Medieval geography interpreted physical space through biblical narrative

Evidence

These were another source of knowledge. The Middle Ages reinterpreted geography in terms of the Bible. Jerusalem was the center of the earth because it was the Holy City. Asia was the home of the Three Wise Kings; Africa that of King Solomon. Columbus believed the Orinoco (in Venezuela) to be a sacred river flowing out of the Garden of Eden. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 599

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete instance of representational authority overriding empirical observation — the same mechanism Hall will trace in how the West ‘reads’ the Orient. — connects to: Odysseus’s voyage secularizes mythic space into surveyed, rational geography; Wilderness originally signified biblical places of moral peril and exile — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 9; The Old Testament’s wilderness image authorized Protestant dominion over nature and land. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 555