ReViews

The Holy Land: Oxford Archaeological Guides

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998) 4th edition; 150 maps, photos, diagrams and plans; 475 pp., $18.95 (paperback)

Some guidebooks are best to read as you prepare for a trip. This is not one of them. Other guidebooks offer the most pleasure after your travels have ended, as you recall the places you have seen. This is not one of them either.

Instead, this is the kind of guidebook that you want to have in hand and open as you walk through the sites of the Holy Land. As a sort of paperback tour guide, it is a brilliant accomplishment, packed with authoritative information, entirely reliable, almost free of error—as good as a brilliant, learned and methodical mind can make it.

In this fourth edition of his now-famous guide, author Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, longtime professor at Jerusalem’s École Biblique et Archéologique Française, follows the outline of his original 1980 edition. A brief introduction on historical periods and use of the guide, plus some travel advice, is followed by a long section on Jerusalem (about a third of the book), arranged geographically, and short entries on 200 other sites in Israel, arranged alphabetically.