Alrighty folks, since the content of the next few chapters is just a looooooooong list of villages, towns and cities and descriptions outlining the borders of the territories for each of the tribes of Israel, we’re gonna be ramping up the pace significantly here.
All of these geographical descriptions were done via words because map-making was not a really a thing in the Biblical era.
As far as we know from the historical records available to us, the Israelites did not engage in the practice of drawing maps on papyrus or animal skins.
Nevertheless, for us modern folks, a good ‘ole map is the quickest and easiest way to see the tribal boundaries as described in Joshua chapter 18 and 19.
Having said that, even looking at a map can still give us the wrong idea of the real reality on the ground unless we understand the boundaries assigned to each territory.
I gather 9 out of 10 people aren’t gonna be able to understand that last sentence, so let me rephrase this.
When a tribe of Israel took control over a certain territory, as I mentioned before, they didn’t actually take control of every square inch of the piece of real estate they had inherited.
The truth is some cities and villages came under Israelite control while others remain inhabited by the enemy.
And other areas weren’t controlled by anyone, a sort of no-man’s land so to speak.
So if we were to create a map that actually accurately represented the real situation, it would more resemble a huge white piece of paper with clusters of colored dots sprawled throughout the page with a lot of open spaces in between.
The colored dots would represent the areas Israel had successfully subjugated and the open spaces would represent everything else (areas inhabited by the Canaanites or no-man’s territory).
Another challenge that causes even the finest Bible scholars on the planet to stumble and fall flat on their faces is that there are a ton of place names ascribed to certain territories that can no longer be identified.
And in many cases, different places will go by the same name.
For example, did you know that in the United States there are 12 cities that go by the name of Philadelphia.
That’s right, Philadelphia isn’t just located in Pennsylvania homies.
There’s a Philadelphia city in Illinois, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana and Virginia.
And guess what, we have the same thing with the Holy Scriptures.
There are several places named Bethel, a ton of Kadeshes, and at least to my knowledge, at least three places called Gilgal.
Some of these places are easy to identify and more often than not it’s so obvious a given town’s name was the result of an attempt to render a Hebrew town name into another language (usually Arabic or Aramaic).
Unfortunately, there are many other names that have disappeared with the sands of time.
Anyways, understand that at the end of the day, a map of the ancient world is just an educated guess representing the best that scholarship has to offer us right now.
One archaeological dig unearthing the discovery of some new location could instantly overturn the accuracy of any map in existence today.
My point is don’t be a map-worshipping fool man.
Over and out homies.
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