Mapping Antiquity: Issues and Examples
There are no maps in the Hebrew Bible. But there are thousands of biblical maps, or more exactly, maps that purport to be based on readings of the Hebrew Bible. The difficulties that accompany biblical mapping are aptly illustrated by a cross-section of biblical and Near Eastern scholarship. We may draw on these studies to frame our question. In chronological order, Robert North (1979), Zecharia Kallai (1986), Aharon Kellerman (1989), Philip Alexander (1992 [and 1982]), and Ralph W. Brauer (1995) offer an eclectic but representative sampling.
In his monograph, A History of Biblical Map Making, North opens the first chapter with the heading "a. Maps are not 'facts' but the record of a moment in history " (1979: 1). This statement summarizes the thesis that he develops by inventorying the manuscript and print traditions of biblical maps. He quickly clarifies his thesis by comparing four atlases: those of Abel, Aharoni, Noth, and the widely used Westminster map by Wright/Filson:

But it would be desirable that the scholar could see before him [four principal maps by Abel, Aharoni, Noth, and Wright/Filson] combined onto a single map the different frontiers traced by these four experts. Then it would become obvious that they are drawing on some sources of information apart from the "concrete facts" of the literary texts or empirical observations. The "facts" especially of excavation are being differently interpreted in the different "schools"; and the schools themselves represent different traditions. Thus, each of these four maps is the record of some tradition as well as of some real geographical facts. In the same way ultimately every map, and not merely one attempting to reconstruct a historical situation already long past, is really a record of the particular phase in the history of cartography to which the author belongs (North, 1979: 2).

For its time, the monograph is a remarkable compendium and analysis of biblical map making and secondary studies on biblical geography. To a non-specialist, it represents a useful and adequate survey of the mapping tradition. Compared with the projected six-volume encyclopedic The History of Cartography being edited by David Woodward and the now late J. B. Harley, or with Leo Bagrow's earlier classic History of Cartography, North's piece offers the most comprehensive summary of biblical and Near Eastern materials.
It is important to emphasize that, as the title suggests, North's volume is a review of traditions of map making and scholarship, and is not an exercise in map making itself. He produces no maps or definitive geography. Those are not his intent or goal, and this must be kept in mind when judging his work against those who have made such attempts.
In spite of this, the difference between North's perception and understanding of the referentiality of historical and modern maps of antiquity and that of Zecharia Kallai is immediately apparent. Kallai's Historical Geography of the Bible: The Tribal Territories of Israel is a major study on the tribal period, as the title implies. And again it is his presuppositions more than his reconstructions that interest us here:

The fundamental basis of our examination of these lists [in Joshua, Judges, Numbers, and Deuteronomy] will be the premise that their descriptions constitute a picture of a once-existing reality and are not the fabrications of an ancient writer, nor a prophetic vision or theory, for they clearly bear the stamp of reality. The precise, convoluted lines of the territorial descriptions, as well as the inconsistency between the systems formed by the various lists, are incontestable evidence that we have before us no artificial portrayal. A visionary description or literary reworking would have resorted to smoother and more harmonious lines. It will suffice to compare these lists with the vision of Ezekiel, chapter xlviii, to realize the truth of this. However, where we can find no actual background to a passage, we must ascertain whether a literary revision has not occurred here and blurred the reality that is represented in the first instance.

Our premise, therefore, is that such descriptions were recorded in accordance with a given historical reality, which they reflect, irrespective of whether the descriptions were originally composed in their present form, or whether the passages show signs of subsequent redaction or revision. Such later editing, wherever it may be assumed, left the clearest -- and decisive -- impression on the relevant sources, making it difficult to discern its earlier formulations. Hence we shall refrain from basing our investigation on any attempt to reconstruct these lists historically and discover the nucleus of a description by removing the "additions"; we shall rather examine the existing text as we find it. After we have elucidated the geographical significance of the lists, we shall be in a position to investigate the time when these lists portrayed existing conditions (Kallai, 1986: 16).

Kallai's willingness to work with a final-form text would resonate strongly in many quarters of biblical scholarship today. Approving glances would be cast not only by the roster of final-form critics, but also by some more historically minded colleagues who have learned that immediate emending some types of biblical materials is unwarranted. For example, information in genealogies may be obscured or lost in attempts to reconstruct an ur-reading or an "accurate" history. We can applaud Kallai's willingness to work first with what he receives before trying to unravel the tradition.
Other aspects of his statement are puzzling. To make convolution and inconsistency in biblical materials criteria for reliability, authenticity, or historicity is unusual. As a result, some his remarks -- to the extent that the quotations are representative -- illustrate characteristics of map making that North criticized, especially his confidence in historical referentiality and objectivity. Hence, if his work were added to the list of four whom North cited, the same mixture of general information and specific personal and traditional details would emerge.
An attempt to separate these elements can be seen in Aharon Kellerman's Time, Space, and Society: Geographical Societal Perspectives. Admittedly, he is neither a biblical specialist nor cartographer and is not speaking directly of maps, so we are moving outside the worlds and perspectives of North and Kallai. Instead, Kellerman offers a geographer's perspective on spatiality that confronts readers with ancient religion in the age of modern politics:

The processes of change in Israeli temporality and spatiality have immense ideological loadings that are typical of transitions in other values and structures in a society. The Judaic notions of time and space are ancient; those of Zionism, socialism and capitalism started to evolve in the nineteenth century and were imported into European Jewish society and, through immigration, into the Land of Israel. The processes of change may be summarized as follows. The weakening of Judaic spatiality and temporality stemming from secularization trends was simultaneously coupled with the strengthening of socialist-Zionist temporality and spatiality, starting in the early 1900s and culminating in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, the nesting of Zionist-nationalistic and capitalist notions of time was taking place. The dominance of Zionist-socialist time and space in pioneering Israel did not prevent a penetration of Judaic elements into socialist time-space. This blending process continued in later Israeli society, when a gradual shift occurred toward capitalist and nationalist notions of time and space; nevertheless, political elements of time-space were left strong.

The current pluralism in time-space notions in Israeli society reflects not only conflicts among the several approaches but interactive influences as well. All this leads to a minimal consensus on temporality and spatiality, consisting of a variety of elements originating in different approaches. Examples of these elements are the use of the Jewish calendar, the use of settlements as a political tool, and the increased emphasis on time as an economic resource. Israeli society may thus be typified as having both strong temporality and strong spatiality, the first, partially of ancient Judaic origin and the second with modern Zionist and capitalist roots (Kellerman, 1989: 96-97).

Kellerman is not directly concerned with visual representations of geographical space. As noted, he is a geographer and not a cartographer. But his dividing Israel's view of space and time into Judaic, Zionist-socialist, and capitalist categories is helpful. The division enables him to assess the interaction among religion (or religious tradition), politics, and history. As a result, he can demonstrate both the subtly and centrality of spatial subtexts in matters of enormous international importance.
We may pause to summarize by noting that the three authors are representative of 1) varying attitudes that accompany biblical map making, 2) the potential effect that those attitudes have on modern perceptions of space, and 3) reciprocally, the effect that modern (i.e., current) perceptions of space have on understandings of the past. Seemingly, Robert North's position with regard to maps of antiquity and Aharon Kellerman's view of the cultural spatiality of modern Israelis have weathered the tests of time. Kallai's view, with the mimetic and referential tone expressed here and elsewhere, contrasts with the other two (even though they are not completely in mutual agreement). As North implies, however, Kallai's disposition more than his own has dominated biblical history and geography.
The fourth example illustrates an attempt to plot inferences in literary texts on a two dimensional cartographic plane. Several of Philip Alexander's studies on Jewish geography have been published as a 1982 article in the Journal of Jewish Studies on the geography of the Book of Jubilees and in a broader review of "Early Jewish Geography" in a 1992 entry in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. The latter contains an abridged section on Jubilees that follows the former article.
Alexander follows Aharoni in accepting three types of geographical texts in the Hebrew Bible: territorial administrative lists, itineraries of expeditions and conquests, and historical geographical descriptions (Alexander, 1992: 978). The same categories apply to post-biblical Jewish geographical texts. It is Alexander's treatment of the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 and the derivative texts in the mid-2nd century B.C.E. Book of Jubilees 8-10 that attract our firmest attention.

The Table of Nations forms the basic "world map" of the Jews in the biblical and postbiblical periods, and it was constantly reinterpreted to fit the changing state of their geographical knowledge. The assumption was that, being Scripture, the Table must be an accurate and comprehensive picture of the world. As the political scene shifted and new peoples came within the Jewish horizon, they were related to the Table.

. . . If we exclude its simple reuse in 1 Chr 1: 4-27, the earliest and most significant interpretation of Genesis 10 is in Jubilees 8-10. Jubilees (which dates from the mid 2d century B.C.E.) attempts to project the genealogy of Genesis 10 onto a standard world map of its day. It has been suggested that the author of Jubilees actually drew a map, but (as often happens with complex diagrams in manuscripts) it has not survived (Alexander 1992: 980).

Figures 1 and 2: Alexander, JJS and ABD. (click on maps to enlarge)

In both his articles, Alexander introduces a line-drawing sketch of the map he believes was envisaged (and may have been included) in the Book of Jubilees (1982: 213; 1992: 982). In each he acts on his supposition that the image existed in the mind of the ancient author (Figures 1 and 2). The two drawings vary in detail. The most significant is the 90o rotation of the later one in order to orient the top of the map toward the east where the 1982 drawing showed north at the top.
Alexander draws the lands of Shem, Ham, and Japheth using the well-known T-O form (terra-oceanus) that divides Asian (the Middle East), African, and European land masses by two T shaped bodies of water, the long perpendicular part representing the Mediterranean and the horizontal part representing the Nile on the south and Don flowing to the Black Sea on the north. The entire world is surrounded by ocean (O). In this configuration, Jerusalem is at the center, the omphalos of the map (Figures 3 a-d).

Figures 3 a-b, 3c-d: Examples of T-O drawings and maps. (click on maps to enlarge)
Alexander notes the political and cartographic significance of the map:

The Jubilees mappa mundi is more than a piece of disinterested cartography which tries to reconcile the Bible with the science of the day. Like many other maps, it a political statement. Jubilees stresses that the division of the world after the flood was solemnly agreed to by the sons of Noah (Alexander 1992: 982).

.............

The Jubilees world map is the earliest example of a type of world map that, despite the advances of scientific geographers such as Eratosthenes and Ptolemy, predominated in European culture down almost to the time of Columbus. Its essential features are reproduced in a series of Christian T-O maps, such as Richard of Haldingham's famous and elaborate Hereford Map (ca. 1290 c.e.). It is unclear whether the Christian T-O maps go back to the lost drawing of the Jubilees map, or whether they are derived from the written text of Jubilees alone. Jubilees was certainly known to some Christian authors in its Greek translation, and it seems to have influenced the patristic Diamerismos literature, which is concerned with dividing up the world among the sons of Noah (Alexander 1992: 982).

Alexander has done his homework well. The centering of the omphalos or navel on Jerusalem that he emphasizes in his articles, the scholarly controversy about the Christian use of the T-O form, the politics of the descriptions, and the place of the Table of Nations and Book of Jubilees in discussions of map making are all widely documented.
From the point of view of our investigation, however, there are several problematic assumptions. First is the presupposition that later tradition well into the Common Era may have, or did, draw upon the Jubilees map, even though we have no Jubilees map! We should note that Ptolemy alludes to a tripartite division of lands that he follows in his longitude - latitude grid (Georgraphia, Bk. VII, Chap. V), and that other recent historians of cartography share Alexander's view. However, the presence of such a Jubilees map is based on an assumption -- if I read Alexander and others correctly -- that it could have easily fallen out of the manuscript tradition because it would have existed separately (Alexander, 1982: 197), but that it nevertheless served as a model for Christian cartographers. In its absence, however, it is difficult to say that "the Jubilees map is the earliest example of" the T-O maps, whatever the origins of the form. The T-O form is a template. To have -- or not have -- the actual template is different from having a text that one thinks fits easily into the template. The issue raised by Alexander is, did the author use the technology of map making? His argument seems circular.
Secondly, the explanation for the T-O form's dominate usage is more complex than his statement conveys. To explore the issue would take us beyond the scope of this paper. However, we can note two important elements. 1) The form has cosmological and theological meanings that require it to be seen in a broader cultural context than merely a tradition of form-transmission. 2) If he is correct, then we have another case of "cartographic amnesia" similar to that plaguing Ptolemy's longitudinal and latitudinal grid that was lost or forgotten for several centuries. Ptolemy's insights are thought to have been ahead of their time, and when they were recalled, they were accompanied by advances in technologies associated with navigation and exploration. That analogous circumstances -- practical or technological advances -- affected the T-O form seems highly unlikely, and I find no reference to such a process in the secondary literature.
Ralph W. Brauer's small study on Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography (1995), our fifth example, again takes us away from immediate contact with biblical materials. As the title suggests, it draws on cartographic images of various Muslim societies in order to appraise the spatial perceptions in each.
Brauer documents a number of maps that do not contain clear boundary markers or lines separating territories. In this, they are similar to recent maps of Saudi Arabia that do not delineate borders within the neutral zones with Iraq and Kuwait or on the southern border separating the nation from its neighbors because of the desert Rub al-Khali. In Brauer's view of Muslim geography, "border zones" existed where boundary lines did not. These were areas where the sovereignty of neighboring powers competed and overlapped at the outer reaches of the sovereigns' domains. His illustrations (Brauer, 1995: 29) show conical lines that overlap to illustrate that power diminishes in proportion to the distance from the power center (Figures 4 a b).

Figure 4a: Concepts. (click on map to enlarge) Figure 4b: Border Zones. (click on map to enlarge)

On the margins, neighboring powers compete and/or share "control." The maps represent the political reality on the ground.

It was demonstrated that in fact medieval Arabo-Islamic geographers, from the earliest scholars working at the beginning of the ninth century right through to the fourteenth century days of Ibn Khaldun, if they admitted the existences of political boundaries at all, did not conceive of the margins of adjoining individual states as sharp borderlines. Regardless of whether they addressed boundaries formed by states falling within Dar al-Islam or between Dar al-Islam as a whole and states of Unbelievers, geographers described all such borders in terms implying boundary zones of significant depth surrounding a core area of any given political entity within which its capital was located. Transition zones associated with external frontiers were shown to be occupied by a mixed border population differing in its composition from that of the core areas of these states (Brauer, 1995: 65).

A central polity's power diminished in proportion to a region's distance from the center, and the maps reflect this. Brauer insists, as well, that the geographical concept of transition zone was widely shared by the people of the time and was not restricted to the cartographers. They also shared a distinction between internal and external boundaries, the former between two Muslim states, the latter between Muslim and non-Muslim states (Brauer, 1995: 66). Geographers between 820 and 1320 A.D., nevertheless, did not seem to have a concept of area, a lack that Brauer credits to the breakdown of communication between these specialists and Arabo-Islamic mathematicians of the day who were already using area as an abstract concept (Brauer, 1995: 67). From this he poses a query:

With these data we concluded that, in accordance with Ibn Khaldun's dictum, medieval Muslim states were indeed conceived of a being surrounded on all sides by boundary zones and hence lacked the sharply defined territory that would require border lines. Clearly, one could conclude that such states cannot have been conceived of as territorial states by the people of the time (Brauer, 1995: 67).

Although he does not develop his insight, Brauer strongly implies a linkage between boundary lines and state- or nationhood. In other words, as many others have argued, boundary lines are constitutive parts of nations, states, and empires, but are lacking in less centralized political structures. Boundaries are associated with knowledge and power so that, in non-state environments, spatiality bears a different meaning. This needs to be remembered when considering biblical maps.