I created an interactive map overlaying Apostle Paul’s 20,000km of journeys on a 1st century Roman Roads network, with modern vs. ancient cities and site photos. The base map utilizes the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (DARE), which was embedded into ArcGIS, with all four of Paul’s journeys with every stop added. The Roman Roads map can also be switched to a modern map to compare the ancient vs. modern locations.
This is part of a personal project I am embarking on called Kingdoms Collide, where I plan to retrace every step of Paul’s journeys across the ancient Roman Roads.
teytra · 4h ago
Interesting. Is it possible to add what sources you use for each datapoint?
The Acts and Epistles of course (verse numbers would be nice), but you use more sources, right?
intofarlands · 4h ago
Thanks for checking it out! I have the verse references, with plans to add all the relevant verses within the box as well.
Most of the locations are known historically, however some could benefit with additional sources, such as Malta. I will try to add those as well
turing_complete · 4h ago
It already shows the sources if you click on the markers
bambax · 3h ago
Magnificent project, congrats!
Is ArcGIS free for this kind of project?
intofarlands · 3h ago
Thank you!
Yes, it is free through ArcGIS Online, their web-based mapping software
parodysbird · 3h ago
I'd recommend looking into adding a speculative final journey he might have taken to Spain. He mentions plans to go there in Romans, and other sources like 1 Clement and Jerome suggest he actually went there. The city of Tarragona has a tradition that he visited, as a speculative destination to map.
fsiefken · 2h ago
What a nicely done narrative presentation and container (ArcGIS etc) of travel. Immersive 360 degree pictures might be nice to add.
Other - a bit more crunchy and modern board games that feature a little bit of Paul are Commissioned (2016) and The Acts (2018) & expansions - both games can be solo'd - good for personal immersion in the topic of church history, community building or friction.
Very interesting project! The Roman world really comes alive this this.
A pet peeve of mine though (and a bit OT):
I know it is not your fault, since this is inbuilt behavior, but I cannot for the life of me understand why almost all map widgets now have this behavior when as you are scrolling the whole page and happen to go over the map, suddenly the scrolling motion is used to zoom out the map, which thus quickly collapses into a thumbnail or a dot. It always drives me nuts when it occurs, a total fail of a UI/UX design. What was wrong with pinching to zoom out??
Not sure, but I think Google Map started this trend. I wonder if these map widget designers actually test the interaction with actual users.
andretti1977 · 3h ago
Beautiful work, no other words.
I’ve always thought it would be cool to build a side project like OpenStreetMap, where people can mark the places traveled by famous historical figures — kind of like what you did with Paul’s journey, but open to any historical figure. Do you know if there’s anything like that out there?
maxweylandt · 1h ago
neat! Small typo in 'Paul's first Journey' :
>This first trip laid the framework for hsi other trips further afield.
should be 'his'
Mistletoe · 4h ago
How did Paul make money and buy food for the journeys?
intofarlands · 4h ago
Paul financially supported himself as a tentmaker (See Acts 18:3 - “There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, 3 and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.”)
> ... in which missionaries support themselves by working full-time in the marketplace with their skills and education, instead of receiving financial support from a Church.
chad_oliver · 1h ago
Just to be clear, Paul literally made tents. The meaning of "tentmaking" that you quote came later by analogy with Paul.
i often wonder this. how wasnt he robbed along the way? how didnt he starve to death. unless he was the calvin klein of tents, surely youd be working all day every day making tents just to survive, leaving no time for your spiritual whitecastle.
Mistletoe · 4h ago
Interesting. I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole and seen Thomas Jefferson call Paul the first corrupter of Jesus’ teachings and I’m seeing everything in a brand new way. It makes a lot of sense.
photios · 3h ago
TIL Jefferson published his own "version" of the New Testament. [1]
> Jefferson mashed up/cut and pasted the New Testament to remove any references to the supernatural, or miracles, as well as the divinity of Christ. His title for the book was "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which tells us a lot about his motivations.
It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.
bdcravens · 1h ago
I'm not really a believer or practicer anymore, but as someone who spent substantial time reading scripture when I was, I've thought a lot about what happens to Christianity if you discard the writings of Paul. If the namesake of Christianity satisfies the claims of the believers, that should be sufficient. Unfortunately, I believe that without Paul's writings, as well as the body of knowledge contained in extra-scriptural writings (commentary through history, catechisms, doctrine passed down by your local church, etc) Christianity pretty much falls apart.
dragonwriter · 2h ago
> It is very strange the amount of theology that comes solely from Paul's idiosyncratic writings, given that he neither met the prophet in question (Jesus), nor was taught by any of his students (apostles), nor even got along particularly well with any of his students.
It's interesting that every point of this narrative conflicts with the canonical accounts (even excluding the Pauline corpus for this purpose), in which Paul did encounter Jesus, and did at least spend time with (we aren't explicitly told it was spent in study, but presumably it was not exclusively in silent meditation) with disciples of Jesus between the encounter and conversion experience and the start of his ministry, and he got along as well with the other apostles as the other apostles they did with each other.
krapp · 49m ago
Between Paul commanding slaves to obey their masters and his belief that women should remain subservient to men, his words have been responsible for centuries of suffering and violence. It would be fine if Christians could just accept that Paul was a man of his time, and held the prejudice of his time, but because his letters are in the Bible, that prejudice is now the Word of God and Christians are compelled to obey it in kind. The religion and the world would have been better off without him.
...and the Book of Revelations, which Christians have been driving themselves insane trying to decode. That should have gone into the apocrypha.
beardyw · 32m ago
There is widely held view, based on textual analysis, that some letters attributed to Paul are not by him. Most prominent of those are 1 and 2 Timothy, thought to be by Timothy himself, and the source of many of the ideas you complain about.
Those letters, even at the time the Bible was compiled - about 400 AD, were nearly not included due to doubts about their authenticity.
krapp · 16m ago
Fair enough, but they were included and they were attributed to Paul. The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either. You can put quotes around Paul's name in this context but the effect is still the same.
Jedd · 38s ago
> The Gospels probably weren't written by the apostles they were attributed to, either.
We absolutely know for sure that those books weren't written by the 'names' used - we just know that none of the authors identified themselves, or cited any sources.
bambax · 3h ago
Interesting! It's possible though that Paul invented the concept of Jesus, which was later made into a "real" person/story.
photios · 3h ago
That's doubtful.
To do that, St. Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it. Then do the same with the extended 70 apostles and their disciples. And, of course, change the gospels.
In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
arp242 · 1h ago
> In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
As I understand it, a number of people claimed to be the Messiah in Jesus' lifetime (and before, or since for that matter, including today). I don't think Old Testament references to the Messiah are all that meaningful as such for this particular discussion. Whether Jesus is or isn't the Messiah is of course a matter of faith.
photios · 20m ago
> a number of people claimed to be the Messiah in Jesus' lifetime (and before, or since for that matter, including today)
Yes, they imitated and used the "concept of Jesus". That's why I think St. Paul did not invent it.
arp242 · 17m ago
Right; I understood that more as "the person Jesus", rather than the broader concept of the Messiah.
jacquesm · 2h ago
He would have written a self-help book for wannabe cult starters titled 'How to get your first 12 customers'.
What is interesting about this project is that it cleanly splits off the real and verifiable components from the fantastic bits.
fjfaase · 1h ago
An argument against the position that the "concept of Jesus" is woven throughout the Old Testament is that the Jews did not accept him as such. And yes, I do know about all the 'christian' reasons why that did not happen, but it is rather obvious that there is no need to rewrite the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
photios · 1h ago
> no need to rewrite the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah
Funny you mention that. Because those Jews (not all of them, mind you) that did not accept the Messiah did try to change the book of Isaiah. The mental gymnastics about the "Almah" translation continue to this day.
According to the 'Acts of the Apostles', Paul (then still called Saul) was actively prosecuting the followers of Jesus, which by many were considered to be a Jewish sect, like there were more of such sects.
It was on one of this prosecution trips that he experienced a medical condition that lead to temporary blindness, which he interpreted as a divine intervention, resulting him to join the sect.
krapp · 1h ago
Doubtful.
As far as I know, academic consensus is that there was probably a real person behind the Jesus movement, just as with Buddhism, Islam and other religious movements. Of course, that says nothing about the supernatural claims made by the Bible, or how closely the canon written centuries after the fact actually hews to that person's teachings.
ab5tract · 3h ago
That feels like a real stretch considering that Paul is responsible for starting the branch of Christianity that would eventually outlaw any “non-canonical” books about Jesus. Said books would never even have existed if it was true that Paul invented the character of Jesus whole cloth.
bambax · 3h ago
The erradication of non-canonical books came way later. There was no such thing at first (during at least the first two centuries following Paul's life).
balamatom · 1h ago
Does remind of an intellectual property crackdown some. "Only we get to tell this story"
bdcravens · 1h ago
In addition to the exact work he did, it was an early church value to work, rather than depend on external funding:
He was also a Roman citizen, so he could pull some privileges for free rides like getting to Rome through exercising his right to appeal directly to the Emperor
shusaku · 2h ago
As an American, I’m planning a similar strategy to finance my vacation to Ecuador.
palmotea · 4h ago
Didn't he work as a tentmaker? Also I'd imagine he got a lot of support along the way.
thrown-0825 · 54m ago
The original christian mega church grifter.
Jesus would have cast him out along with the rest of the pharisees if he had the chance.
unnamed76ri · 53m ago
What motivated you to make this? It’s not entirely clear to me from looking over more of your site. Seems like a lot of effort unless you and your family are believers.
sicher · 29m ago
Or perhaps interested in history of religion?
unnamed76ri · 8m ago
Yeah could be. Their overall story seems interesting. Just curious to know more of the “why” behind the effort.
unnamed76ri · 15m ago
Not sure why I’m being downvoted. Asking why someone wrote something is a basic skill everyone is taught in primary school.
This is part of a personal project I am embarking on called Kingdoms Collide, where I plan to retrace every step of Paul’s journeys across the ancient Roman Roads.
Most of the locations are known historically, however some could benefit with additional sources, such as Malta. I will try to add those as well
Is ArcGIS free for this kind of project?
Yes, it is free through ArcGIS Online, their web-based mapping software
There's a 1990 board game about Paul's travels with a similar map, but with less narrative detail, it's more about immersion and play. Tom Vasel wrote a review: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/100649/review-journeys-of-p...
Campaign variant: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/127941/missionary-campaigns...
Other - a bit more crunchy and modern board games that feature a little bit of Paul are Commissioned (2016) and The Acts (2018) & expansions - both games can be solo'd - good for personal immersion in the topic of church history, community building or friction.
# Bart Ehrman on the Pauline timeline:
https://www.bartehrman.com/story-of-paul-in-the-bible/
https://www.bartehrman.com/apostle-paul-timeline/
https://www.bartehrman.com/historical-paul/
# Academic research bridging archeology and the letters of Paul
https://rbecs.org/2020/07/03/nasrallah/
A pet peeve of mine though (and a bit OT):
I know it is not your fault, since this is inbuilt behavior, but I cannot for the life of me understand why almost all map widgets now have this behavior when as you are scrolling the whole page and happen to go over the map, suddenly the scrolling motion is used to zoom out the map, which thus quickly collapses into a thumbnail or a dot. It always drives me nuts when it occurs, a total fail of a UI/UX design. What was wrong with pinching to zoom out??
Not sure, but I think Google Map started this trend. I wonder if these map widget designers actually test the interaction with actual users.
I’ve always thought it would be cool to build a side project like OpenStreetMap, where people can mark the places traveled by famous historical figures — kind of like what you did with Paul’s journey, but open to any historical figure. Do you know if there’s anything like that out there?
>This first trip laid the framework for hsi other trips further afield.
should be 'his'
There are also other mentions he was a tentmaker.
For anyone wondering
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentmaking
> ... in which missionaries support themselves by working full-time in the marketplace with their skills and education, instead of receiving financial support from a Church.
https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/skenopoios
"some translate more generally: leather worker"
> Jefferson mashed up/cut and pasted the New Testament to remove any references to the supernatural, or miracles, as well as the divinity of Christ. His title for the book was "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which tells us a lot about his motivations.
Walking in Arius' footsteps ...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dnyxy8/thoma...
It's interesting that every point of this narrative conflicts with the canonical accounts (even excluding the Pauline corpus for this purpose), in which Paul did encounter Jesus, and did at least spend time with (we aren't explicitly told it was spent in study, but presumably it was not exclusively in silent meditation) with disciples of Jesus between the encounter and conversion experience and the start of his ministry, and he got along as well with the other apostles as the other apostles they did with each other.
...and the Book of Revelations, which Christians have been driving themselves insane trying to decode. That should have gone into the apocrypha.
Those letters, even at the time the Bible was compiled - about 400 AD, were nearly not included due to doubts about their authenticity.
We absolutely know for sure that those books weren't written by the 'names' used - we just know that none of the authors identified themselves, or cited any sources.
To do that, St. Paul would need to make all the other 12 apostles buy into the story and start spreading it. Then do the same with the extended 70 apostles and their disciples. And, of course, change the gospels.
In addition, the "concept of Jesus" is something that's woven throughout the Old Testament. St. Paul would have to go back in time and change the Torah and books of prophets like Daniel and Isaiah.
As I understand it, a number of people claimed to be the Messiah in Jesus' lifetime (and before, or since for that matter, including today). I don't think Old Testament references to the Messiah are all that meaningful as such for this particular discussion. Whether Jesus is or isn't the Messiah is of course a matter of faith.
Yes, they imitated and used the "concept of Jesus". That's why I think St. Paul did not invent it.
What is interesting about this project is that it cleanly splits off the real and verifiable components from the fantastic bits.
Funny you mention that. Because those Jews (not all of them, mind you) that did not accept the Messiah did try to change the book of Isaiah. The mental gymnastics about the "Almah" translation continue to this day.
https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/isaiah-714-a-v...
It was on one of this prosecution trips that he experienced a medical condition that lead to temporary blindness, which he interpreted as a divine intervention, resulting him to join the sect.
As far as I know, academic consensus is that there was probably a real person behind the Jesus movement, just as with Buddhism, Islam and other religious movements. Of course, that says nothing about the supernatural claims made by the Bible, or how closely the canon written centuries after the fact actually hews to that person's teachings.
"If one doesn't work, one shouldn't eat"
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/2%20Thessalonians%203%...
Jesus would have cast him out along with the rest of the pharisees if he had the chance.