To Take Time: Dispensationalist Bible Maps and Charts in the Early Twentieth Century

Recent scholarship on maps suggests we must reimagine what we think a map looks like and what a map does. Maps are lively images that can take many visual forms, perform many functions in society, and assert many different claims about the relationships between human beings and their environments. Maps can also make claims about time, articulating relationships between the past, present, and future. This paper invites scholars to rethink the significance of maps in Protestantism by examining two Bible maps from the early twentieth century: a map of “The Holy Land” in the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 and a chart made by dispensationalist minister Clarence Larkin in 1920. Examining the materiality of these images and their functions in Protestant communities, this paper argues Bible maps and charts made distinct claims about contemporary politics, the Bible’s relationship to geography in the past and present, and the sacrality of time.