Geography and History of the Holy Land

This chapter was very informative and loaded with a lot of historical information about ancient Israel. What I found particularly interesting about this chapter was that Israel was actually not all that big. For instance, when Cosby referred to the story where Jesus told his disciples to get on a boat to escape the crowd and rest, but the crowd ran ahead of them on foot, made a lot more sense when given an accurate representation of just how big the rivers of Israel are. I think it would be amazing to actually go to the country and be able to view the various landmarks where biblical stories went down. To be honest, I hope that I get to visit there one day, and maybe it would help me gain a new appreciation for biblical passages. What challenged me is that as archaeologists attempt to discover more and try to prove or disprove biblical passages, at what point is it too much? Is digging this deep (pun) into the origins of biblical stories a way of testing God? I say this because God calls us to have faith in him and his message, and through this intensive archaeological research, are we exercising doubt? Maybe we aren’t. I also believe this archaeology can be a good thing for the Christian faith. If we can prove more and more is correct about the Bible, then it will increase the overall credibility of the book and our religion. I think this topic of archaeology also merits more in-class discussion. Even though this chapter felt like a bit of information overload, I believe it will help facilitate some needed class discussion.