First 'Bible Map' Published 500 Years Ago Still Influences How We Think About Borders, Study Suggests

A backwards Bible map that changed the world

Five hundred years ago, a Bible accidentally printed with a backwards map of the Holy Land sparked a revolution in how people imagined geography, borders, and even nationhood. Despite the blunder, the map reshaped the Bible into a Renaissance book and spread new ideas about territorial organization as literacy expanded. Over time, sacred geography evolved into political boundary-making, influencing not only early modern thought but modern attitu…

How the first Bible to include a map helped spread the idea of countries with borders

Five hundred years ago the first Bible featuring a map was published. The anniversary has passed uncelebrated, but it transformed the way that Bibles were produced. The map appeared in Christopher Froschauer’s 1525 Old Testament, which was published in Zürich and widely distributed in 16th-century central Europe. Yet despite being a groundbreaking moment in the Bible’s history, the initial attempt was hardly a triumph. It is flipped along the no…

First 'Bible map' published 500 years ago still influences how we think about borders, study suggests

The first Bible to feature a map of the Holy Land was published 500 years ago in 1525. The map was initially printed the wrong way round—showing the Mediterranean to the East—but its inclusion set a precedent which continues to shape our understanding of state borders today, a new Cambridge study argues.

The first Bible map

The first Bible to feature a map of the Holy Land was published 500 years ago in 1525. The map was initially printed the wrong way round – showing the Mediterranean to the East – but its inclusion set a precedent which continues to shape our understanding of state borders today,