Biblical geography is notoriously difficult

Source: Jesuit Institute South Africa

Fr Peter Knox SJ from the Jesuit Institute South Africa writes: Towns and places mentioned in the time of Jesus and Paul are frequently impossible to locate. They might have been given a much greater significance in biblical accounts than they really had. Or they might have changed their names many times over the past 2000 years.

This would not be surprising since the land we now know as the Middle East is a crossroad of trade routes. From north to south, Africa to Turkey, and Iran to the Mediterranean, people have been travelling, trading, invading, settling, marrying, and dying for thousands of years. Clans, tribes and nations have come and gone and claimed various parcels of land as their own. With no authority to ensure justice, conquest was the final arbiter.

If we go back to our scriptures, we need to admit a great degree of agnosticism (meaning ignorance or not knowing) regarding places mentioned in significant Bible stories. For example, where was Eden in the Book of Genesis? Or the Reed Sea through which Moses led the fleeing Hebrews in the Exodus? Or all those other places mentioned in their forty-year wandering in the desert? Another example: scholars recognise at least four contenders for the village of Emmaus (Luke 24), which was "seven miles from Jerusalem."

Did crossing a river and defeating an army give a people the right to claim an entire swathe of land, even if God pointed them in that direction? Did the arrival of European colonists in Africa give them the right to own the land and plunder its resources? Did it give them the right to wipe out entire populations? Did the Boer Covenant before the Battle of Blood River really prove God's favouritism? Was apartheid justified because certain theologians claimed that it was God's will for South Africa? Does Rwanda have a right to the strategic minerals of Eastern DRC while its proxy army is terrorising the Congolese citizens?

God does not play geopolitics. We don't believe God makes covenants giving people the land "from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River." This term is equally offensive to other ears as the expression "from the river to the sea." We don't believe God has worked this way in history. Nobody claiming such divine sanction to invade other people's land would have a case in the International Court of Justice.

Nobody can march into Canada or Congo or Crimea, Gaza or Greenland, Palestine or Panama, and claim "this is ours." Might does not confer such a right. Humanity has evolved over 2000 years. We no longer follow the law of the jungle.

Nowadays, our systems of international law, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and the rights of people to safety and a home are much more refined than they were in biblical times. We cannot just nod and say "Amen" because a geographical claim was made in biblical times. We cannot endorse claims based on dubious history or geography. The Russian Empire no longer exists. Biblical Israel no longer exists. The International Court of Justice exists. It resolves territorial claims. It is our duty as citizens to uphold the rulings of this court, no matter our religion or nationality.

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