BetaUr to the Second Templedrag to pan · scroll to zoom · click any place, event or verse
200 km
The Old Testament Atlas
Ur to the Second Temple · prepared by Taylor Halverson, Ph.D.
Fifteen hundred years of Old Testament history laid on the land it happened on:
88 places, 41 journeys, 36 military campaigns, 33 excavated objects, twelve ancient peoples and
nine eras, each drawn in real coordinates and tied to the verse that reports it.
Beta
Places, routes, dates and identifications are still being reviewed. Where scholars disagree — the
location of Sinai, the date of the exodus, the sea crossing, the cities of the plain — the atlas follows
the traditional identification and says so in the entry rather than choosing silently.
On the evidence
All 601 scripture references were checked against book and chapter counts. Regnal dates follow Thiele's
synchronised chronology. Inscription dates, findspots and museum holdings were checked against published
translations and museum records; disputed points — Samaria falling in 722 or 720, the figure on the Black
Obelisk — are named as disputed.
On the routes
Every route leg was checked against the coastline and stepped through real roads, rivers and caravan
stations: none crosses water, and none runs more than about 200 km without a waystation — except the
Arabian incense road, where the desert genuinely is that empty. Routes follow the historic network
(Via Maris, the King's Highway, the Euphrates road) but remain schematic, and kingdom outlines are
approximate zones, not surveyed frontiers.
On the Jerusalem plan
Walls, gates, valleys and the water system are drawn from the excavated and surveyed lines in four
building phases — David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Nehemiah. Reconstructed stretches are named as such in the entry.
The map is the document; everything else is a way of asking a question about it. Nine eras
run down the left and across the bottom, layers sit above the map, and the panel on the right holds whatever
you last clicked.
Finding your way in
Come, Follow Me (key w) opens the reading year: pick a week and the map sets itself to that
reading — era, layers, places and one note on what the ground adds.
Tours is the easiest start: seven narrated walks that set the map up stop by stop.
Presenter (key m) strips the controls and enlarges every label for a classroom projector.
Scale in the left rail jumps between the four scales the Old Testament is read at — Crescent,
Egypt and Sinai, Canaan, the ridge country — or straight into Jerusalem (shift-1 to shift-5).
Nine eras across the bottom and down the left; arrow keys step through them.
Search (key /) reaches places, events, peoples, objects, city features and scripture references.
Layers and lines
Layer chips at the top of the map, with Clear, All and Reset; number keys toggle them.
Journeys, places and events show by default — campaigns, finds, roads and tribes are opt-in.
Hover any line to name it; click a journey or campaign for its stage-by-stage distances and days.
Clicking anything in the right panel rings it on the map and turns its layer on for you.
Time and text
Timeline (key C) opens the chronology: Judah and Israel's kings side by side, the prophets who
overlap them, and the empires above. Click a reign to read it; click a prophet to fly to his home town.
Every scripture reference is a button. In the Verses tab, place names inside the text are
clickable and the map follows the verse you are reading.
Seeing the ground
Jerusalem plan (key J), or open Jerusalem's entry and pick a building phase.
Satellite and Street map swap the parchment for real imagery, down to a single excavation.
Click any photograph — on the map or in a panel — to see it full size with its licence. Esc closes
whatever is open.
Sources
Coastlines and modern borders: Natural Earth (public domain), 1:50m.
Scripture text: King James Version, World English Bible and Bible in Basic English (public domain).
Photographs of sites and artefacts: Wikimedia Commons — each carries a link to its source and licence.
Author · Teacher · Tour leader · Scripture scholar
Taylor Halverson is a scholar of scripture and a teacher of learners — an entrepreneurship professor in the
BYU Marriott School of Business who spends his working life helping people find and act on the best ideas
and tools available to them.
He is the author and editor of more than fifty books and nearly a thousand articles and blog posts, and a
builder of scripture study resources: the ScripturePlus app with Scripture Central, whose scripture YouTube
channel he co-hosted to more than fifty million views, and BYU's Virtual Scripture Group, whose team spent
more than five years reconstructing New Testament Jerusalem in three dimensions. This atlas belongs to that
same body of work — tools made so that ordinary readers can see what specialists see.
He leads tours to Israel and the Middle East, China, India, Central America, Europe, and the national parks
of the American West, where he unfolds how geology, geography, civilization, and scriptural texts created our
beautiful present day.
Academic training
Ph.D., Judaism & Christianity in Antiquity — Indiana University
Ph.D., Instructional Systems Technology — Indiana University
M.A., Biblical Studies — Yale University
B.A., Ancient Near Eastern Studies — Brigham Young University
Two doctorates in two separate fields — the ancient world, and the design of learning. Both of them are
in this tool.