever map in the Bible still influences how we think about borders today – despite being printed the wrong way round 500 years ago, a new study reveals.
Nathan MacDonald, professor of theology at the University of Cambridge, has analysed the map published in a rare copy of the Bible from 1525.
It shows the Holy Land – the revered region of the Middle East where the events of the Bible are purported to have happened.
It isn't at all geographically accurate, showing the Mediterranean to the east of Palestine rather than the west, and it has a distinctly European–looking landscape.
However, it led a revolution to create maps with clearly marked territorial divisions and made people appreciate land could be separated into boundaries.
Maps with borders had been published before 1525 but not in the Bible, according to Professor MacDonald.
'Dividing maps into territories is a novelty in early modern maps, and becomes increasingly common, and today is ubiquitous,' he told the Daily Mail.
'This map is simultaneously one of publishing's greatest failures and triumphs.'
Very few of Christopher Froschauer’s 1525 Old Testament survive in libraries around the world. Trinity College Cambridge’s Wren Library cares for one of the rare survivors (pictured)
This map of the Holy Land – the region of Israel and Palestine – was drawn by German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder.
It was included as a fold-out in a 1525 Old Testament Bible published by Christopher Froschauer, a book printer based in Zurich, Switzerland.
Very few of Christopher Froschauer’s 1525 Old Testament survive in libraries around the world, although Trinity College Cambridge’s Wren Library has one of them.
The map shows Israel divided into the 12 historical tribes – Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin.
The 12 tribes represent the foundation of God's chosen people and the 'inheritance of all things by Christians' – making it a map of 'significant symbolic resonance'.
'In the biblical book of Genesis, the Israelites are said to be descended from 12 sons of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham,' Professor MacDonald told the Daily Mail.
'Different parts of the Promised Land are later allocated to the different tribes.
'Within Christianity, the language of the tribes was adopted so that Christians could claim to be the true heirs of Abraham, rather than the Jews.'
Nathan MacDonald, professor of theology at the University of Cambridge, argues the inclusion of Cranach’s fold-out map was a pivotal moment in the Bible’s history
Very few of Christopher Froschauer’s 1525 Old Testament survive in libraries around the world, although Trinity College Cambridge’s Wren Library has one of them
When was the Bible written and how is it organised?
The Christian Bible was not written in one go, but in fact is a collection of writings, the earliest dating back nearly 3,500 years. It is made up of the Old Testament (otherwise known as the Hebrew Bible) and the more–recently–penned New Testament.
The Old Testament was written at different times in an approximately 900–year–period, started in about 1200 BC and completed in about the first century BC.
In the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, the Old Testament includes writings considered apocryphal by Protestants.
The New Testament was written during a much shorter period, during the last half of the first century AD, it's believed.
The New Testament contains four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Acts, 21 letters, and Revelation.
The map also shows the 'stations of the wilderness wanderings' – where the Israelites stopped during their 40–year journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.
According to Professor MacDonald, the map did borrow ideas from those that came before. It followed the example of older medieval maps, which divided the territory of Israel into clear strips of land.
'Modern maps like the ones we’re familiar with (i.e. with longitude and latitude) had been printed since the 1480s,' Professor MacDonald told the Daily Mail.
'They were some of the most popular early printed books, but they were expensive and prestigious items that would have been restricted to the wealthiest.'
However, in 1525, printing Bibles with maps was a novelty.
At the time, mapmakers had extremely limited information on what the boundaries of these territories might have been, so there were bound to be inaccurate.
In his paper, published in The Journal of Theological Studies, Professor MacDonald argues the inclusion of Cranach’s map was a pivotal moment in the Bible’s history and deserves greater recognition.
Its greatest legacy may be how it contributed to the way people started to think about borders.
Its boundaries depicted the spiritual inheritance that Christians were to possess, rather than today's more 'political' maps that show where one nation begins and another one ends.
Cranach’s map followed the example of older medieval maps (not published in the Bible) which divided the territory of Israel into clear strips of land. Pictured, the ‘Modern Map of the Holy Land’ from a reprinting of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia dating to the 1480s
'Dividing the Holy Land into tribal territories did not communicate political sovereignty as borderlines came to mean but communicated religious claims to the holy sites and the religious inheritance of Judaism,' the academic told the Daily Mail.
'Essentially, over several centuries borders on maps came to mean something very different – not spiritual inheritance, but political sovereignty.
Of course, it wasn't the only major shift in the Bible's long history.
Better known changes include the move from scroll to 'codex' – what we now know as the modern book with a stack of pages bound together.
There was also the creation of the first portable single–volume Bible (The Paris Bible) in the 13th century and the addition of chapters and verses since the mid–16th century.
Fast–forward to the present day and the digital revolution is also transforming the way people encounter the Bible.
'Many people are encountering the Bible as an electronic text without some of the traditional elements that have accompanied the Bible (like maps),' Professor MacDonald said.
'There is the proliferation of various Bibles for different audiences – young people’s Bibles, women and men’s Bibles – which often have different introductions, side bars, charts and guides.
'The Bible has never been an unchanging book – it is constantly transforming.'
Scientists reveal who wrote the Bible – and say it probably WASN'T God
Around the world, millions of Christians see the Bible as the divine word of God.
It tells an incredible story about the history of the world, from creation to redemption and God’s Last Judgement of the living and the dead.
It includes famous stories such as Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, David and Goliath, The Crucifixion and The Resurrection.
But who actually penned this masterpiece, variously amounting to more than 700,000 words?
Famously, the Bible is the word of God, but researchers generally agree it was written by multiple human authors.
Professor Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, biblical scholar at Villanova University in Pennsylvania¸ said 'dozens' of people likely penned the Bible, probably more than 40.
However, identifying these people who wrote the Bible is 'quite complicated', she told the Daily Mail.
