Book Subtitle: Carta’s Atlas of Biblical
 Biography., May 14, 2010
            By  Paul T. Gibson “International Agriculturalist”
(Southern Illinois & Makerere (Uganda) Universities) – See all my
 reviews                
 
      This review is from: Greatness, Grace, and Glory (Hardcover)
      Great book.  Accurate–Biblically, historically,
 geographically. Told as accounts of Biblical characters, setting
 them in their geographical, historical, cultural and political
 context. We have been looking for a book like this for years. Paul
 Wright is an accomplished scholar, yet writes in a delightful way,
 enjoyably setting you in the context of the Biblical account.
 Organized as insightful and readable historical narratives of 23
 Biblical characters, from Abraham to the Apostle John. Great maps,
 photos, and illustrations from one who has spent his life studying
 Biblical history and geography, much of the time living in
 Jerusalem itself. Our son recently obtained an Master’s degree
 under Dr. Wright, and we have been super-impressed with his wealth
 of knowledge and meticulous accuracy combined with a very
 interesting and personable style.

The Future of the Past

A new website which was launched a few months ago makes life much easier for anyone interested in maps and other information about the Biblical era, as well as about other periods in Israel’s history / Gaya Polat

S P R ING 2010  

Let’s say you are a priest looking for a visual aid to show your believers the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the path he traveled along the Via Dolorosa. Or perhaps you are a teacher in your local Hebrew School looking to connect your pupils to those places with foreign names in a far away country. Or maybe you are a student in the university who needs a diagram of the First Temple and of the city of Jerusalem at the time? For anyone interested in the history of the Bible and Israel, the Carta Map Bank is an important tool in helping to bring the words and stories to life through visual aids.

In 1958, while Israel was still making its first steps as a country, Carta was founded as a cartographic company dedicated to studying the Biblical era in depth .Specifically, they focused on bringing the stories from the Bible to life – using maps, illustrations and other forms of visual aid. As the years passed, Carta made a name for itself as one of the experts on the period of the Bible. They documented every archeological excursion, every scholarly piece of information they could find – and conducted studies of their own through leading professors. All this resulted in one of the richest databases ont he Biblical era, and later expanding it to a database on the entire history of Israel (i.e. also the Crusades, the Ottaman Empire and so on). As their database grew, they published books and atlases using some of the world’s finest studies on these topics. Some of those, such as the Carta Bible Atlas, published over 40 years ago, is still considered a “super-bestseller” in the genre and is generally believed to be the most thorough, detailed and basic book on the Bible era.

A new website

Even though Carta’s  specialty is the days gone by, it doesn’t mean they shy away from the technologies of our current times. As everyone knows, technological advances in recent years have completely changed the ways in which we approach information. While not so many years ago, a student working on a project who needed to gather more information on, say, the conquest of Jericho, required long hours in the library, today more and more of the research is taking place on one’s computer. As such, Carta has decided that the day has come for the great sea of information known as the World Wide Web to be not only full of gossip sites, social networks and the like, but also with the rich information of the past. The result is the website www.bible-books-maps.com that came to life four months ago. The goal of the website is to be the leading database on the Biblical era in general and on Israel specifically. “We have the richest, most detailed resources on those topics,” says Shay Hausman, President and CEO of Carta ,“so there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be available on the Internet.” The first thing a person can find on the site is over 3,000 illustrations, maps, pictures and diagrams that are related to any topic, name, battle and so on that appears in the Bible. “We believe that the best way to bring the text to life is through visual aids. You know, as they say – one picture is worth a thousand words,” explains Hausman. Each picture is supplemented with information explaining the important facts relevant to that picture.

The next step that Carta is currently working on is to add not only the illustrations and their explanations but also the entire scholarly database that Carta acquired. As a result, when someone will search for “Joshua,”  he will be presented not only with the diagrams explaining the siege and conquest of Jericho, but also with all the relevant scholarly information, so the site will be a one-stop environment for people who are interested in Biblical times or the history of Israel.

Another feature that is being developed for the site is special forums and blogs that will be managed by the researchers working for Carta. The idea is that a student or a person interested in a given topic will be able to ask questions and receive an intellectual response. Furthermore, it will bring together people from around the world who are enthusiastic about history. Within a year, Carta also plans to upload a similar site in Spanish and they are also developing an iPhone application.

All the information

“The academic and information world is rapidly changing. It is moving more and more toward a place of specialty,” Hausman explains. “People don’t want to see a general doctor today; they want to see the eye specialist or the cardiologist and so on. And it’s the same when they are looking for information. People today don’t want you to give them a thick book on Jerusalem in which they have to sort out the information themselves. For example, if they want information on Jerusalem in the days of the Crusades, they don’t want to go through all the pages on Jerusalem in King David’s days and in the Ottoman Empire. Instead, they want to be able to tell you ‘Jerusalem in the Crusade Era’ and for you to give them all the information they need – nothing more and nothing less. And this is what this site will do. In one place you’ll be able to find all the relevant scholarly information plus all the important illustrations, maps, pictures and so on. And to remind you – we have the most extensive database of any organization on those topics,” asserts Hausman. “You know, I like to say that perhaps three million tourists come to Israel every year, but three billion don’t. And some of those three billion are interested in the history of the events that happened here, and do want to know, see and understand. And this is what we’re trying to do, to be able to give them an atlas of the archeological knowledge that was gathered here, the maps and so on, to help them connect and understand as much as they can. We are not interested in religious interpretations; they can take this knowledge and do with it as they please. All we want to do is give them the relevant scholarly knowledge,” Hausman continues. However, the site itself has not caused Carta to stray away from their original mandate. “Our primary goal is still to expand the knowledge and research on those topics; if it is relevant to Israel’s history, we are interested in it. And there is no end to that goal; there is always more to know,” concludes Hausman.

THE CARTA MAP BANK IS AN IMPORTANT TOOL IN HELPING TO BRING THE WORDS AND STORIES OF THE BIBLE TO LIFE THROUGH VISUAL AIDS