Distant Views of the Holy Land.

• Author: Long, Burke O.
• Position: Book review

Distant Views of the Holy Land. By FELICITY COBBING and DAVID M. JACOBSON. Bristol, CT: EQUINOX, 2015. Pp. vi + 321, illus. $200. [Distributed by ISD, Bristol, CT]

In recent years, the Palestine Exploration Fund has catalogued and digitized its extensive archive of visual materials that document PEF-sponsored archeological activities and, less extensively, renderings of the Holy Land by visitors and artists unaffiliated with the PEE Two volumes of photographs resulting from these preservation efforts have been published (Gibson 2003; Abujaber and Cobbing 2005). Distant Views of the Holy Land is a welcome addition. More than its predecessors, this new selection of images emphasizes the history and archaeology of biblical sites, which are in turn illustrated by photographs, drawings, original watercolors, maps, and a few engravings from rare travel books.

In their introduction, Felicity Cobbing, PEF Executive Secretary and curator, and David Jacobson, editor of the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, summarize the scope of the selected images. The earliest date from the 1850s, but the strength of the collection resides in photographs taken during expeditions conducted by the PEF, beginning with James MacDonald's ordinance surveys of Jerusalem (1864-65) and continuing into the early twentieth century with other PEF researchers. In addition, Cobbing and Jacobson discuss the pictorial archive in relation to the history of the PEF, and further, in the context of pilgrimage, tourism, and commercial photography. The authors are clearly aware that the PEF's scientifically minded researchers were embedded in a remarkable cultural phenomenon, the seemingly insatiable thirst to visit the land of the Bible, or if not visit, to at least visualize it, capture it in imagination, and thereby render it holy.

Although the majority of photographs are black and white and stem from PEF activities, some come from private individuals. A good number derive from commercial artists, such as Bonfils, Robertson and Beato, and Krikorian and Raad. The authors also include paintings, notably watercolors by Claude Conder, leader of the PEF's survey of western Palestine; William Simpson, a Scottish artist; and his fellow Scotsman, David Roberts. Whatever their source, most of the images in Distant Views depict sites and landscapes mentioned in the Bible.

Cobbing and Jacobson group images by geographic regions: Galilee, Samaria, Judea and Philistia, and Jerusalem and Bethlehem...