{"id":69203,"date":"2025-02-05T01:32:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T06:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=69203"},"modified":"2025-01-23T09:03:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T14:03:53","slug":"the-victorians-and-the-holy-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2025\/02\/05\/the-victorians-and-the-holy-land\/","title":{"rendered":"The Victorians and the Holy Land"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Once in a while a book comes along that is too much fun to put down.\u00a0 This is one of those books.\u00a0 Allan Chapman is in fact an Oxford professor, teaching the history of science, and it shows throughout this book as he shows how scientific discoveries helped make possible the advancement of the fledgling science of Biblical archaeology.\u00a0 \u00a0The book focuses on major figures who did what can be called adventure tourism to exotic Middle Eastern places, like the Pyramids in Egypt or the rose city of Petra in Jordan, and Chapman even explains the rise of Biblical tourism for the ordinary folks at the hands of Thomas Cook. Along the way we meet real scholars, quacks, interesting lay people, royalty and much more.\u00a0 Here is the description of the book on Amazon.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn this engaging study, Allan Chapman shows how the Holy Land took on new meaning for Europeans during the Victorian era. Previously, most Europeans had viewed the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern bank of the Jordan River as a literary backdrop for biblical narratives. During the nineteenth century, however, they began to take interest in this region as a literal, physical place. Technological inventions such as steam-powered travel, telegraphy, and photography made the Holy Land more accessible. In public museums, ordinary people could view artifacts ranging from Egyptian mummies to statues from Nimrud and Nineveh. In linguistics, translations of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Assyrian cuneiform broadened Europeans\u2019 awareness of myths, legends, and history. These discoveries in archaeology and linguistics brought new energy to nineteenth-century debates about whether the Scriptures were based on factual history.<\/p>\n

In addition to explaining how Holy Land studies changed during the Victorian era, Allan Chapman identifies key people who facilitated those changes. He introduces readers to a diverse demographic that includes adventurers, astronomers, missionaries, ministers, learned women of independent means, and Queen Victoria\u2019s eldest son. Driven by a wide range of professional and personal motives, these individuals had a powerful impact on the Victorian public\u2019s understanding of the Holy Land.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I have a few small quibbles with this enjoyable book (which is very well written). One of the points Chapman emphasizes multiple times is that what archaeology does is make plausible the descriptions of the social setting and culture and religion of the figures in the Bible, without proving the Bible to be historically true.\u00a0 \u00a0While this is large right about what archaeology does\u2014 it helps us with context of the stories in the Bible.\u00a0 But occasionally that is not all.\u00a0 For instance, occasionally there are inscriptions that speak about figures in the Biblical text that not only confirm they existed, but confirm what the Bible says about them.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking for instance about the Erastus the aedile inscription in the ground at Corinth, and what Rom. 16 says about this same person.\u00a0 Or the story about governor of Cyprus Sergius Paulus in Acts, which various inscriptions and literary sources confirm was a real person, who really sent Paul to his hometown of Pisidian Antioch (and see my post about the honorific inscription about that governor found at Pisidian Antioch by Mark Wilson and myself).\u00a0 Here is a picture of the celebration of this find at the little museum in that town\u2026.<\/div>\n
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My other small quibble about this book is that it desperately needed a chapter about the greatest Biblical scholar of the Victorian Era, J.B. Lightfoot, who was one of the first to take advantage and incorporate the new archeological finds in the Lands of the Bible into his commentaries and essays.\u00a0 He was the perfect illustration of how Victorian Biblical scholars kept up with the changing nature of archaeology and its relevance to understanding of both the OT and NT, as the three volumes I collected from his handwritten notes and had published by InterVarsity Press over a decade ago show.\u00a0 \u00a0I was also surprised that the famous illustrations of the Holy Land by\u00a0 David Roberts from the 1840s did not figure in this book.<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s not often that what could be counted as well-written pleasure reading, is also an excellent example of a very educational and enlightening study, but this book by Prof. Chapman is such a book.<\/div>\n
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Once in a while a book comes along that is too much fun to put down.\u00a0 This is one of those books.\u00a0 Allan Chapman is in fact an Oxford professor, teaching the history of science, and it shows throughout this book as he shows how scientific discoveries helped make possible the advancement of the fledgling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":69206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15224],"class_list":["post-69203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-how-curiosity-and-treasure-hunting-leads-to-exploration"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Victorians and the Holy Land<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Once in a while a book comes along that is too much fun to put down.\u00a0 This is one of those books.\u00a0 Allan Chapman is in fact an Oxford professor, teaching\" 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