Look and learn about the places you've read about in the Bible

"Oxford Bible Atlas,"

Edited by Adrian Curtis

If you've never been to the Holy Land or other places mentioned in the Bible, this is the book to take you there in absentia.

If you've been to any of those ancient sites, this Oxford University Press large-format paperback is the book to rekindle memories.

It was nearly 50 years ago that the Oxford Bible Atlas first appeared in print, and this fourth edition blossoms like none of its predecessors thanks to color photography throughout. As you might imagine, satellite photos of the Dead Sea, the River Jordan, and that portion of Earth from Egypt to the Arabian Penisula weren't in that first edition in 1962.

As Adrian Curtis explains, the primary aim of the atlas is to provide the reader with an awareness of the world in which the biblical stories are set. Aerial photographs do what one's imagination never can to show what the hills of Galilee, the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and the City of Jerusalem are really like.

While many of us are accustomed to looking at an atlas for directions, the Oxford Bible Atlas does so much more, offering not just geography and history but archaeology and geology, too. There is as much text and photography as there are maps.

We don't just see where Babylon is on the map, for example, but we learn how the exile of the Jews there came about.

Curtis, a Methodist lay preacher, is an excellent teacher with a background as a lecturer on the Hebrew Bible for 40 years at the University of Manchester in Great Britain.

You can very easily sit down with the atlas and read it as any other work of nonfiction, chapter by chapter. It would be great for Bible study, small group, faith sharing or adult faith formation purposes, reading a chapter a week. Most chapters are just a few pages, with full-page maps included, and they tend to read chronologically.

Where did the Ephesians live?

While many are likely to have a fairly good idea where Damascus is (in Syria, north and east of Israel), how many times have those of us in the pews heard the lector proclaim names of biblical places such as "Cappadocia" or "Ephesus" (Paul's epistle to the Ephesians!) and not had a clue that both are part of modern-day Turkey?

A couple of the later chapters offer a real education in archaeology, including a two-page spread on ancient writing systems.

I enjoyed reading and finding my way along on the maps, but I could see where others might enjoy and learn about biblical lands just by looking at the many photos and reading the captions. That alone is an education.

Bravo to all involved in bringing Bible places to life. -- bz

Monk's poetry invites us to view biblical stories and characters from non-traditional perspectives

"God Drops and Loses Things,"

by Kilian McDonnell

Bible stories we've read before, biblical characters we've met before, but never this way. That's what fills the pages of Benedictine Father Kilian McDonnell's third book of poetry (St. John's University Press).

Perhaps you -- like myself -- feel you are out of your area of expertise in reading, no less reviewing, poetry. But take a chance, challenge yourself and try to see with the eyes of this monk from St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn.

I stuck a Post-It note on at least a dozen of the nearly 50 works because they said something to me.

For one thing, Killian gives a voice to the women of Holy Scripture -- Miriam, for example, and Mary Magdalene -- whose thoughts the Bible authors mainly ignored.

My favorite might be "Widow Rachel: Matchmaker," as much a short essay as a poem, but cleverly imagined thoughts from the mind of a woman trying to find a wife for the carpenter, who doesn't seem to be interested:

"Mary needs grandchildren. The man is thirty and still at home with his mother, so of course the women whisper as they gather at the market stalls."

It's a treasure.

See how quickly you find the "prodigal daughter" entry.

Moving from the Hebrew Testament to the New Testament, Father Kilian re-writes parables with a new, imagined tone that somehow makes the stories of Jesus mean more to today's hearer.

I loved "The Catholic Thing," an accusation in poetic form that correctly charges us Christians with being so unchristian at times.

Toward the end Kilian favors us with a few pieces that come from his person -- family and Benedictine family -- that are filled with rich images, take us to the places he chooses to share with all of us. We're so blessed that he does. -- bz

It's okay, Catholics, we can laugh

"The Book of Catholic Jokes,"

by Deacon Tom Sheridan

Did you know that they had automobiles in Jesus' time?

Yes, the Bible says that the disciples were all of one Accord.

Yeah, you may have heard some of them before.

And yes, Tom Sheridan admits that some of these may have been jokes to which a Catholic angle has been added to make them churchy.

But Sheridan, who was a writer and editor for the Chicago Sun-Times before he was a deacon, has nicely selected jokes that folks with decent moral standards can tell in polite company, and Acta Publications has packaged them well as a handy little and inexpensive paperback.

Did you hear the one about the man who opened a dry-cleaning business next door to the convent? He knocked on the door and asked the Mother Superior if she had any dirty habits.

To be sure there are some clinkers in the bunch, and some moldy oldies. And I don't know why every priest in a joke has to have an Irish surname; hell0 -- you don't have to be Irish to be a priest, or to be funny.

With most of the quips you don't have to be an "insider," so to speak, although I'm not sure the jokes that take off on the differences between, say, the Franciscans and the Jesuits, aren't going to have some Catholics scratching their heads. But maybe not.

For the most part the collection is good stuff -- good enough to make you crack a smile even though you may have heard them before.

There's at least one great priest golf joke, a cute one about a rabbi and a priest, a funny Pope Benedict XVI joke and a clever atheist joke. And as someone who can rarely remember a joke, what a good resource; I'm sure "The Book of Catholic Jokes" will end up on a number of reference shelves in rectories. -- bz

One Sunday morning a priest saw a little boy staring intently at the large plaque on the church wall. The plaque was covered with names, and flags hung on either side of it.

"Father," asked the boy, "what's this?"

He replied, "It's a memorial to all the men and women who died in the service."

They stood together in silence for a moment. Finally, the boy asked with genuine concern: "Was it at the eight or the ten-thirty Mass?"