The seeker after truth should study Bible geography. Most Bibles have maps at the end, but how often are they

used? Geography is, as it were, the spatial background of Scripture as history is its temporal one. In order to

understand properly the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan or, let us say, Paul's missionary journeys, we

obviously cannot ignore geography if we are to appreciate fully their importance. We read in the Bible of Tyre,

Sidon, Chittim, Hamath, Anathoth and a host of other places. lf we know nothing of Bible geography, how can we

correctly understand the passages where these are used? And moreover, these places must be taken literally. If the

Egypt of Bible times is not the literal land, what is it? Who can be sure of what it represents? Once one has left the

normal literal meaning of a word, the door is thrown wide open to any idea, however far-fetched, and uncertainty

and error can only result. God's revelation is set in an historical and geographical context, and involves historic

personages and events.

H. H. Rowley writes:

`A religion which is rooted and grounded in history, cannot ignore history. A historical understanding of the

Bible is not a superfluity which can be dispensed with in Biblical interpretation, leaving a body of ideas and

principles divorced from the process out of which they were born' (Relevance of Biblical Interpretation).

Moreover, not only the understanding of the Scriptures, but their truth, is bound up with history. If it could be

proved that Pontius Pilate was not a historic personage, the truth of the Bible falls to the ground.

Another thing must be stressed in the matter of interpretation and that is, the priority of the original languages of

Hebrew, Chaldee and Greek. Inspiration in the Biblical sense applies only to these, and does not extend to the

hundreds of translations that have been made, however good they may be. Consequently it is useless to base any

argument on a translation without verifying the original.

It must be constantly borne in mind that the Scriptures are the truth of God accommodated to the human mind

for its instruction and assimilation. This must be so, because God, infinite and limitless, is seeking to reveal Himself

to man, circumscribed and finite. Humanity cannot reach up to Him, but He can, in His goodness and love stoop

down to us, and this is what He has done in His Word. To have any meaning to us, God's revelation had to come in

human language and human thought forms, referring to objects of human experience. Revelation for us must of

necessity have an anthropomorphic character. Anthropomorphism simply means ascribing human characteristics to

God. The understanding of God and the spiritual world is by this means and by analogy. So we have God's

almightiness spoken of in terms of a right arm, because among men, the right arm is the symbol of strength and

power. Similarly the glory of heavenly things is described in the Bible in terms of human experience, such as gold,

silver and jewels.  Such is the description of the heavenly New Jerusalem in the book of the Revelation.

Seisenberger, in his Practical Handbook for the study of the Bible, puts it this way:

`It is with a well-considered design that the Holy Scriptures speak of God as a being resembling man, and ascribe

to Him a face, eyes, ears, mouth, hands and feet, and the sense of smell and hearing. This is done out of

consideration for man's limited power of comprehension and the same is the case when the Bible represents God

as loving or hating, as being jealous, angry, glad, or filled with regret. This shows that God is not indifferent to

man, and his behaviour, but notices them well. Moreover the Bible teaches that man was made in the image and

likeness of God, and therefore in the Divine Being there must be something analogous to the qualities of man,

though in highest perfection and sin excepted'.

When we study the Scriptures we must always bear these facts in mind and remember that, in them, God has

graciously stooped down to our limited intelligence, using things that we do know, to explain in a measure those that

we do not, because they are infinite and beyond us.

This accommodation is very different from the way believes in accommodation of form, but of matter and content.

Thus he asserts that the atonement of Christ, as a sacrifice, was only the manner in which the first century Christians

thought of the death of Christ, but this idea is not binding upon Christianity today. In other words the sacrificial

element in Christ's death was only the opinion of the early Christians. This sort of accommodation we utterly reject.