Biblical Geography

One of the best apologetics (defense of the truth) for the Bible is the fact that as near as anyone can tell the places it describes actually existed or exists the way the Bible says it did. Since the Bible is real and tells things that actually happens a great deal can be better understood by looking at the geography it describes. It used to be that you would need to use books that had to be constantly updated as new information is learned but now the Internet and Google's mapping technologies you can study Biblical geography very, very easily. I found this site called BibleMap.org and it is a Biblical Geographic Information System (GIS) where you choose a book and chapter into a search field and each point mentioned in the passage you referenced is displayed on a map and the passage is displayed. It's great. It leverages GoogleMaps and is a great tool and based on Sattllight data.

Another great tool I found is a site called Bible Geocoding. Geocoding is a technique used in GIS where locations and data about that location is assigned to its appropriate coordinates on a map. I did a lot of that in my first job when I finished college. Now it has been done just about every single identifiable location found in the Bible. If a Biblical location is unidentifiable it is only because after so many centuries, we can't find it any more. This site does show us that there are many location where we know where they are now. This site also leverages GoogleMaps, but it also allows you to download Kmz files that are input files for GoogleEarth. Why is that awesome? Glad you asked. KML files are XML files that contain geographic information. The files can be loaded in GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth. GoogleEarth is a 3D mapping system. With it, you can look at Biblical locations in beautiful 3D and even fly over and through those locals as if you were in an airplane. Excited yet? Bible Geocoding also allows you to view or download the data by books of the Bible or all the data in one file.

The one drawback for both tools is that you have to have a live internet connection to use them.