Bible: Then & Now

Rating:
Summary: Armchair tour of archeological Bible sites
Review: I bought this book for our church library and found it excellent! It is well-laid out in chapters on each archeological site of religious significance to the life of Christ, with an acetate "Then and Now" view of each site. My students really liked these acetate overlays and put them back and forth over the photos of modern day ruins. Each chapter tells of the Biblical significance and also the archeological significance of each place. Between the chapters lie double-page spreads of Bible stories and how they relate to the sites. This is an excellent book for Christians, amateur travelers, archeologists, architects, even for preteens and teens who play with Legos and can't stop drawing kid-style elevations of buildings.

Rating:
Summary: Great book that gives perspective to Biblical texts.
Review: The overlays are great. Some of the pictures do not show sites as they were in Biblical times but show them a few hundred years after the Bible was finished.

I would like to see another book like this with more cities in the time period of the Bible. I was looking for something on Crete.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent travel tool for viewing ruins
Review: This would be a great book to carry with you as you tour Israel. The artistic recreations of what the ruins used to look like are so helpful. I went to Israel once before, and even though the tour guides do their best to describe what the ruins looked like, a picture *is* worth a thousand words. This book covers major cities/ sites mentioned in the Bible, not just Roman or Crusader times which are often the emphasis in museums over there. Summaries of Biblical stories accompany the pictures. My only reason for not rating it a "five star" is that I wish it covered even more archaelogical sites. There are 14 overlapping illustrations superimposed over the photos of the ruins.