 "Greece and Turkey biblical sites guidebook" | 2010-06-28 |
| - Reviewed By Dr. Banjo from Austin, TX, USA |
| This is a very good book. I used it as a resource companion on a recent tour of selected biblical sites in both Greece and Turkey, and it was very helpful in helping me to understand the places that I visited. The diagrams, photographs, and text all helped me to interpret the things that I saw at the sites. |
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| "Great Resource for a Bible Student" | 2009-08-04 |
| - Reviewed By Y. Molitvenik |
| I read a lot of books on biblical sites and have never come across such a well organized book, with very helpful information. The book describes biblical significance of the site and also explains archaeological remains at the site. I would definitely recommend to take this book along while traveling to any location in Paul's journey. |
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 "Mixed impressions" | 2009-02-14 |
| - Reviewed By O.Cristo from Itapevi, SP - Brazil |
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.
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 "A Bargain" | 2009-01-28 |
| - Reviewed By J from Portland, OR |
I bought this when I left to live in Turkey for a year. I've been in western Turkey for the most part, and it's been nice to have. There are decently-long historical explanations before the bits about Biblical history, so it's useful for folks who want the history before the Bible. There is also sporadic advice about how to travel around various sites--"take the first unmarked gravel road after the fence surrounding the ruins" kind of a thing--so it gives you the sense that you're an explorer in your own right...
The Kindle edition is frustrating at times, since maps are small, but they are still useful. You don't find guidebooks like this in Turkey once you are actually here, so having it on Kindle is invaluable.
The book is divided into sections:
1: Greece (Amphipolis, Apollonia, Athens, Beroea, Cenchreae, Corinth, Cos, Crete, Mitylene, Neapolis, Patmos, Philippi, Rhodes, Samos, Samothrace, Thessalonia)
2: Turkey (Antioch on the Orontes, Antioch of Psidia, Assos, Attalia, Colossae, Derbe, Ephesus, Hierapolis, The Hittites, Hattusa and Yaziliyaka, Iconium, Laodicea, Lystra, Miletus, Myra, Patara, Perga, Pergamum, Philadelphia, Sardis, Seleucia Pieria, Smyra, Tarsus, Thyatira, Troas)
3: Cyprus (Northern Cyprus, Southern Cyprus)
It has substantial maps, indexes and glossaries. A steal for only $8... |
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| "A wonderful help to Pilgrim and Tourist" | 2007-10-22 |
| - Reviewed By A pilgrim seeking truth from Dunnellon, Florida |
This little volume adds information helpful to traveller without unneccessary detail. It is as complete as any other guide as I have seen and more complete than most.
Anyone seeking up to date and ancient information to help understand the "Biblical World" will find this a valuable resource. |
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| "Well researched, user friendly, but with lacunae" | 2007-06-18 |
| - Reviewed By David Graham from Shell, Ecuador |
This guide to the biblical sites in Greece and Turkey is the product of many long travels (more than 10,000 miles just in Turkey alone) and first hand visits to the sites it covers. It is written in prose that is easy to read, has a helpful glossary of archeological and cultural terms not commonly used in daily life(such as agora, chiton, or megaron), an index, maps, charts, and lots of photographs taken by the authors. It gives information on the location of the site in question (e.g., "The site of ancient Pergamum is scattered in and around the modern town of Bergama"), its history ("According to the geographer Strabo, the earliest inhabitants of Ephesus were a group of peoples called Leleges and Carians,"), its biblical significance ("Derbe was one of the cities visited by Paul and Barnabas during their first missionary journey,"), and a step by step coverage of what a site visit is like (so that it pays to have the book open as you are walking through a place like Sardis, for example).
For the sites covered, the authors get very high marks. Their book is as good as it gets.
However, there are gaps in their coverage, especially in eastern Turkey. Time and again I found myself frustrated while traveling through eastern Turkey as I wanted to read about the biblical sites I was seeing and all I found was...nothing. No coverage is given to Mt. Ararat nor any space taken to talk about the different theories about where Noah's Ark might have landed (or the modern search for it - a real growth industry). No coverage is given to the Tigris River, the Euphrates River, or to discussion about the importance of the land between the rivers: Mesopotamia. (The Garden of Eden has always been associated with this region, not to mention much of the great action in the Old Testament.) Carchemish is not covered (either historically or biblically) and Harran is only mentioned long enough to say it won't be covered in the book. These places didn't even show up on the otherwise thorough map the authors made of prominant biblical sites in Turkey: the eastern part of their map is notable for its lacunae. I also found it curious that no bibliography was included in the book. Moreover, several names that appear in bold print in the text (presumably in bold print because they were significant people) fail to show up in the index (e.g., Alyattes, Amyntas, Androclus). It should also be noted that their attempts to describe some of the museums they went to resulted in errors (e.g., they got their rooms mixed up in describing the Antalya Museum and will confuse the reader if they try to use this guide while touring the museum).
In short, this is an excellent book with some disappointing lacunae in coverage. If you plan to tour the biblical sites of both Greece and Turkey, by all means buy this book: you won't be disappointed. If you plan to tour only western Turkey (where most tour companies work) then certainly this book will meet your needs. If you plan to tour any part of eastern Turkey, however, I do not recommend this book. Instead, I recommend Everett C. Blake and Anna G. Edmonds' book "Biblical Sites in Turkey". This book gives fine coverage of all the western Turkey sites while also covering the eastern Turkey sites not covered in Fant & Reddish's book. Moreover, it discusses The Seven Churches of Revelation (which oddly doesn't receive formal coverage or even appear in a chart in the appendix of Fant & Reddish's book), it covers many sites important for church history not covered in Fant & Reddish's book (Urfa (Edessa), Van, Mesopotamia, Istanbul, Gordion, Nicea, etc.), has color photos, suggested tours, a bibliography, is 184 pages long, and was last updated in 2005. To sum, go with the Fant & Reddish book for Greece and western Turkey and the Blake & Edmonds' book for eastern Turkey. |
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