Photo Companion to the Bible ACTS - Review

In addition to his informative blog, Todd Bolen at BiblePlaces.com has been compiling some excellent study resources, the latest of which is the Photo Companion to the Bible volume on Acts. Previous volumes on Ruth, Psalm 23, and the Gospels have been released. The primary creators of the Acts volume are Steven D. Anderson, A.D. Riddle, Christian Locatell, Kris Udd, and Todd Bolen who have provided most of the photos and commentary. According to the introduction:

The Photo Companion to the Bible is an image-rich resource for Bible students, teachers, and researchers. Just as a librarian stocks the shelves with as many relevant materials as possible, so we have tried to provide a broad selection of images. Our goal is that you will find in this “library” whatever it is you are looking for. 

The volume is organized into 28 PowerPoints, one for each chapter of Acts. This makes it convenient to search for images connected to a chapter in Acts. Further, each of the images in the PowerPoint is labeled with a verse number and order sequentially. There is a variety of images included: photographs of sites, artifacts, historic photographs, aerial views, and maps. Where it would be helpful, some photographs are duplicated and include an overlay labeling notable features. (Many images come from BiblePlaces’ Pictorial Library of Bible Lands.) Each slide includes the portion of the verse to which it relates, the chapter:verse reference, and a descriptive caption. In the comments section of the PowerPoint, additional information is provided.

There are over 4000 images in the Acts collection, and the 28 PowerPoints take up about 1.6GB of storage. There are between 65 and 250 slides for each chapter. The maps provided by A.D. Riddle are very nice, and most of the pictures are of high quality. As for permissions, it states, “The purchaser is granted permission to use this work in face-to-face teaching, video-recorded sermons, class notes, church newsletters, and like contexts.” Any other use would require specific permission.

This resource will certainly be useful to anyone teaching or studying Acts and looking for visuals. Whether it is a location (e.g., Capernaum), topic (e.g., Baptism), or reference (e.g., “times or seasons”), there are multiple images that can be used. To have everything organized by specific Bible reference simply makes things much easier to access. Some items are very loosely connected with the text, and there are a few identifications or comments with which I might quibble, but overall this is a fantastic and immensely helpful resource.

The list price is $149, but the introductory sale price is $89 which includes free shipping in the US as well as immediate download. For a sample of what this outstanding collection is like, you can download for free the PowerPoint for Acts 18.

Disclaimer: I provided a couple pictures of a memorial to Paul at Apollonia for which Bolen provided me this volume for free.