About
A companion for reading the Bible in its world.
Lands & Lineage brings the geography, history and people of Scripture alongside the text, so that every passage can be read with its world in view.
Who we are
Lands & Lineage is developed by Lands & Lineage LLC, an independent company, and is currently in an invite-only beta. We would be glad to hear from you at support@landsandlineage.com.
Our doctrinal commitments
Research answers are given within the historic ecumenical creeds — the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Definition of Chalcedon and the Athanasian Creed — and draw on the Westminster Confession of Faith and its Larger and Shorter Catechisms. Where a source differs from the creeds, the answer says so openly and cites both.
How the content is written
Our 4,454 articles on places, people and peoples are prepared with the help of a language model, working only from the sources held in Lands & Lineage. Every statement is footnoted to its source, and articles are marked as drafts until they have been reviewed.
Where scholars disagree about the location of a place, the map shows that uncertainty rather than choosing for you.
Sources
Scripture and the classic reference works are in the public domain; the geographic and name data are published under Creative Commons licences. Our principal sources:
| Source | Used for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Berean Standard Bible | The text of Scripture | Public domain |
| King James Version (1769) | A second translation, to read and compare | Public domain in the United States |
| Berean Interlinear Bible | The Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words, with Strong’s numbers | Public domain |
| STEPBible lexicons (TBESH, TBESG) | Definitions of the original words | CC BY 4.0 |
| OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding | Place identifications | CC BY 4.0 |
| Pleiades | Ancient places and coordinates | CC BY 4.0 |
| STEPBible TIPNR | People, names and family links | CC BY 4.0 |
| Smith (1863), Schaff (1880), Easton (1897), Hastings (1898), the ISBE (1915) | Bible dictionaries and encyclopedia | Public domain |
| Josephus, Strabo, Pliny, Pausanias, Tacitus, Suetonius, Eusebius | Ancient historians and geographers | Public domain |
| The Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, via the NEUU Bible Commentaries Dataset | Early commentary | Translations public domain; dataset CC BY 4.0 |
| Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706–1721) | Reformed commentary | Public domain |
| Calvin’s Commentaries (Calvin Translation Society, 1843–1855) | Reformed commentary | Public domain |
| John Lightfoot, Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae (1658–1678) | Jewish background to the Gospels | Public domain |
| The ecumenical creeds and the Westminster standards | Doctrine | Public domain |
| Wikimedia Commons, the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Library of Congress | Photographs and art | Each image under its own licence, credited where shown |
| Protomaps and OpenStreetMap contributors | The basemap | ODbL |
The complete list of sources is available in the app.