Biblical Researches in Palestine

Robinson made two journeys to Palestine. The first began on 12 March 1838 in Cairo, reached Jerusalem on 14 April, toured Arabia Petrea in May, arrived in Nazareth on 17 June, and ended in Beirut on 27 June;[3] The second began on 5 April 1852 in Beirut, where he arrived back again 19 June 1852 having explored much of Northern Palestine.[4]

Kiepert's map accompanying the book

The work has been described as a "cornerstone of nineteenth century Palestine exploration".[5] Earlier descriptions had relied on the accounts of travellers and legends, whereas Robinson and his guide and translator Eli Smith relied on only what they saw for themselves.[6]

Albrecht Alt described the work as "epoch-making", and in describing the influence of the work in dispelling previously accepted knowledge of the region, stated: "he was able definitively to disprove a large part of what his predecessors had thought and had written. In Robinson's footnotes are forever buried the errors of many generations".[7]

Robinson's October 1840 letter to his publisher enquiring regarding the upcoming publication

Professor Thomas W. Davis noted that "all later archaeological research in Palestine is in some way indebted to [Robinson]. His geographical study marked a new era".[8] In a study of nineteenth century Biblical Studies in the United States, Jerry Wayne Brown described Robinson's work as "the most significant piece of American Biblical scholarship before the Civil War".[9]

Professor Rana Issa of the American University of Beirut notes that the work relied on phonology as anthropological archaeology:

Phonology here works as a kind of anthropological archaeology. However, instead of excavating the land, Robinson excavated from the lips of the natives. Phonology also turns the natives into a landscape. Unlike Thomson, this landscape does not feed into a poetic imagination; rather it is a landscape that must be made to reveal the traces of the Bible scientifically. For Robinson and Smith, the natives unwittingly carry the "divine dialect" of the land. Based on information from their lips, Robinson turns Ain Shams into the Bible's Beit Shemesh, Ain and Beit being so seemingly common as to be interchangeable. 'Akir is Ekron, while Dura is the biblical Adora because "dropping of the first feeble letter in not uncommon." Robinson records what the natives say only to correct their pronouncements about the place names against the Bible. What they have to say is important as raw material, which will ultimately be made to take the shape of a word that occurs in the Bible.[10]

• Goldman, Shalom L. (2004). "Christian Hebraism and Palestine Exploration; Moses Stuart, Edward Robinson and Their Jewish "Informants"". God's Sacred Tongue: Hebrew and the American Imagination. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 137–162, 215. ISBN 978-1-4696-2023-7.
• King, Philip J. (1983). "Edward Robinson: Biblical Scholar" (PDF). The Biblical Archaeologist. The American Schools of Oriental Research. 46 (4): 230–232. doi:10.2307/3209782. JSTOR 3209782. S2CID 165586450.
• Bartlett, John Raymond (1997). Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation. Psychology Press. pp. 4–. ISBN 978-0-415-14114-7.
• Bewer, Julius A. (1939). "Edward Robinson as a Biblical Scholar". Journal of Biblical Literature. The Society of Biblical Literature. 58 (4): 355–363. doi:10.2307/3259707. JSTOR 3259707.
• Alt, Albrecht (1939). "Edward Robinson and the Historical Geography of Palestine". Journal of Biblical Literature. The Society of Biblical Literature. 58 (4): 373–377. doi:10.2307/3259709. JSTOR 3259709.
• Hitchcock, Roswell Dwight; Smith, Henry Boynton (1863). The Life, Writings and Character of Edward Robinson: Read Before the N. Y. Historical Society. A. D. F. Randolph.