WE LOVE BIBLE MAPS. This map helps tell the story of the Philistine defeat of Israel and the death and burial of King Saul and his sons, who died in battle. The Casual English Bible® has one thing no one else has: 3D-style Bible maps like this. We create them from geeky software using elevation data and satellite maps from several international space agencies. We go to the trouble of making our own maps because we want people to do more than read the Bible, but to get a sense of the geography behind the stories.
The Casual English Bible®
A million words aren’t enough
FIRST A PITCH THEN A CONFESSION
PITCH
WE’RE ABOUT TO ADD A BLOG FEATURE to The Casual English Bible® website. Those of us who work on this site call it the Bible site. You’re not subscribed to it. You’re signed onto this one; we call it the Author site.
- Bible site. The Bible blog will deal more directly with Bible insights, questions, and some attempted answers. You can subscribe to the Bible site sometime next week, we hope.
- Author site. The author site will steer more toward Christian living and stories closer to home—yours and mine.
CONFESSION
Though we hope both sites will inform you, let me be frank and tell you the main reason we’re adding the Bible blog.
[This is AI’s suggestion for the next sentence: “This feature aims to bring more insights and updates regarding The Casual English Bible,® making it easier for you to stay informed.” That’s true, but yuck. Here’s my next sentence, below.]
We’re not adding the Bible blog because you need one more thing to read.
Or because I simply don’t have enough to do in paraphrasing over a million words in the Bible, with accompanying footnotes, discussion questions and answers—along with nearly 1,000 3D-style Bible maps that I make from scratch with my own geeky recipes.
We are adding this feature so you will find us and discover our maps and our new, emerging paraphrase of the Bible. As is, this moment, Google’s search engine pushes us to the back of the book because we don’t have a blog for that website. So if you search for a new paraphrase of John 1:1 or a map of Mary and Joseph’s shortest escape route to Egypt, lotsa luck finding us.
Google made me do it
So this additional feature boils down to Google, a search engine company in need of serious competition so they won’t be so bossy.
If you haven’t heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it’s essentially making sure everything we do online follows the Laws of Google, religiously.
Like the Bible Book of Leviticus, Google has strict laws to observe. Also like Leviticus, failure to do so often results in the death penalty. Sort of. Your stream of numbers slows to a drip and dries up—whether the numbers measure site visitors, Bible readers, or map buyers.
I started the Bible website to offer a free, online, easy-reading Bible for people new to the Bible. Or, as Google prefers me to call them, “Bible beginners.” I don’t talk like that. It feels demeaning. I prefer “Bible newcomers.” But that doesn’t work as well with the Google gods. And they are very much like gods, with the power they wield.
Enough about Google.
Casual English Bible® update
New Testament is proofed
We just finished proofing and editing the New Testament. We’re beginning to review the New Testament maps for correction. We’ve been in a beta format while I’ve been working on this. We’re about to exit New Testament beta. We’re still in Old Testament beta. I’m working through Daniel’s short book now. After that, all I have left are the whopper books of Jeremiah, Job, and Ezekiel. I plan to work on them in that order.
Looking for a designer
We expect to print the New Testament in color with some of our best maps as soon as we can get there. I’m looking for a designer to help us artfully present the text, footnotes, and a selection of the most helpful maps. I have one designer on tap for a chat about the project.
Subscriptions
Even our developer is excited about this. We’re going to add a subscription option for people interested in licensing maps for publication. We have ministers, Bible study leaders, and university and seminary profs who pay $20 a pop to license a map for a one-time presentation in their sermons, lectures, and Bible study sessions. We’re going to start a subscription service for people who would like to use any map and chart in our full library as many times as they like. And we have almost 1,000 of them.
If there’s a way we can extend subscriptions beyond that, for unlimited access to the library of PDFs, we will. We want to. But we haven’t figured out how to make it work. That’s because I think like a writer and my web developers think in code, so no one has any idea what’s going on in there. Neither of us think like marketers.
A writer will say, “We’ve got 952 Bible maps, many in 3D style.” A marketer will say…
If I knew that, we’d already have it figured out.
Growing map sales and donations
The only income the Bible website has comes from me, several gracious donors (especially a long-distance truck driver), and the sale and licensing of our maps. We do not break even. Not even close. Not yet. But we will do or die. And we are determined to do.
So, we are a bit grudgingly cooperating with Google so when you search with phrases like “3D Bible maps,” “PDF Bible maps,” or “easy-reading Bible” you will find us and you’ll get to see, for example, how close Samson lived to his future wife (who didn’t survive the honeymoon) and later to his girlfriend Delilah, who lived just a few minutes down the trail.
And you’ll get to read Jesus speaking in everyday English, like he spoke in everyday Hebrew and Aramaic and possibly Greek, the international language of his day.
This isn’t a normal blog article
This article is not typical of the blogs on either site. It’s an update about where we are with the Casual English Bible® and where we hope to be soon.
So, (transition word) please read one more blog someday before you give up on me.
Casual English Bible®
Bible map search engine
Help support Casual English Bible®
Become a Patron
Steve’s Bible-background YouTube Channel
Steve’s song from the words of prophet Habakkuk
More feature articles
Funny-odd Bible Proverbs
Bible Gateway
Please let me know what a subscription will cost for me to what you said. “We’re going to start a subscription service for people who would like to use any map and chart in our full library as many times as they like. And we have almost 1,000 of them.”
I teach a class of around twenty people in a class at a time in the church I attend as a retired pastor. I use your maps that I purchased. But I want to make sure I am covered. Your maps inspire me.
I just put the complete guide to the Bible in my Amazon cart. I love the map you have shown here on King Saul’s body!! I am in the middle of teaching the rise and fall of 3 giants in Bible for K-12th grade at our Christian school and I am so hoping this map will be in this book! Very, very amazing!!!
Thank you so much for this amazing work! We have no clue, do we!!!
Thanks for the kind words about the map and for buying the book.
The map of Saul’s death isn’t in the book. The book has been around for several years, while the maps are new and exclusive to The Casual English Bible® at CasualEnglishBible.com.
There’s a map search engine on that site. You can search the more than 900 maps we’ve created.
The online version is free and you can download for a few bucks a set of PDFs for any book of the Bible with geography going on. We’re creating a subscription service soon that will allow people to use as many maps of the Bible as they like.