Geographical References - The Gospel of Matthew

This map covers the geographic places with proper names that are referenced in the Gospel of Matthew. More analysis is below the map.



Matthew's Geographical Frame of Reference

The Gospel of Matthew, in general, had a broader geographic span than the Gospel of Mark. Some noticeable contributing factors are:

• Matthew's gospel recounts Jesus' birth, with references to Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt -- a time period in Jesus' life that Mark did not cover. 
• Matthew provides basic orientation in history and ancestry, a common-enough feature of Jewish narratives, and so mentions Babylon. 
• Matthew sees the events as taking place in a certain Jewish religious prophetic context, and so mentions the designated territories of the ancient tribes where we find much of the action of his narrative: in the land of Judah, the land of Zebulun, and the land of Naphtali. It's arguable that the land of Judah was essentially a precursor to Judea, so "land of Judah" was combined with Judea on this map.
• Matthew provides more "red letter" text of Jesus' conversations, where Jesus makes reference to Nineveh, Sodom, and Gomorrah -- so there are conversational mentions of places that are not directly connected to a person or event in the narrative. I'm aware that there's debate not only over the placement of Sodom and Gomorrah, but even over their historicity; those debates are beyond the scope of this post where the question is more simply: what would the earliest readers of Matthew's gospel have thought?

In all, the map indicates 36 distinct places which, together, are mentioned 115 times in the Gospel of Matthew. The most commonly-mentioned places are Galilee and Jerusalem; those two items make up roughly 25% of the geographical references in the Gospel of Matthew. For perspective, those same two places made up roughly 33% of the geographical references in the Gospel of Mark.

Here, in the details of the maps, we see the beginnings of a trend: the further away a place is located (from the perspective of the original author), the more likely we are to have the place referenced by the name of a larger geographic territory, while the closer a place is (from the original author's perspective), the more likely the author is to include names of smaller regions, specific cities or towns, and landmarks such as gardens and specific individual buildings.

Geographical References - The Gospel of Mark

Continuing the "geography" series, the next map covers the geographic places with proper names that are referenced in the Gospel of Mark, the shortest of the Biblical gospels and considered by many to be the earliest-written of the Biblical gospels. Additional notes are placed below the map.
The Breadth of the Geographical Interest
The Gospel of Mark has more places than the maps we have previously reviewed, with 27 distinct places mentioned, and 71 distinct mentions of those places. Here we see an increase in the variety of places: a collection of regions, landscape features, towns or cities, and named places within or around the city. The majority of places mentioned are in the immediate vicinity of Jesus' known historical locations, and within the range that could be easily traveled in the Roman era. In a brief comparison to the eight non-canonical gospels covered in the previous posts, those eight documents mention 6 distinct places among them: Bethlehem, Israel, Jerusalem, the Jordan River, Judea, and Samaria. The number of distinct places mentioned does vary among those documents, from a low of zero in two of the non-Biblical gospels, to a high of four distinct places in the Proto-Evangelium of James. Interestingly, the non-canonical gospels mention two places that the Gospel of Mark does not mention: Samaria is mentioned in 2 of the 8 non-canonical gospels, and Bethlehem is mentioned in one of them, while neither is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark. The reason Bethlehem isn't mentioned in Mark is fairly clear: as the Gospel of Mark begins with Jesus as an adult, there is no reason to mention Bethlehem. The reason there is no mention of Samaria is more open to speculation, whether because it is a minor point in any of the narratives of Jesus' life, or because there is tension between Samaritans and Jews; either would be a plausible reason. While Mark mentions more non-Jewish places than I'd realized before plotting them on a map, he doesn't mention Samaria. (With a quick preview of the four Biblical gospels, the remaining ones all mention Samaria or Samaritans.)

Relative Geographical Context
The Gospel of Mark, as mentioned briefly, has 71 references to 27 distinct places. The most common places mentioned are Galilee and Jerusalem, which combine to make roughly 31% of the referenced geographical names. This compares to the combined total of the eight non-canonical gospels reviewed with 60 references to 6 places, with over 50% of the references being broad references to "Israel", and 75% of the references going to either "Israel" or "Jerusalem". To keep these findings in perspective, it may help to refer to the previous chart on the relative lengths of these documents. None of these non-Biblical gospels is as long as the Gospel of Mark; in fact, the five shortest of them combined are still not quite as long as the Gospel of Mark. However, by the time these 8 non-Biblical documents are all considered -- including some of the longer non-canonical gospels, there is over twice the amount of material as the Gospel of Mark but noticeably less context by way of physical geography.

Geographical References - Non-Canonical Gospels, Other than Gnostic Gospels

The next installment in the "geography" series covers the more commonly-known documents that are often referred to as gospels, but are not in the Bible, other than the Gnostic gospels discussed in the previous post. Again, against the background of the modern-day features that come pre-loaded on google maps, I have plotted the geographical items referenced in these alternative gospels. Additional notes are placed below the map.

The documents reviewed for this map, each with is own layer, are:

• The Gospel of the Savior
• The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 
• The Proto-Evangelium of James 
• The Gospel of Peter 

Among the four documents reviewed here, there are four distinct places mentioned:

• Bethlehem: 4 mentions (all in the Proto-Evangelium of James)
• Israel: 33 mentions (often indirectly by identifying a character as an "Israelite")
• Jerusalem: 8 mentions
• Judea: 7 mentions

Prominence of Israel as the Main Geographic Reference

Over 60% of all geographical references in these four documents are to Israel, including referring to someone as an Israelite. Israel is the only place mentioned in all four of the documents. In the Gospel of the Savior, the two references to Israel are the only geographical references. The Gospel of Peter mentions Israel twice. In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the narrator's introduction of himself as "Thomas the Israelite" constitutes 1/3 of the mappable geographical references in the document (the other two are references to Jerusalem). While the other documents reference "Israel" once or twice each, the Proto-Evangelium of James mentions Israel frequently, tallying up 28 of the 33 references to Israel, and 28 of the total 52 geographical references in the four documents currently reviewed. These references are often in the context "tribes of Israel", "children of Israel", "God of Israel", and similar constructions. That is, slightly over half of all geographical references in the four documents are references to Israel in the Proto-Evangelium of James.




Later analysis will put this finding in context against other documents to be reviewed.

Geographical References - Gnostic Gospels

I'm now trying my hand at some basic google maps to plot the geographical references in the Gnostic Gospels. The map below reflects some of my learning curve with google maps, no doubt. Amid the many modern-day features that come pre-loaded on these maps -- and it doesn't seem that google currently allows these pre-loaded features to be turned off -- I have plotted the geographical items referenced in the Gnostic Gospels. Some notes are in order and are placed below the map.



If we consider the classification "Gnostic Gospel" to be useful -- which is beyond the scope of this post -- then this map includes geographical references from all the documents that I have typically included in this classification: The Gospel of Thomas (Coptic), the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, and the Gospel of Mary. Among those 4 documents, together they reference a total of 5 different geographical items, with Jerusalem being mentioned 3 times in the Gospel of Philip for a total of 8 references to those 5 different geographical items:

	Israel / Israelite	Jerusalem	Jordan	Judea / Judaea	Samaria / Samaritan
Gospel of Thomas (Coptic)	1	0	0	1	1
Gospel of Philip	0	3	1	0	1
Gospel of Truth
Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Mary are counted among the Gnostic Gospels, but do not mention any geographical locations.

For thoroughness' sake I'd want to mention why a reference to "Nazareth" isn't plotted even though the Gospel of Philip includes several Nazareth-related words: it is because the author of the Gospel of Philip does not seem to consider it to be a geographical reference. Here is the passage in question from the Gospel of Philip, for those who want to assess for themselves whether "Nazorean", "Nazarene", or "Nazara" was recognized by the Gospel of Philip's author as having any geographical significance:

The apostles who were before us had these names for him: "Jesus, the Nazorean, Messiah", that is, "Jesus, the Nazorean, the Christ". The last name is "Christ", the first is "Jesus", that in the middle is "the Nazarene". "Messiah" has two meanings, both "the Christ" and "the measured". "Jesus" in Hebrew is "the redemption". "Nazara" is "the Truth". "The Nazarene" then, is "the Truth". "Christ" has been measured. "The Nazarene" and "Jesus" are they who have been measured.

The map above has layers, and when reviewing it in google maps you should be able to turn on and off the layers corresponding to each particular gnostic gospel, to allow an individual view of a particular gospel, or a combined view of all (the default view).

Christ is risen!

I have come to love life, and to enjoy it. And so I thank God that he thought our lives worth saving.

He is risen indeed!