2 The Land and the Map: C.W.M. van de Velde’s Map of the Holy Land Jutta Faehndrich THE HOLY LAND AND CARTOGRAPHY The nineteenth century was the golden age of explorers and expeditions. However, the lust for discovery was not about information as such – indigenous people probably knew their surroundings well enough – but helped to construct a decidedly Western body of knowledge about the world. Unlike Africa or the Americas, the region referred to as the Holy Land had been well known since antiquity with its Biblical topography firmly in Catholic and Christian Orthodox hands. Yet the relatively young Protestantism was able to gain ground over the course of the nineteenth century with the help of a Biblical Geography that, allied with historical-critical theology and philology, advanced by establishing knowledge according to newly defined scientific standards. 1 Nineteenth-century Biblical Geography represented a paradigm shift: in lieu of the unquestioned legendary Catholic topography, it aimed at thoroughly researching geography based on scientific facts. What was more, Palestine was actually a new region for Protestantism and, with the endeavours of scholars such as Edward Robinson, 2 Protestants first and foremost discovered, described and constructed the Holy Land for themselves. 3 This scholarly Palestine was an invention of tradition in the Hobsbawmian sense – a newly created, but not necessarily wrong, ‘discovery’. Like other invented traditions of the nineteenth century, it very quickly became popular and ultimately created a collective memory of the region. 4 One of its most paradigmatic works was William Thomson’s The Land and the Book (1859). 5 The title expresses the idea that the Bible (the Book) and the land together formed an integrated whole – the land could not be understood without the Bible and the Bible could not be understood without the land. 6 This made the geography of the Holy Land quintessential for understanding the scriptures. The title of this chapter alludes to that concept, suggesting that the land and the map together made for understanding the Book. Faehndrich, Jutta (2017): The Land and the Map: C.W.M. van de Velde's Map of the Holy Land. - In: Mapping the Holy Land: The Foundation of a Scientific Cartography of Palestine. Haim Goren, Jutta Faehndrich and Bruno Schelhaas with Petra Weigel. - London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017. - (Tauris historical geography series; 11), pp. 55-106. Excerpt by courtesy of the author.