The Bible is primarily a book of history, and without some knowledge of
its historical contents no one can rightly understand its revelation of
divine truth. But in order to know the history contained in the Old
Testament we must obtain a view of the lands in which that history was
wrought. We therefore study first of all the =Old Testament World=.
I. =Location and Extent.= The history of the Old Testament was enacted
upon a field less than half the area of the United States. It extended
from the river Nile to the lands east of the Per'sian Gulf and from the
northern part of the Red Sea to the southern part of the Cas'pi-an. The
world of Old Testament history was thus 1,400 miles long from east to
west and 900 miles wide from north to south, and it aggregated 1,110,000
square miles, exclusive of large bodies of water.
II. Let us begin the construction of the map by drawing upon its borders
=Six Seas=, four of which are named in the Old Testament.
1. The =Cas'pi-an Sea=, of which only the southern portion appears in
the northeastern corner of our map.