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The Bible's references to the geography of the land are accurate and reliable. But the allusions are incidental, not central to the narrative. However, if we put together the data on plant-distribution, allusions to climate and other material in the Old Testament, we find the description fits. Indeed, the evidence is reliable enough to shoe that throughout biblical times climate had been stable and the ecological zones we depict today are the same as in Old Testament times, the only differences being woodland cover, location of settlements and other such variables of human occupation.
The main geographical regions
The geographical divisions of Palestine can be seen in the map. We shall concentrate on these geographical features which influenced the course of political events in Old Testament times. The most striking distinctions are between the desert and the sown , the mountains and the coastal plains. South of a line from Aleppo to Hassetche in Syria the rainfall diminishes and turns the steppe into a desert, in a series of undulating plateaux between 300 and 1000 feet/90 and 300 m. The southern part of Palestine is also desert, the triangle-shaped Negev. The western part is a level or slightly undulating plain; the eastern sector is hilly, badly eroded and stony hammada desert. The Negev and Sinai to the South were the scene of Israel s wanderings before their settlement in the land .
The central backbone of folded limestone north of the Negev forms various low mountain chains from Judea through Samaria to lower Galilee. Upper Galilee consists of recent basalt lavas that break through the limestone cover. It is overlooked by Mt. Lebanon with its peaks rising over 3,300 feet/1,005 m and continued northwards into the Ansariye mountains. This hilly backbone was the nucleus of Israelite territory . East of these chains is the system of rift valleys, laced together by the Jordan Valley between the Lake of Galilee and the Dead Sea in the South, while the Orontes-Hama-Ghab depressions continue the geological fracture north into Syria.
The coast north of Gaza consists of a broad belt of shifting sand dunes that narrows progressively. From Jaffa/Tel Aviv northwards there is sufficient moisture to provide a vegetation cover that inhibits the further spread of dunes, and this stretch as far as the Yarkon River was Philistine territory. The plain of Sharon between the Yarkon and Crocodile rivers was swampy or heavenly forested, and formed a buffer zone between Philistia and Phoenicia, in whose sparsely settled area the tribe of Ephraim obtained a foothold. North of Mt. Carmel the coast is more rocky and indented and here the Phoenicians established their power in the natural harbors of Tyre and Sidon.
The influence of geography on events
The ecological transition between 'the land' and ' the wilderness' was of great significance in the Bible.The contrast between the Mountain 'spine' and the coastal plain was more widely important. The mountains had the slight advantage in higher rainfall, better drainage and in being more suitable for tree crops. There was a strong demand from Egypt and elsewhere for oil, wine, raisins, and dries figs this region produced. More important , the difficult terrain enabled every village to be a fortress and plenty of stone was available for building elaborate walled defenses. But on the coastal plain there was no stone, the settlements were difficult to defend, and the international highway of Via Maris built by the Egyptians remained a long time under Egyptian control. The plain was indeed the eastern border of the Mediterranean world, rather than the western fringe of Asia and its steppe peoples.
The Philistines settled on the southern part of the coast with Egyptian consent and they were guardians of the maritime highway. But the Phoenician realm began when the road left the coast to cross the Carmel range into the Plain of Jezreel. The Phoenicians appear to have respected the Philistine-Egyptian sphere of influence and did not expand further south.
When Egypt's influence waned, David and his generals deprived the Philistines of their conquests in the 'Shephelah' or foothill zone beyond the coast and confined them to the southern coastal plain. Philistia never recovered her former power. But Israel respected the Phoenician sphere of influence, since their trade was vital.
Solomon was not equipped to rival the Mediterranean power of the Phoenician merchants, though he did benefit from the direct opportunities of trade in the Red Sea ands the Indian Ocean, via his port at Ezion-geber on the Gulf of Aqaba.
But the penetration of the Indian Ocean by Israel and through her the Phoenician traders, threatened a monopoly Egypt had closely guarded. So Egypt became a centre of intrigues against Solomon, later instigating the revolt of Edom on the trade-route.
Later again Egypt backed Jerobeam's revolt which put an end to the united kingdom and terminated the menace of Judean trade in the Red Sea.
Greece, Rome and the New Testament
The rise of the Greek world in the conquests of Alexander the Great introduced a new factor. The thousand-year rule of Phoenicia was ruthlessly broken. To maintain its maritime interest, Alexander guaranteed all inland peoples their positions and rights. Greek settlers, Greek language and Greek civilization were now introduced on the Palestinian coast and remained- slightly modified by the Romans- for a thousand years. With the fall of the Carthaginian Empire in the West, Roman rule struck a final blow at the Phoenician civilization and the Roman occupation of Palestine followed.
In the New Testament we sense a contrast in atmosphere between the Judean interior with its rural village life (portrayed in the Gospels) and the civic atmosphere of Roman city life on the coast and beyond the Mediterranean Sea (depicted in letters). The fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 saw the intensive occupation of the hill lands too, with a Roman road network and Roman camps in the interior grafted on to the Hellenized world of the coastlands.