What are some of the most significant settings in Elizabeth Geogre Speare's novel The Bronze Bow?

Elizabeth George Spear’s novel The Bronze
Bow features a number of significant settings. In general terms, the novel is
set in Roman-occupied Judaea during the time of Jesus (first century C.E.). The youthful
protagonist, Daniel Bar Jamin, is specifically described in the book’s opening
paragraphs as a Galilean:

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A proud race, the Galileans, violent and
restless, unreconciled that Palestine was a conquered nation, refus[ed] to acknowledge
as their lord the Emperor Tiberius in far-off
Rome.

This very early
sentence already implies the crucial role that setting will play in this novel. The book
is set during a time and place of great cultural and religious conflict, and so the
stage is already set in the very first paragraph for descriptions of such conflict in
this book.

Other paragraphs early in the book refer not
simply to Palestine in general but to specific places in Palestine and to specific
geographical features, including a “valley,” “terraces of olive trees,” “thickets of
oleander,” and a “brown, mud-roofed town.”  Spear thus goes out of her way, in the early
pages of the book, to suggest that setting will be important in this book and also to
create a vivid sense of setting by using highly precise imagery.  She describes a kind
of landscape that will seem unusual and even somewhat exotic to many of her young
readers, a great many of whom are residents of modern cities and
suburbs.

Various significant places mentioned in the book
include Ketzah, the village of Daniel’s youth; Capernaum, where Joel’s family plan to
move; Nazareth, the home of Jesus; a mountain; a watchtower; a shop; a synagogue;
Jerusalem; a temple; the Lake of Merom; and numerous other places. By emphasizing and
describing such places, Spear makes her book historically credible while not neglecting
to emphasize the trans-historical significance of the events and characters (especially
Jesus) she depicts.