Your Opinion on Bible Atlas and Archaeology Magazine

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jwithnell

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Are any of you familiar with the ESV Bible Atlas?

I am trying to select a book (not a "kids" book) that we will frequently use next school year teaching my kids about the historical, social, and geographical setting for the Bible. I love the Biblical World put out by National Geographic, but it assumes the "truth" about such things as the documentary hypothesis and makes frequent mention of the "myths" of the Bible.

Along similar lines, which is the least antagonistic of the Biblical archaeology magazines that we might use as a resource? I'm not fond of the "we'll believe it when science proves it" approach that is so often assumed, but can filter much of that if the scholarship is the highest quality and generally acceptable.

If you're interested in what we're doing, and can make recommendations, Sonlight has formed the backbone of our schooling for the last 5+ years and Abeka before that (K-12, yes I'm that old). I like a literature-based approach. My two youngest are in middle school and elementary. I'd like to take a break from the typical cycles of American and World History. The boys have also had tons of Bible taught from a "great stories of scripture" approach. I'm aiming for a kind of social studies of the Biblical setting and have found nothing that really fits that approach. OT and NT surveys don't quite capture this, though we would read through the entire history of the scriptures. (I.e., Kings or Chronicles but not both. John and one of the synoptic gospels.) I've previously been successful at personally designing portions of curriculum so am confident in trying this. We'll used separate math, language arts, and science that I've already selected, so I'm developing the history and reading "core." Obviously, we'd use a lot more than an atlas.
 
I hadn't heard of the ESV Bible Atlas and so, in curiosity, I clicked on the link. I recognize many of the illustrations in the sample pages as reprints from the ESV Study Bible. So my initial reaction is to wonder if perhaps there might not be much material in the atlas that couldn't be gleaned from the study Bible already. Just something to keep in mind. I don't really know much that can help you beyond that.
 
We don't have any ESV Bibles, so the materials would be new to us. I hadn't thought about it until now, but even in my own Bible it sometimes takes a search because, "that diagram is in here somewhere." Does anyone here know enough about the ESV to assess the strength of the scholarship for the materials attatched to the translation?

Steve, I might have one of the "Streams" books here in the house; I hadn't thought about them in years.
 
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