Why I created these

Occassionally I have the opportunity to teach in a church or ministry setting. And when I do, I love to help Scripture come alive for those in attendance. While there’s various ways to do this, one of my favorite is to help the audience place themselves in the time and place of the people where the Scripture originated from. This typically leads to showing maps or the ancient world.

As one who is passionate about design, this often means I’m scouring the internet trying to find an image that’s visually pleasing, not distracting with other details, and that I’m legally allowed to show from a copywrite standpoint. This task has always seemed harder than it should be.

Eventually, I put together a few images of different parts of the ancient world that I often show. They are intentionally designed without labels as the context changes depending what I’m teaching on.

I’ve posted these here both for my own reference as well as for anyone else who would like to use them. You may use them for any purpose - commercial, non-commercial, teaching, print, etc. You do not need to provide attribution. My hope is that you can use them to help the Biblical landscape come alive as well. Enjoy!

Israel

Great for many Old Testament stories and the life of Jesus, this map of Israel allows you to highlight exactly what you want to focus on without other details getting in the way.

Ancient Near East

A map showing the entire ancient world, this map is ideal for showing empires like Rome, Babylon, Persia, and more.

Mediterranean Rim

A map showing the Mediterranean is great for highlighting Paul’s missionary journeys and the spread of the Gospel.

Egypt and Israel

This map showing both Egypt and Israel is ideal for highlighting the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt, through the desert, and into the Promised Land of Israel.

Fertile Crescent

The fertile crescent, the area of land including the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and extending over to Israel, is built for placing some of the early stories in Genesis such as Abraham leaving Ur. It’s also a great map for highlighting the Persian and Babylonian empires.

Galilee

The region around the sea of Galilee is where Jesus spent much of his time and as a result, is great for digging deeper into the life of Christ.

SVG Files

Interested in downloading these files as SVGs? This allows them to be scaled indefinitely without losing quality. You can download a zip file containing the SVGs here.