Paul Calvert spoke with the creator Ouri Sivan

Going Back In Time Over 2000 Years  With A New Bible Travels App

Ever wondered what it would be like to go back in time over 2000 years? Walk around the streets and alleys of Jerusalem during the times of Jesus? Stand on Mount Olives at sunrise and look at the panoramic city view? Well now it's possible! The Bible Travels app is a virtual tour guide that follows the footsteps of Jesus in his last days in Jerusalem featuring over 150 pages of moving maps and animated photo galleries. To find out more Paul Calvert spoke with the creator Ouri Sivan.

Paul: What is the Bible Travels app?

Ouri: The Bible Travels app is a virtual tool to Jerusalem. It has animated photo galleries of all Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and around Jerusalem. It also has Bible teaching pages that show you where every site appears in the Bible and it also has more historical information and general information about most sites in Jerusalem.

Paul: What was the idea behind this app?

Ouri: Well the idea was to bring Jerusalem to people who cannot come here; to use a very advanced technology to bring Jerusalem to everyone, everywhere. You can actually sit in China, Canada, or in Birmingham and just take your iPhone from your pocket and go to Jerusalem; go to the holy sites and see the olive mountains and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Paul: Was it easy creating an app like this?

Ouri: I thought it would be easy, but it wasn't; physically it was very demanding. Many, many days of shoots and there was a lot of research involved and I had to make sure everything has to be perfect, so people could actually sit and learn and make sure that, to the last letter, everything they read would be correct.

Paul: Did you actually have to go around Jerusalem to take photographs of every single place that you've got for your app?

Going Back In Time Over 2000 Years  With A New Bible Travels App

Ouri: Yes and not only that, I had to go on every site that we visited, that we photographed, we had to go in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening to see which was the best light to shoot this location and to plan the shoot, because the photographs in the application are taken from a traveller point of view. If you go to a church, you have a shot of the entrance and then you go in and you see a wide look and then you go and you see the close-ups on the statues and then you see the ceilings and you see the floor and then the next picture will be out and go to the gate of the next church, etc. We had to plan the lane of the shoot, so when you flip through the photograph it will be as if you were visiting. That was the intention of the app.

Paul: What can people see as they go through the app?

Ouri: On the menu page you have all the lanes, that if you are a tourist that's where you go, the classic lanes. It takes you by order. Let's say you want to enter the gallery of the olive mountains, so you have all the churches of the olive mountains inside and out. If you want to leave in the middle of a lane you can go switch a lane and go to the Via Dolorosa; you can go to Ein Karem and you can go to the city gates, etc. Then on each site that you visit, on every few photographs, you have Bible pages that show you all the places that it appears. Most places like the olive mountains appear in many different places in the Bible and it makes you understand, for instance, the place in the olive mountain where Jesus stood and wept and when you stand there and you see the photograph it's much more realistic. It helps you understand what you read in the Bible. We put a lot of effort in making it in a way that it will make you understand what you see and what you read in the Bible.

Paul: Wow, so people can actually be reading the Bible and find out: this is exactly where I am reading now, today and seeing and imagining Jesus standing there in the area where you are photographing?

Ouri: Yeah, when you see the panoramic view of Jerusalem from the olive mountain you understand like it says, where he stood and wept over the destruction of Jerusalem. When you see it physically and you see another close-up and you see another close-up of the wall and then you see another wide of the city it helps you; it makes it more realistic. I think that's one of the fascinating things about the Bible Travels, that it gives you the Old City of Jerusalem and makes it real. You have it in your pocket and you go back in time to the Bible and you see this is where Jesus was arrested and this is the place where he was carried away with the cross and this is where he fell with the cross and this is the burial place and this is where he had his trial and these places are actually there. You see it's a real picture, it's no drawing.

Paul: You do a little bit of tour guiding yourself, is this what inspired you to do the app?