Customer Reviews

The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford Archaeological Guides)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is important that any potential reader understand that this is a scholarly examination of the archaeological treasures of Israel. If you want a tourist guide this isn't it.

I was hoping for light reading about Israel when I ordered the book but as I travelled around Israel I found the book to be a good companion to me. It is a book that I will keep on my ministerial bookshelf as a resource!

As an archaeologist myself, I was excited by the reviews. But the books was a waste. The maps are poor and out of date, as is much of the descriptive information. I could not make head nor tail out of many of the descriptions-they were incomprehensible,inaccurate and impossible to follow both textually and geographically. Find the Blue Guide-even though it is out of date it is vastly superior.

A must if you plan on going to any of the historical areas of the Holy Land. Much superior to any of the "name" travel guides, incredible detail and historical perspective.

I asked an Old Testament scholar which guide he recommended for people visiting Israel, and this was his pick. So a seminary-grad friend and I each bought copies. We kept it with us everywhere we went and found it a most useful resource. It includes both historical backgrounds and summaries of all the major attractions. But don't look for it to include places such as Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum), even though that's the second most popular tourist site after the Western Wall in Jerusalem. This is an archaeological guide. It includes museums with collections relating to archaeology, but it is not intended to be a tourist's guide to every place in the Holy Land.

I have mixed impressions on this book.

It has the most comprehensive contents on the subject I saw in any other book. The text is live and it is a pleasure to read its contents - it is not easy to stop! The Biblical references are a plus and very welcome. It is a great tool for your travel planning as well an interesting reference book if you need study and understand the Bible.

On the other hand its illustrations, maps and photographies are a big deception - at last for me. I read a couple of British guides issued by the end of the XIX century with better illustrations and photographies.

The photographies in the book are in low number considering it is a "modern" travel book. All pictures, maps and illustrations are B&W and several of them of low quality. The illustrations are mere very poor stretches as you found in the books a couple of centuries ago. Maps are equally poor.

If you know any DK Eyewitness Travel books you probably will be deceived with this one.

Great description of both the sights and the surroundings of all of the different areas of the Holy Land. Provides background to understand the significance, as well as other importance in other times.

For sheer quantity of information, this book is unequaled. It also covers many places that are skipped over by most other guidebooks. But even with regard to the book's greatest virtue, its inclusiveness, a serious problem must be addressed, and this is the book's bias toward Latin sites, often to the exclusion of Byzantine sites. Some background may help contextualize this problem for those visiting the area for the first time. The Eastern Church has been present in the Holy Land from the beginning, and its oral and written traditions have been carefully passed down from one generation to another, through adversities of all kinds. The Latin Church, in comparison, is a relative newcomer, arriving "in force" only during the Crusades. Of course, human nature being what it is, the Crusaders, and the Franciscans after them, wanted their own holy sites and their own narratives. So a pilgrim to the Holy Land will often find parallel worlds, one Byzantine, and usually older, and one Latin, and usually more recent. And sometimes there are even specifically Protestant locations as well, such as the so-called "Garden Tomb" outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, that gained celebrity in the nineteenth century due to its promotion by General Charles Gordon. Unfortunately, Fr O'Connor sometimes ignores the Byzantine sites and narratives, or else gives them a dismissive line or two, while going on at great length about the Roman Catholic ones. Perhaps the most grievous of these omissions is St Gabriel's (Orthodox) Church in Nazareth, built over the spring (and site of the original well, before the nearby, Ottoman-built "Well of Mary" was constructed) from which the Virgin Mary would have drawn water, and where ancient sources consistently locate the Annunciation. Both of these (the Church and the well, not to mention a fine museum nearby) are omitted entirely from the book, in favor of the enormous (Catholic) Basilica of the Annunciation, which gets several pages. Nor will Protestants who take seriously the Garden Tomb as the location for the resurrection be pleased with the condescending treatment accorded it. A more practical problem concerns the size and weight of the book itself. It is too large to fit into even a large jacket pocket and too heavy to want to carry anyway, so its usefulness is limited by its format. The excellent "Blue Guide to Israel and the Palestinian Territories" avoids all of these drawbacks, although it appears to be out of print. Despite all these reservations, however, serious students of this wonderful part of the world will probably want to have access to this book.

This book is filled with the knowledge of vast experience and travel. If you want a book that doesn't just give the religiously naive and superstitious what they want to hear (like so many do), then this is your book. Excellent in several ways.