The 1976 "Lands of the Bible Today" Map

[George Thomas Wilson]

The 1976 “Lands of the Bible Today” Map

 

Background:

 

Eleven and a half years ago, on April 8, 2015, I posted a discussion to the Maps and Supplements Group bragging that I had a complete set of “Lands of the Bible Today” maps and indices.  While I did have the complete set of indices, I overlooked a fourth map that was issued in 1976.  Roger E. Nathan in his fantastic collector’s guide, Collectibles of the National Geographic Society, documented all three indices and four maps on pages 42 and 47:

Notice that Nathan, while documenting the existence of revised maps, he does not provide a check box for them like he does for their indices.  That was the reason that I was sure I had the complete set: I “checked all the boxes.”  Upon coming across and purchasing the 1976 map, I went back and looked in Nathan’s book and found that he had, in fact, documented this map.  In the discussion I posted back in the day, I printed image of the Title block of each map with the copyright date at the bottom of each:

Notice that Nathan has the 1963 map copyright as January 1963 while on the map it is merely 1963.  He possibly did that because the associated index was copyrighted 1962.  He did not list a month for the 1976 map, the only other revision (non-supplement) in this set.

 

The Map:

 

Here is an image of the Title block from the 1976 map:

Notice that it does not have a copyright year at the bottom.  Instead, there is the iconic yellow border.  The copyright appears in the lower left corner of the map:

And here is an image of the full map.  It completes the set I thought was completed almost a dozen years ago.

I noticed one thing about the map.  Even though there was no (documented) index for this map, it has kept the letter/number grid from the previous maps so, technically, it could be indexed.  This is only the second map (known by me) to have the grid needed for indexing, but no index.  The other is the May 1921 map of Asia.

 

Yours in collecting,

Tom Wilson

 

[Scott T. Shier]

...and by chance, there's no text line anywhere saying something about it being a special or "especially" printed (-ing) for one of their "Story of Man" books from 1976?

[eg, "Bible Lands Today" ; Great Religions" , etc.]