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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a modern breathtaking visual tour of Paul's journeys, April 18, 2009
This review is from: In the Footsteps of Paul (Hardcover)
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Several years ago, when I visited the modern ruins of Ephesus, it sent chills up my spine to realize I was walking on the same streets and standing in the same amphitheater where the apostle Paul had ministered many centuries before. At the time, I thought to myself how amazing it would be to tour the modern sites today where Paul had lived and ministered. While it is easy to reach many of those sites in modern Greece, Turkey, Italy and Israel, it would require quite a long travel itinerary! And, some of those sites are not easy to reach by any manner. Fast-forward to 2009, and Ken Duncan's release of "In the Footsteps of Paul". Ken has done what I always wanted to do - taken a step-by-step journey to the modern sites of Paul's birth, conversion, ministry, and eventual martyrdom. Ken's photographs are simply stunning - and they inspire the same chills that I felt standing on the alabaster streets of modern Ephesus. "In the Footsteps of Paul" tells the story and ministry of Paul in chronological sequence with Ken's photography, verses from the Book of Acts, and with added insight from among Billy Graham, C.S. Lewis, C.H. Spurgeon, Rick Warren and many others. There are 2 maps to provide you a geographic context to the photographs (although they don't appear until the second section), and I found myself bookmarking them as a reference as I followed the subsequent journeys. While on the surface, you could scan just the stunning photography, it is the biblical context and ministry that provides a deeper study on so many levels. And it is in this context that I found this book a must-have.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful photos, disappointing text, March 6, 2009
This review is from: In the Footsteps of Paul (Hardcover)
The idea for In the Footsteps of Paul by Ken Duncan is a good one. A kind of a photo-journal of the places the apostle Paul visited on his various missionary journeys. The pictures in the book are beautiful. Some of them look exactly as I imagine the Biblical locations to have looked. Some show a more modern portrayal of these old cities. And still others demonstrate how cities often decline and fall into disrepair over time. While I really enjoyed the photography, I found the rest of the book to be lacking. I would have preferred to have only Biblical text, and of course captions identifying the photos, as the entire text of the book. Instead, there were also many quotes used, as well as narrative by the author. The quotes used on many of the pages were distracting. Some of the narrative provided was OK, but much of that, like the quotes, was a distraction to both the photos and the Biblical text. The other thing I found off-putting about this book was the number of times the author listed a photo as a place Paul "probably" saw, or "must have" seen. If we do not know for sure it is a place he actually traveled to, saw or experienced, I don't understand it's place in the book. I prefer accuracy, not probably or might have. This would make a good coffee table book, if you just want to flip through it and look at some amazing photos, but the written content leaves something to be desired.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gorgeous Images, March 18, 2010
This review is from: In the Footsteps of Paul (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
With fantastically clear photographs, and just enough narrative to make it both accessible and a worthwhile educational pursuit (though the prose is clearly not for the seasoned scholar), this work belongs on the coffee table of the amateur biblical student. In this case, however, the book lives by the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, and so is sparing with its prose. The purpose of the book is to show people the things they read about, whether in the Bible or in a textbook, rather than requiring them to lean solely on imagination. As it is, the book is worth the modest investment and is quite handsome a living room table.
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