A backwards Bible map that changed the world

"This is simultaneously one of publishing's greatest failures and triumphs," says Nathan MacDonald, Professor of the Interpretation of the Old Testament at the University of Cambridge.

"They printed the map backwards so the Mediterranean appears to the east of Palestine. People in Europe knew so little about this part of the world that no one in the workshop seems to have realized. But this map transformed the Bible forever and today most Bibles contain maps."

How a Renaissance Map Reframed the Bible

In research published on November 29 in The Journal of Theological Studies, MacDonald argues that the map created by Lucas Cranach the Elder and printed in Zürich did more than update biblical layouts for the Renaissance. It also helped shape early thinking about territorial organization.

"It has been wrongly assumed that biblical maps followed an early modern instinct to create maps with clearly marked territorial divisions," MacDonald says. "Actually, it was these maps of the Holy Land that led the revolution.

"As more and more people gained access to Bibles from the 17th century, these maps spread a sense of how the world ought to be organized and what their place within it was. This continues to be extremely influential."

Rare Survivors of the 1525 Edition

Very few copies of Christopher Froschauer's 1525 Old Testament still exist. Trinity College Cambridge's Wren Library holds one of the remaining examples (see image).

Inside this edition, Cranach's map presents the stations of the wilderness wanderings and the division of the Promised Land into twelve tribal regions. These divisions were a distinctly Christian interpretation, expressing a claim to the sacred sites of both the Old and New Testaments. Cranach's work drew on medieval mapping traditions where Israel appeared as long, narrow strips of land, reflecting earlier reliance on the 1st century AD Jewish historian Josephus, who simplified conflicting biblical descriptions.

According to MacDonald, "Joshua 13-19 doesn't offer an entirely coherent, consistent picture of what land and cities were occupied by the different tribes. There are several discrepancies. The map helped readers to make sense of things even if it wasn't geographically accurate."

Mapping the Bible in the Swiss Reformation

A literal interpretation of scripture was especially important in the Swiss Reformation, which is why, MacDonald explains, "It's no surprise that the first Bible map was published in Zürich."

MacDonald, a Fellow of St John's College Cambridge, notes that as interest in literal readings increased, maps became a tool to show that biblical events unfolded in identifiable places and real time.

In a Reformation context where certain religious images were restricted, maps of the Holy Land became acceptable visual aids and took on devotional significance.

"When they cast their eyes over Cranach's map, pausing at Mount Carmel, Nazareth, the River Jordan and Jericho, people were taken on a virtual pilgrimage," MacDonald says. "In their mind's eye, they traveled across the map, encountering the sacred story as they did so."

A Turning Point in the Bible's Long Evolution

MacDonald argues that the addition of Cranach's map was a major milestone in the Bible's development and deserves more recognition. Other key moments include the shift from scrolls to bound books, the 13th century creation of the first portable one-volume Bible (The Paris Bible), the introduction of chapters and verses, new Reformation prefaces, and the 18th century recognition of prophetic writings as Hebrew poetry. "The Bible has never been an unchanging book," MacDonald says. "It is constantly transforming."

How Biblical Maps Helped Create Modern Borders

In medieval maps, the tribal divisions of the Holy Land symbolized spiritual inheritance for Christians. By the late fifteenth century, however, the lines originally drawn in biblical maps began spreading into maps of the wider world. These lines came to represent political borders. At the same time, these new ideas about political authority were read back into biblical texts.

"Bible maps delineating the territories of the twelve tribes were powerful agents in the development and spread of these ideas," MacDonald says. "A text that is not about political boundaries in a modern sense became an instance of God's ordering of the world according to nation-states."

"Lines on maps started to symbolize the limits of political sovereignties rather than the boundless divine promises. This transformed the way that the Bible's descriptions of geographical space were understood."

"Early modern notions of the nation were influenced by the Bible, but the interpretation of the sacred text was itself shaped by new political theories that emerged in the early modern period. The Bible was both the agent of change, and its object."

Why These Ideas Still Matter

"For many people, the Bible remains an important guide to their basic beliefs about nation states and borders," MacDonald says. "They regard these ideas as biblically authorized and therefore true and right in a fundamental way."

MacDonald points to a recent US Customs and Border Protection recruitment film in which a border agent quotes Isaiah 6:8 -- 'Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"' -- while flying above the US-Mexico border in a helicopter.

Professor MacDonald is concerned that many people continue to treat modern borders as if they were clearly defined in scripture. "When I asked ChatGPT and Google Gemini whether borders are biblical, they both simply answered 'yes'. The reality is more complex," he says.

"We should be concerned when any group claims that their way of organizing society has a divine or religious underpinning because these often simplify and misrepresent ancient texts that are making different kinds of ideological claims in very different political contexts."