Do you study where the Bible came from with your children? We start our day off with Bible work and I love to add in worldview and historical Bible reference material. That can mean straight reading from the Bible and writing out scripture, worldview reading, or the history of the Bible and it’s people. Archaeology has long been a favorite of my husband’s and that has filtered down to his children! We were blessed to be able to review 3 books by Doug Powell iWitness Biblical Archaeology, Old Testament iWitness, and New Testament iWitness published by Apologia Educational Ministries!
The three books are soft backed books that have the look of archeological finds themselves or the journal of Indiana Jones. They intrigued the kids from the moment I pulled them from the package. I had to set down that day and start reading! <lol>
iWitness Biblical Archaeology This is for the adventous child in your life! That boy that doesn’t get very interested in “worldview products” and other books that sound “mom, it’s soooo boring”. I started reading this book out loud to the whole team and my son’s ears perked up! He was very interested in what historians found and how. He even grudgingly admitted that perhaps being a historian was part fun.
I had to keep my laptop open and ready to go while we read through this book. iWitness Biblical Archaeology gave wonderful background and reference material. My kids were always wanting to look up more!
New Testament iWitness On we went to the New Testament iWitness book. It starts out with a question I have heard many adults wonder about, ‘What books should be in the Bible and how did they get there?’ We studied that and the littles took this time to memorize the books of the Bible. Learning about how the Bible was passed on after the Jewish scholars were no longer handling that job (for the New Testament only) was interesting. The various copies we have heard about in the news and what they brought to the overall picture of our understand of the bible is incredibly important. Now my teens have a much more balanced view of the Bible and it’s origins.
Old Testament iWitness The last book we tackled was the Old Testament iWitness. After learning how hard it can be to find a solid thread for a the New Testament that is only several thousand years old I was interested to see how we still have a viable Old Testament. Don’t get me wrong I believe in the BIble as the word of God. I was just wondering how historically and against older scripts the Old Testament be accurate. Turns out that Jewish scholars are amazing! I will not spoil their secrets but I feel much more secure in my understanding of which books are in the Old Testament and why.
Over all the child (and I) are better able to defend our Christian belief based on the Bible. We are better more scholarly Christians now ready to dig deep and find out what goes behind the rumors. This series has brought out the best in many of my kids like my son suddenly desiring to study history with a new fresh view.
Special needs disclaimer does need to go on these books. They are fun and stylized but that is the problem. My struggling readers especially my child with dyslexia could not understand the print font. It is one of the handwriting fonts. On the good side each page has short to the point sections that if you can read the material are easy to remember, upping reader comprehension, and interest.
Apologia has a Christian worldview learning series hit on their hands! These are small easy to use books to enhance your learner’s understanding of the Bible. We all liked them very much and it was not a drudgery to keep everyone attention. The short to the point sections also lead quite successfully to outside the book rabbit holes to journey down. The iWitness books iWitness Biblical Archaeology, Old Testament iWitness, and New Testament iWitness all were a great addition to our Bible time. The series provided Christian Apologetics and worldview for all my kids ages 6 and up (though my middle schoolers and up got the most).
Format: Soft covered books
Age Range: ages 11 and up
Price Range: iWitness Biblical Archaeology 14.00 ; New Testament iWitness 14.00 ; Old Testament iWitness 14.00
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