the minnow

Generally, the events taking place in the Bible occur in what we'd now call the Middle East or Mesopotamia. So the "World" as viewed by the Bible authors was made up of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Caucasus region, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Arabian Peninsula, Yemen, Persia, Libya, Ethiopia? Is this more or less the maximum extent of the Bible's scope? What else was known in the "world" by the Bible authors? I mean, was, say, Ireland, France or Germany known to exist by the people who wrote the Bible? What about modern day Pakistan or India? Any part of tropical (jungle) Africa below the equator?

I'm not really well-versed in Bible historicity/geography and the Bible claims to speak for all the nations of the "world" but I'd be curious to know just how big is the 'World' this Scripture speaks of?

Toto

That depends on what part of the Bible. Alexander the Great made it to India and Afghanistan. Caesar conquered Gaul (France), and made it to Britain. The Celts of Germany were well known in the classical world.

WWJD4aKlondikeBar

Well the bible was written by man and man had a small scope on things back then so that's your answer in a nutshell.

Roger Pearse

Sounds like a refutation of the "God was an astronaut" theory, so fashionable a few years ago.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ben C Smith

Not sure about OT times, but in NT times, yes to all of these. The Romans knew Ireland by the name of Hibernia, France by the name of Gaul, and Germany by the name of (drum roll, please) Germania.

Certainly the existence and approximate location of India would have been generally known. I think Pakistan used to be Bactria.

But, for practical purposes, most of the more farflung places are not mentioned in the Bible, at least not very often (the prophets sometimes refer to distant countries for poetic reasons). Paul wished to visit Spain, but other than that I think the circumference of practical geographic interest might be limited to the area between Rome in the west and India in the east, the northern Mediterranean in the north and Ethiopia in the south.

Ben.