Know the Bible
Who is this? What is this place? What does this mean?
The people, places, objects, events, groups and ideas you meet while reading — explained in their own context first, then opened up through symbolic and personal reflection that is always labelled as reflection.
Places
What is this place?
- Place
Jerusalem
A hill city in Judea that becomes Israel's political and religious centre: David's capital, the site of the temple, destroyed by Babylon in 586 BC, rebuilt, and the setting of Jesus' final week. It remains a living city sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Remember: The hill city where kingship, temple and the cross all converge.
- Place
Israel
'Israel' carries several distinct meanings in and after the Bible, and collapsing them causes real confusion. The senses below are kept separate on purpose.
Remember: One word, several meanings: a man, his descendants, ancient kingdoms, a land — and a modern state.
- Place
The kingdoms of Israel and Judah
After the reigns associated with Saul, David and Solomon, the biblical narrative describes a division into a northern kingdom (Israel, capital Samaria) and a southern kingdom (Judah, capital Jerusalem). Assyria ended the northern kingdom in 722 BC; Babylon ended Judah in 586 BC.
Remember: Two kingdoms after one: Israel in the north, Judah in the south, both eventually conquered.
- Place
Egypt
The great civilisation on the Nile, and in the Bible both a refuge in famine and a house of slavery. Egypt functions throughout Scripture as the place Israel was brought out of — and, occasionally, the place people run back toward.
Remember: Refuge, then slavery, then the place they were brought out of.
- Place
Bethlehem
A small town a few miles south of Jerusalem in Judea, remembered as David's home town and, in Matthew and Luke, as the birthplace of Jesus. Micah's prophecy of a ruler from Bethlehem is quoted in Matthew's account.
Remember: The small town that produced a shepherd king — and, the Gospels say, another.
- Place
Galilee
The northern region of ancient Palestine around a large freshwater lake, with fishing villages, farmland and trade routes. Most of Jesus' recorded public ministry takes place here, at a cultural distance from Jerusalem.
Remember: The working northern region where most of the teaching actually happened.
- Place
Nazareth
A small Galilean village with no notable mention in the Hebrew Bible, presented in the Gospels as where Jesus grew up. Its obscurity is remarked on within the Gospels themselves.
Remember: The village nobody expected anything from.
How it all connects
A few short threads through the story. Only connections seeded in this library are shown — it is a map of what we have written, not of the whole Bible.
The line of promise
Genesis follows one family across four generations — and ends with them in Egypt.
From slavery to a people
The exodus is the event Israel keeps returning to when it asks who it is.
Jerusalem, temple and the last week
One city holds kingship, worship and the events at the centre of the Gospels.
Loss, exile and return
What happens to a people when the land, the temple and the king are gone.
From Galilee outward
The movement begins in fishing villages, not in the capital.
Instruction, ark and temple
Where the covenant terms were kept, and how instruction stayed at the centre of worship.
One kingdom becomes two
A king who would not listen, two kingdoms, and the long road to exile.