Congratulations to the winners of last week’s giveaway of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands.
Elizabeth A. selected the five volumes of the Israel Collection, and Pamela M. chose Samaria and the Center, Jerusalem, Judah and the Dead Sea, Western Turkey, and Cultural Images of the Holy Land.
Thanks to everyone for participating!
Congratulations to Mark M. and Jason A., winners of the Israel Collection of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands. Thanks to all who entered.
We plan to have giveaways of other resources in the weeks to come and you’re invited to enter those drawings. If you’re brave enough to enter the Punchtab drawing (and there’s no downside to it as far as I can tell), your odds of winning are greatly increased because of the smaller number of entrants and opportunities to earn more entries.
Recently Tim Challies reflected on the tension between capturing a moment and enjoying a moment.
I think there’s some relevance to our favorite subject.
For as long as we have had easy access to cameras and then to video cameras we have been torn between enjoying a moment and recording a moment. It’s difficult to do both in equal measure. Many a father has returned home from a visit to the mountains having experienced the whole vacation with one eye closed and the other eye peering through a tiny little rectangle. Today the sheer ubiquity of cameras has escalated this problem. Almost every one of us now has a pocket-sized camera and video camera in our pocket or purse at all times. Comedian Jim Gaffigan pokes fun at himself saying, “I have more pictures of my kids than my father ever looked at me.”
I’ve seen too many people exchange the full-sensory, 360-degree experience of standing on the Mount of Olives or walking down a street in the Old City of Jerusalem in the hope of sharing a 2-D image on a screen with family in the future.
Challies concludes:
I wonder how many beautiful moments we miss because we are afraid we will miss them. Instead of living fully in the moment, enjoying the music or the sunrise or the games with our children, we fall into this strange habit of recording it all. We experience the sunrise through the lens of an iPhone instead of just basking in it, we tinker with focus and angles recording quality instead of just enjoying the music. When all is said and done, we’ve recorded an experience that we missed out on, and the replay is just never as good.
We need to stop believing that everything worth experiencing is worth recording. There’s nothing wrong with taking pictures and shooting video—of course there’s not!—but in all our clicking and in all our capturing, let’s make sure that we’re not missing out on life’s best experiences. Let’s learn to enjoy the moment. Give me one beautiful moment fully lived and fully enjoyed and I will trade it for a hundred moments where my phone stood between me and the source of that beauty.
This week we are going to give away two copies of the Israel Collection (volumes 1-5) of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands. Just as any father likes all of his children, I like all 18 volumes. But since these are not children, I can say without hesitation or fear of repercussion that the first five volumes are my favorite ones.
Israel is not only the center of God’s redemptive plan for the world, but it was my home for a long time. These photos reflect that, not only in terms of comprehensive coverage, but also in quality of photos because of repeated visits in various seasons and at different times of the day.
If you asked a father to describe a few characteristics of his children, he would beam with joy and respond immediately. I’m not going to tell you about my five children, but I will offer a few words about these five volumes.
Galilee and the North – my favorite place in Israel is on the shore of a lake where Jesus walked, talked, and gave us a tiny taste of the kingdom to come.
Samaria and the Center – this volume easily wins the “most improved” award because so many of the sites had restricted access during the years I was making the previous editions (Shiloh, Shechem, Samaria, Jericho, etc.).
Jerusalem – the “city of the Great King” is my favorite city in the whole world. I could teach a whole course on it. But I enjoy even more a quiet stroll along the walls in the early morning.
Judah and the Dead Sea – this really is a 3-in-1 volume, with about 700 photos of the Judean Wilderness and the Dead Sea area, another 300 photos of the Hill Country, and another 500 of the Shephelah and Coastal Plain. 
Negev and the Wilderness – I added a lot to sites previously included (Beersheba, Arad, tabernacle model, etc.), but a LandRover and some great friends got me to beautiful places you’ll probably never see. Indeed, the wilderness is “vast and dreadful,” but it also is majestic and inspiring.
This week you can sign up to win one of two free copies. One will be given away to entrants who use the email form. The other will go to those who enter with PunchTab. You can enter either or both. If you don’t win, you can purchase the Israel Collection with all of its 6,000 photographs for $149.99. If you do win and you already own the collection, we’ll refund your purchase or surprise you with something else. The drawing ends this Friday at 10 am Pacific Time.
(We need your email address to notify you if you win. We will not use it for anything else.)
David Gundersen has posted a review of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands. You can go there for the full review but I want to quote one paragraph:
The images also reflect the eye of an experienced teacher rather than a casual tourist or even a commercial tour guide. I have used plenty of these images in sermons, lectures, and distance education PowerPoints to illumine biblical stories, splash color on scriptural events, orient the audience to geographical dynamics, illustrate concepts and truths, visualize ancient metaphors, and show significant artifacts. Literally, no collection of images comes close in volume, coverage, quality, useability, information, copyright freedom, or customer service. Far from hyperbole, this image library truly is the only one of its kind.
He concludes:
This new and revised Pictorial Library of Bible Lands should be high on the list of resources for the serious or would-be Bible teacher. It would make a very special and practical gift from a college or seminary Bible class to their teacher, from a group of church members to their pastor or pastoral staff, or from a grown family to one of their Bible-hungry parents. Thanks to Professor Todd Bolen for his exhaustive work which is already serving Bible teachers, students, pastors, and church members around the world.
We love to hear how the photos are serving others. Thank you, Gunner.
The full review is here. Details and links to the collection start here. Free photos are here.
Ferrell Jenkins has warm words for the new edition of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands, suggesting that “every church should have a set of this material for the teachers to use in their teaching.” He knows from his own experience what is involved in creating a collection such as this:
Would you prefer to make your own photos? Try buying a good digital SLR camera starting at about $1500, flying to Israel (not to mention Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, the Greek Islands, Italy, et al.), renting a car for a few weeks, buying the gas. Oh, and don’t forget to hire a private plane for a few hours so you can get some good aerial photos. That might cost at least $389.
And what if the lighting conditions were not right for a good photos the day you were at a site? What if you don’t have time to get your photos organized and write a description of each one? Need I go on to make a point? Did I mention that living and teaching in Israel for a decade helps?
Every church should have a set of this material for the teachers to use in their teaching. Over the years I have found that some short-sighted groups (churches) will not make such an expenditure. The other choice is to buy the set for yourself.
I hear several lessons a week, and every one of them could be improved by the use of photos from this wonderful collection.
Thank you, Ferrell! And we thank all the others who have written us privately to express their appreciation. You can read the rest of Ferrell’s review here.
