Drive Through History - The Holy Land

This is a guest post by Dave Stotts.


Historian J.B. Bury once said, “History is a science. No more and no less.” It’s a quote that anyone who desires to know what really happened in time-space history should agree with. No class or book entitled “Creative History” should ever see the light of day.

On the other hand, our presentations of history can and should be creative. Not because history is boring. On the contrary, history can be electrifying. But because it is so exciting and important, history deserves to be told in a way that is engaging, memorable and yes, creative. That is why I love being the host of Drive Thru History.

When our journey started 8 years ago on a trip to Rome, Greece and Turkey, I had no idea our show would find an audience let alone become an award-winning 12-part series on ancient history. It gave us the appetite and the opportunity for more. So we jumped ahead a millennia and a half and covered another segment of history close to our hearts: the American Revolution. Now, along with Zondervan, we’re about to release our third entirely new series, this time on the Holy Land.

I often joke about some of my fellow Texans being surprised to learn this isn’t a series on the Lone Star State. There is a whole ‘nother Holy Land on the other side of the world called Israel.  And it was there that the Drive Thru History crew and I spent 3 exhilarating weeks speeding around a country that is barely bigger than New Jersey, but in terms of its significance, it is global.

We visited all the sites you would expect, bringing with us the Drive Thru History shooting style and self-deprecating humor that our viewers have come to expect. And while the sites in and around Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Galilee will always be significant, it was the lesser-known seen places like Masada, Qumran, Philippi, Beersheba, Ein Gedi, Shiloh and Shechem that will be perhaps the most interesting for many viewers. Taking people to places off the beaten path has always been a feature of the show.

And while it’s trite to say “the Bible came alive” for me while I was there, it truly did make things leap off the page. The geographical information in the Gospels, for example, took on a whole new life as we traveled from place to place. And while I couldn’t help getting excited about being at or near the very location Biblical events took place, for me it was more profound to be reminded that they took place. Our shallow culture distracts us from marveling at the truth of how history itself hinges on what happened in Israel. I hope and pray our series reminds us not just about a significant series of events, but about a Man to whom all of history points. His life, death and bodily resurrection ignited an unlikely group of followers to go forth and make all the world His Holy Land.