John A. Beck (Jack)
I love building things. I love wild places. And I love adventure. How adventurous? My wife and I built our own airplane so that we could fly to national parks, national forests, and wilderness areas where we love to camp, climb mountains, backpack, and snowshoe.
What may surprise you is that this outdoor, adventure junkie spent enough time indoors to earn a few advanced degrees. I have an M. Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. (Hebrew and Old Testament from Trinity International University). For sixteen years, I taught courses in Hebrew and Old Testament at various colleges and universities in the United States. But today my classroom is the outdoors. I spend part of each year teaching field study classes in Israel for Jerusalem University College.
As I have traveled and met people from all over the world, I’ve noticed how powerfully place influences people. Who we are, how we think, and how we most naturally communicate are powerfully influenced by the places from which we come. Take me for example. I grew up in the Midwest and sound every bit as Midwestern as I am. The same is true of those who wrote the Bible. They don’t speak like they are from around here, because they are not. But they sounded local to their family members and friends who lived where they did.
Here is where it gets interesting. When the Holy Spirit moved the thoughts of God into writing using these individuals, they wrote in much the same way they thought and spoke. The geographical references, experiences, and forms of expression that peppered their day-to-day speaking appear within the pages of our Bible. You may not have thought about this before, but part of what the Lord is anxious to say in his Word, he has said using geography.
For nearly three decades, I have tried to connect with the geographical experiences of the biblical authors and poets so that I might better understand how they thought and wrote. I have walked hundreds of miles where they walked, experienced the weather they knew, and listened to the sounds that filled their days. A little of me is now “from there.” Because of that, I read the Bible differently. I experienced what I call a geographic conversion of my Bible reading. Details that I had missed or ignored leap off the page, offering new and exciting insights into old and familiar passages. I am honored to share what I have learned in the books I write and the documentaries in which I appear. My goal is simple. I want to help others make the Bible’s geography meaningful.
