In my haste to post the Weekend Roundup this morning, I neglected a few things I had intended to mention.

Ferrell Jenkins is back in Israel on a study and photographic tour.  He has already posted some good photos from Samaria, Shechem, Qeiyafa, and Jerusalem.

This month you can view the Ezra and Nehemiah commentary for free from the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary.

National Geographic has just released The Letter and the Scroll: What Archaeology Tells Us About the Bible.  I’m pleased to have a number of photos in the book, but I haven’t yet seen it.  A friend
suggests that its approach is rather mainstream, trying not “to push too many buttons.”  He is very impressed with the photographs and illustrations and thinks they will be helpful in teaching.

About a year ago, Life Magazine made its archive of 10 million photos available online.  Ben Atlas has sifted through the collection and pulled out images related to Israel in 1948, particularly the War of Independence.

LIFE in Israel in 1948 – Part 1

LIFE in Israel in 1948 – Part 2

LIFE in Israel in 1948 – Part 3

This is a fantastic collection that proves the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

You can search the archive yourself with Google if you add “+source:life” to your search.  So, for instance, you might try these searches:

Jerusalem in 1940s (176 images)

Palestine in 1940s (200 images)

Israel in 1940s (200 images)

The story of the birth of modern Israel is one of the most remarkable tales of the 20th century.  There are many books on the subject, but one I have enjoyed several times is O Jerusalem, a classic which is also available in audiobook format (22 CDs for $20 from Amazon).  I listened to the book this summer and profited greatly.

HT: David Reagan

On the one-year anniversary of the ESV Study Bible, Justin Taylor reveals that a new Bible atlas is in production.

For those who have appreciated the maps and illustrations in the ESVSB, in June we’ll release the Crossway ESV Bible Atlas, which we’re very excited about. It was a huge project, but OT scholar and archaeologist John Currid (RTS-Charlotte) and cartographer David Barrett have done an outstanding job with it. There’s about 65,000 words explaining the geography and cultures of the biblical world, along with 175 full-color maps, including some in 3D, 70 photos, numerous recreations, a fully searchable CD, and a detailed 16.5 x 22-inch map of Palestine.

He does not mention that David Barrett is also the creator of the recently released Bible Mapper 4. 

Readers here may be interested to know that the majority of the photos in the new atlas come from the image collection of BiblePlaces.com.

HT: Ted Weis

If, like me, you’re a fan of Bible Mapper, you’ll be pleased to know that version 4 has just been released. 

Bible Mapper is still the best program for making custom maps of the Middle East, and now it includes 35 pre-made Bible maps that get you off to a quick start.  You can see some of these in the gallery. 

There are a number of other improvements as well that may not sound so impressive, but really make the program more enjoyable to use.  This includes:

• Select Object engine that uses the cursor is much faster at any zoom level and is more forgiving about how close you have to click on an object to select it (e.g., routes and rivers are easier to select)
• A basic blank map template is included that contains essentially all the basic styles that you need to create a professional-quality map (journey path styles, political label styles, river label styles, etc.)

You can read more of the improvements on the website.  If you have any need for maps, I encourage you to check it out.  As before, use of the maps you create is virtually unrestricted.

 “Samson’s Exploits” – one of the new maps in Bible Mapper 4.0