Friday, 19 October 2007 00:00 | and posted in Old Testament
Old Testament history in 5 easy steps - you won't find it represented as simply anywhere else!
Introducing the Old Testament's Locale
Old Testament history happens completely within what we would now refer to as the "Middle East."
The OT in five arrows
So here you are - Old Testament history represented by five arrows on a map! For a description and the story behind each arrow scroll down the page.
Line One
As the Bible's story begins, humanity is clustered inside and around modernday Iraq. Only when Abraham comes on to the scene does the Bible move away from this area.
God asks Abraham to leave his home land and to settle in a new land that God will show him. Abraham obeys and is lead to this new land, Canaan, and sets up home there.
Line Two
Abraham's family, his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob (later named Israel) continue to live in this new land until disaster strikes during Jacob's lifetime. A deadly famine lasting seven years begins killing off the population of Canaan.
Years before, Joseph, Jacob's favourite son, had been sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. But by an extraordinary turn of events Joseph ended up second in command in Egypt and was responsible for the first ever international food rationing. God has orchestrated events so that through Joseph, Jacob's entire family survive the famine by moving down to Egypt to live.
Line Three
Hundreds of years later the Jews are forced into slavery by the Egyptians. God uses Moses to rescue his people and lead them back to the land he promised Abraham. They slowly take possession of the land under the leadership of Joshua.
Line Four
All of the major powers of the ancient world lived in the "Middle East" around something called the "Fertile Crescent." This was an area of land that was both habitable and extremely fertile and which stretched from the Nile delta in Egypt east round the coast and into Syria and Turkey (you can see the light green colour on the map standing out in sharp contrast to the desert shades of Iraq).
Israel was situated in an extremely important military and commercial position. Armies or trade had to go through Israel to move north and south or else they had to negotiate the deserts and the heat and lack of water.
The problem for Israel was that the military superpowers tended to rise from the North and South and they would be stuck in the middle. Feeling threatened by the nations around them, God's people ask for a king and Israel the nation is born.
Israel survives three kings, Saul, David and Solomon, before the kingdom splits into two (Israel in the north and Judah in the south). Over time both of these two nations drift from God and God allows them both to be conquered and dragged into captivity by the ruling superpowers of their day. They once more are forced to serve as slaves in a foreign land.
Line Five
After almost 70 years of exile, God (as he promised he would do through his prophets before the superpowers conquered them) brings his people back to the Promised Land. Leaders like Nehemiah and Ezra help the people rebuild the Temple, Jerusalem and their land.
