Felix-Marie Abel and his Vision of Nature in Palestine: Géographie de la Palestine revisited

Abstract

Felix-Marie Abel was in the early 20th century one of the most prominent “Bible scholars” and, despite limitations, contributed to a better knowledge of Palestinian history and geography. The present paper is an overview of Abel’s monumental Géographie de la Palestine focusing on chapters dealing with plants and animals of Palestine. We show that this analysis of historical texts could be useful to make comparative studies with the situation of nature in Palestine today.