Interactive map of Paul's first century travels in Roman world
intofarlands.com
intofarlands.com
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
Acts 9:15 – The Lord said to Ananias about Paul: “This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.”
His mission to bring the Gospel to the Gentiles makes him a good choice for this work.
The more accurate answer is that Paul wrote (or was supposed to have written) a bunch of letters documenting his travels. The book of Acts (christian bible) also documents his travels. Note that multiple of the Pauline epistles are widely recognized to be forgeries written in his name.
The time of the other apostles post-New Testament is mostly accounted as tradition rather than written record. I'm not saying all, I'm saying most. I do not pretend to be an expert. There's no map to be made of the travels of Thomas, for example. Only the idea that he reached India (and maybe some other details that I'm leaving out). Or Jame-the-Just, who, as far as I can tell, might have gone to Rome but didn't travel the Mediterranean. The reason for his conversion has little to nothing why this is interesting (to me, to scholars, to people who aren't of the faith).
I've been reading a ton about the first two centuries of christianity for a couple of years and this is my current understanding. It's an exciting topic if you're a history nerd. Especially if you're an atheist who wants to better understand the formation of the dogma that you might have been taught as a child.
Apologies for stomping on your reply / reasoning. I don't agree with your answer. No harm intended.
There's a wide body of scholarship on who wrote each Epistle and when, no point trying to debate that here imo. I agree they weren't all written by him, but the seven that were are enough for decades of individual study and reflection. In the ancient world, writing in the name of a respected teacher wasn’t always seen as fraud the way we think today. It could be seen as honoring a tradition — like continuing a school of thought under a founder’s name.
I don't think our replies negate each other, they seem complimentary to me.
Another aspect that's interesting is that his path covers most of the territory that was conquered by Alexander the Great, see Daniel 8-11. This Hellenistization and Paul's strength in Greek rhetoric, and 'dual' citizenship made him well suited for quickly spreading the gospel to these areas.
Jewish by birth and religion — giving him authority in synagogues, knowledge of Scripture, and credibility among Jews.
Roman by law and politics — granting him rights that protected him and enabled his mission across the empire.
This combination was rare and made Paul uniquely suited to bridge cultures: he could preach to Jews in their synagogues, debate philosophers in Greek forums, and stand trial before Roman governors.
Paul was able to traverse thousands of miles along these networks and what he did really changed the course of history. He confronted the Roman Empire at its absolute height, and despite being shipwrecked twice, imprisoned at least three times, beaten and stoned many times… he still carried on. I thought it would be cool to visualize what he accomplished in a unique way.
I have plans to include the distances and approx. time for each of the legs.
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
I am doing a similar project with family genealogy so it covers a longer span of time but the family connections to places become tangible. You really see how some people live out their entire lives in one small area while others hit the trails and find a way to prosper in some far-off locality. It especially stands out when you look at children and inheritances since the first-born son typically ended up with the father's best assets and other sons needed to find their own way with smaller parcels of land or almost nothing. Perhaps the most interesting part is discovering all the loops and intersections where a descendant ends up living or working in a town where an ancestor lived generations earlier without knowing anything about that ancestor. Feels like the circle is completed when someone later cycles back through and finds that they also like the place well enough to stay a while.
What you are working on sounds really interesting. Now you have me thinking on my families genealogy connections…
I have taken a similar path to yours in that the location flags have links to photos relevant to that flagged location (home, farm, etc) so the experience of tracking a relative thru time is a little more rich for the young people who may never have met or heard of that person before they click the link. Tying things to contemporary newspaper accounts of the joys and tragedies of life that found these people adds another layer and helps reinforce the family lore about events or people.
I've always loved history. There's so much of it and every minute that passes just adds a little more flavor to the tale.
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
How can we know the gods face to face, till we have faces?
Love, love is going to lead you by the hand
Into a white and soundless place
Now we see things as in a mirror, dimly
Then we shall see each other face to face
One UI comment. I notice there is a legend under the map and callouts on the map to each of the four journeys. I wanted to see one of these switch the display to only show one journey at a time. Maybe the site does this and clearly on desktop, but I couldn’t intuit it on mobile.
I am still working on the legend and having it do exactly like you said. I have to change things up a bit but hopefully I can be able to implement it soon
I eventually figured it out I think.. A brief summary about Paul and his journey at the top would greatly improve the first impression of people adjacent to and outside of the target audience.
Nice work!
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?
I don’t know of anything like that, but what a cool idea. I have a passion for the Silk Roads as well, and I made an interactive map for it. Soon I will add Marco Polo’s and Ibn Battuta’s routes to it. I really like historical journeys and how they intersect with the modern locations
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.
Was it common to go walking across the Roman Empire or was it a rare feat?
Thanks for taking a look at it!
There are also other mentions he was a tentmaker.
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.
Paul is, in this terminology, also a prophet. He explicitly says the revelation he tells is not of human origin, and so not passed down to him through e.g. the ministry of one of the students (apostles) of the prophet in question.
It strikes me as unusual to have so much of the theology coming from someone who simply claims private revelation but is not the prophet in question and when the prophet explicitly chose disciples and set a ministry for them.
I am Christian btw, but I support bringing historical and documentary rigor to theology. I also haven't actually doubted anything, at least not of Christ. I've just characterized Paul's gospel and mission as coming from a private and separate revelation, unlike the gospels and missions that the original apostles received.
The point that I made based on that is that it is strange that a lot of the theology of Christianity as it develops centuries later is derived more from the exceptional and privately delivered gospel of Paul, rather than from the gospels of the apostles of Jesus when he also held a historical human form.
I think there is also an obvious scholarly reason for this that doesn't even require belief, which is that Paul's writings are the closest documents we have to the time of historical Jesus. However, that also gives reason for us to be cautious in hanging major theological positions on specific sections in Paul that seem absent from or in tension with the synoptic gospels.
As to the degree that these are falling apart is debatable. They certainly don't have the strong central hierarchy and universalism that Catholic and Protestant sects have, but they seem to endure.
Without Paul, Christianity reverts to being a variety of Judaism whose leader from the hinterlands got it right about what really mattered in life, as had his predecessors [0]. But he fatally misjudged the big city's religious oligarchs — vassals to their ruthless Roman occupiers — when he relentlessly attacked them and their cozy little setup; at their behest, he was executed by the Roman overlords.
Some [1] of the leader's later followers — his posse, if you will — imagined they'd seen him. But the leader's wealthy and/or well-connected followers are strangely absent from the narrative. Perhaps they had more information about what had really happened [2].
The early postmortem appearance tales eventually mutated into a legend of a warrior-king, raised from the dead — who would return Real Soon Now, to usher in God's reign and establish Israel's rightful place in Creation [3].
Over decades, the tales percolated into Mediterranean Graeco-Roman culture — eventually mutating further still into a tale of a divine being [4] (perhaps hybridized with that culture's myths?).
Some self-cites:
[0] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/06/metanarratives_...
[1] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2004/10/troubling_incon...
[2] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2005/10/the_empty_tomb_...
[3] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2006/04/what_did_messia...
[4] https://www.questioningchristian.org/2005/11/jesus_is_lord_d...
> 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...
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"
I feel like if tent-making was such a prevalent profession, there'd be name derivatives from it
The Arabic surnames Kheyyam/Khayam/Khayami are all derived from the word for tent maker, Plachta is Polish, but more closely aligns with canvas-maker, mostly sails. And then theres Zeltman, which is German for tent man (which is ambiguous between "man who sells tents" and "man who lives in a tent")
> And then theres Zeltman, which is German for tent man (which is ambiguous between "man who sells tents" and "man who lives in a tent")
likely a bit of both!
I always assumed it was like tents for vendors at markets, and stuff like that.
Seneca’s brother, most well known as the recipient of Seneca’s letters, was one such judge who dismissed the charges against him when he found out that he was a citizen.
It's more than that. Basically everywhere he went local commoners wanted to kill him and it was the elite local rulers that safeguarded him
"If one doesn't work, one shouldn't eat"
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/2%20Thessalonians%203%...
The timeline is also problematic because it’s entirely possible Acts was written first. Indeed IMO an earlier dating of Acts is pretty likely, the story is abruptly terminated after Paul has been in Rome two years with no natural conclusion, suggesting the narrative ended there because that took the author up to current events (60), where Josephus obviously wrote much later.
>This first trip laid the framework for hsi other trips further afield.
should be 'his'
Jesus would have cast him out along with the rest of the pharisees if he had the chance.
you are projecting yourself into other person. that is the opposite of empathy. for YOU is a lot of effort. for YOU is only valuable for "believers" (whatever that even means) for YOU also includes family believers....
dont you see? if you dont, no problem i understand. i just wanted to explain to you why are you downvoted, that's all.
You could just let the OP choose to answer for themselves instead of getting offended on their behalf. So far, they’ve chosen not to answer, and that’s fine too.