The Bible and Classics served Europeans as cognitive maps for new lands

Evidence

For the better comprehension of the unknown parts of the world and their perplexing inhabitants two kinds of historical text served more than any others: the Bible and the Greek and Latin Classics. These texts of course were the main educative texts of Europe and it is not therefore surprising that they were turned to with such regularity; indeed it can be said that in some ways they served as maps to these unfamiliar territories and to their inhabitants and their beliefs. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 315

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘Bible as map’ idea anticipates the book’s broader thesis about how Protestant mission reading practices shaped orientalist (especially Jewish-related) knowledge; relevant to the framing of missionaries as persistent inquirers. — connects to: Odysseus’s voyage secularizes mythic space into surveyed, rational geography; Maps transformed village-centered sacred space into abstract conquerable space — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 305; The same biblical imagery powered both European nationalism and colonial expansion — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 330