Most Useful Atlas?

[rkbishop]

I'm about to start a series on the Psalms of Ascent, so I'm looking into resources for the geography of the Bible, believing it will be helpful in poetry. I have the IVP Atlas, but I've looked at Sacred Bridge and Zondervan NIV Atlas. Any thoughts on which Atlas has been most useful to your sermon prep?

[Abram K-J]

For sermon prep, that's a toss-up. The Sacred Bridge is more thorough, by far, but doesn't necessarily have something for all given verses, when the Zondervan one may. If you're looking to do your own research on, say, topography and geography of the era in which the Psalms were written, TSB is the way to go. If you're more going to be searching the Atlas by Bible verse reference, I'd go with Zondervan, but that may or may not return results--especially for Psalms.

[ukfraser]

This is very biased!

I had the holman bible atlas as a hard copy which isnt available in accordance

Attached is the pompey siege of jerusalem from sacred bridge and the jerusalem topography from zondervan

 

I dont find the maps in zondervan to be very good compared to my hardback holman and much prefer sacred bridge but you may want to consider other carta publications, there is the cut down new century handbook which is cheaper but has most of sacred bridge material but there is also bible handbook which isnt in colour but very good for topography.

 

Carta also do some specific jerusalem ones which may be even better.

 

For me, zondervan has too many pictures and text at the expense of the maps which is what an atlas is about so i prefer carta. Though in this case zondervan may meet your requirements, thinking about shouting the psalm into jerusalem.

Edited March 29, 2016 by ukfraser

[Abram K-J]

E.g., searching Psalm 121 in Zondervan yields one relevant result, and TSB has none. However, that's just a search by Scripture reference, which is one of many search fields you could use. Searching for "hills" or "mountains" in Jerusalem could still turn up more in either.