The Land

Rainey and Notley, in their book The Sacred Bridge, say that "of all the writing held sacred by the world's religions, only the Bible presents a message linked to geography. This is not just the location of religious centers but the experience of a people in its land . . . the religious experiences of that ancient people took place in relation to a geographical setting . . . the Bible is replete with geographical information, not as a guidebook for travelers or a textbook on geography, but often almost incidental to the message. Yet without geography, that message is often obscured or vitiated for the uninformed reader."