The Land and the Book is the result of over 40 years of missionary work in the Bible lands by William M. Thomson. To picture the scenes and scenery of the Holy Land, and to portray the manners and customs of the present inhabitants that illustrate the Bible, is the main object of the work. But to do that right, one must have seen and felt them; as this the author has done through many years of adventure, and whatever of life and truthfulness there may be in his illustrations is due to that fact.

The Bampton Lectures were inaugurated at the University of Oxford in 1780 at the behest of William Bampton. Bampton, who left Oxford a generous bequest of land and estates, stipulated that the university in turn establish an annual series of eight lectures to be delivered in the University Church.

The land where the Word-Made-Flesh dwelt among men must ever continue to be an important part of Revelation, and Palestine may be fairly regarded as the divinely prepared tablet whereupon God’s messages to men have been graven in ever-living characters by the Great Publisher of Glad Tidings. It is from this land we have received that marvelous spiritual language through which we gain nearly all true religious knowledge. Here it was devised and first used, and here are found its best illustrations. The sites and scenes described in The Land and the Book were visited many times during the author’s long residence in the country; the results, so far as they bear on biblical illustration, appear in the current narrative. The conversations were held in the open country, on horseback, by the wayside, or beneath the traveler’s tent, and the reader is at liberty to regard himself as a compagnon de voyage. Volume one covers the Kingdom of Judah, including within its territorial limits the ...

Central Palestine, comprising Samaria and Lower and Upper Galilee, was not only the largest but also the most beautiful and fertile portion of the land of Israel, and it is now preeminently distinguished for the number, variety, and importance of its historic sites and sacred scenes. There lived and labored most of the great prophets mentioned in the Old Testament, and there also dwelt the Savior of men during nearly the entire period of his life on Earth. Though he was born in Bethlehem, Nazareth was his home, and in Capernaum, “his own city,” on the shore of the Sea of Gennesaret, many of his mighty works were accomplished. To the believer and student of the Bible, the entire country from Bethlehem to Dan, and from Dan to Hermon, the Mount of the Transfiguration, and from there to “the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,” is invested with unique and unparalleled interest. Thomson’s personal acquaintance with that region has been exceptionally intimate, and “through every part of it he ha...

The previous volumes of this collection covered Southern Palestine, Jerusalem, Central Palestine, and Phoenicia—mainly devoted to the Promised Land west of the Jordan. The present volume—the third and last—relates to the Lebanon, Coelesyria, Anti-Lebanon, Damascus, Bashan, Gilead, and the regions “beyond Jordan eastward.” Though not originally included in the Land of Promise, those adjacent districts were closely connected with it. Some of them were the first that were occupied by the patriarchs of old, others were the first taken possession of by the Hebrew nation, and all of them were most intimately associated with the children of Israel in their social, civil, and religious institutions and in their secular history. In traversing those regions, therefore, we are still in the land of the Bible, and drawing our biblical illustrations from the manners and customs, the scenes and scenery of the Holy Land.

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