PhotoMuseum Version 2.0 of the Accordance Bible Times PhotoMuseum has just been released. It’s a free update to those of you who already have the PhotoMuseum. If you don’t yet have the PhotoMuseum, you can get it on sale this week.

What is the PhotoMuseum? It’s similar to our wildly popular Bible Lands PhotoGuide, but where the PhotoGuide covers the various places mentioned in the Bible, the PhotoMuseum covers ancient peoples (Edomites, Moabites, Philistines), along with the objects they used (Altars, Houses, Weapons) and the activities they pursued (Fishing, Music, Personal Grooming). Both the PhotoGuide and the PhotoMuseum are packed with high-resolution photos and detailed captions, so you can actually see what life was like in the Biblical world.

I’ve had the privilege of working on both these projects. The PhotoGuide was explicitly designed to serve as a companion to our interactive Bible Atlas, which made it relatively easy to select the Biblical places it would cover. We simply began with a list of Atlas sites and worked our way through it, beginning with the most important sites and moving to the more obscure ones. Deciding what to include in the PhotoMuseum was a bit harder because its focus is so much more varied: people, objects, customs, etc. Our clear aim was to illustrate the historical background of the Bible, but we didn’t want to write a full-blown Bible dictionary!

As I began work on this latest upgrade to the PhotoMuseum, it occurred to me that just as the PhotoGuide acts as the perfect complement to the Atlas, so the PhotoMuseum could serve as the perfect complement to the Accordance Timeline, offering more detailed descriptions of the various people and events it displays. With that in mind I began using the various Timeline items as a guide to new PhotoMuseum articles. The obvious place to begin was with the various rulers, so you’ll find nearly 30 new articles on Roman rulers, Assyrian rulers, and Israelite/Jewish rulers. A new article on the Assyrians was also written with a view to explaining the various Timeline items associated with the Assyrians. Thus, you can easily amplify from the Timeline to the PhotoMuseum for a clear explanation of the various stages in the rise and fall of the Assyrian empire.

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In addition to covering more historical people and events, this upgrade to the PhotoMuseum also includes new articles on Games and Sports, Linear Measures, and Ground Warfare. Numerous other articles have been expanded with new photos. In fact, about 200 new photos have been added since the initial release of the PhotoMuseum two years ago.

The latest release of the PhotoMuseum also adds external links to ancient texts in Josephus, Context of Scripture, Hebrew and Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and their English translations, and Carta’s Raging Torrent. This enables you to see a photo of an ancient inscription which sheds light on the biblical text, then follow the link to a transcription and/or translation of that inscription.

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The PhotoMuseum is an ongoing project which will continue to be expanded. With this latest update, the PhotoMuseum is quickly evolving into a tailor-made companion to the Accordance Timeline. If you don’t have it yet, be sure to get it before the current sale ends.