Jerusalem Post

ByJOANIE MARGULIES

Study author, University of Cambridge Professor Nathan MacDonald, described this map's inclusion as "simultaneously one of publishing’s greatest failures and triumphs.”

In 1525, a map of the Holy Land was first included in a Bible, transforming the book from just a sacred religious text into a Renaissance book, and eventually influencing the modern concept of clearly defined state borders, according to a new Cambridge study.
The study, published today in The Journal of Theological Studies, argues that Lucas Cranach the Elder’s map, printed in Zürich, set a precedent that continues to shape our understanding of territorial divisions today.
Study author, University of Cambridge Professor Nathan MacDonald, described this map's inclusion as "simultaneously one of publishing’s greatest failures and triumphs.”

The failure was cartographic: the map was initially printed backwards, showing the Mediterranean to the East of Palestine. "People in Europe knew so little about this part of the world that no one in the workshop seems to have realized," MacDonald said.

The triumph, however, was in precedent: the map "transformed the Bible forever," leading most Bibles today to include maps.

The map depicted the stations of the wilderness wanderings and, crucially, the division of the Promised Land into twelve tribal territories. The boundaries, a Christian concern, followed older medieval maps that relied on the 1st-century historian Josephus, who had simplified the complex and contradictory biblical descriptions found in Joshua.

Professor MacDonald questioned the assumption of territorial division in these maps. He argued that these early Holy Land maps “led the revolution” in popular thought on political borders.
More people gained access to Bibles in the 17th century, leading to a shift in how society viewed the world. Though this was initially intended for spiritual purposes in medieval times, the biblical significance of the division of land into tribal inheritance was ultimately reinterpreted politically.
"Lines on maps started to symbolize the limits of political sovereignties rather than the boundless divine promises," MacDonald explained. This transformed how the Bible's geographical descriptions were understood, turning a text not about modern political boundaries into an example of "God’s ordering of the world according to nation-states.”
This historical influence remains prominent and relevant, with MacDonald noting that the Bible had an influence on what the world uses as a guide for beliefs on nation-states and borders, which they regard as "biblically authorized and therefore true and right in a fundamental way.”
MacDonald expressed concern over the simplification of these complex ancient texts. "We should be concerned when any group claims that their way of organizing society has a divine or religious underpinning because these often simplify and misrepresent ancient texts that are making different kinds of ideological claims in very different political contexts,” MacDonald said in his statement.
He cited the ease with which modern AI chatbots state that borders are simply "biblical" as proof of this simplification.