Keyterm: Christianity
Holy Books: The Bible – A range of different people from a vicar to a translator describe how the Bible was put together and why it means so much to Christians.
Curriculum Mapping
TrueTube films are designed for use in a number of ways. Some ideas of where this film could link to your curriculum are below:
AQA
Edexcel
Area of Study 1 - Christianity - The significance and importance of the various beliefs, issues and practices to Christians today should be explored throughout the sections. This should include reference to how the Bible informs a Christian’s understanding of the topics and how approaches to the issues are underpinned by philosophical arguments and ethical theory as applicable. Area of Study 3 – Catholic Christianity - The significance and importance of the various beliefs, issues and practices to Catholics today should be explored throughout the sections. This should include reference to how the Bible informs a Catholic’s understanding of the topics and how approaches to the issues are underpinned by philosophical arguments and ethical theory as applicable. Area of Study 1 – Catholic Christianity - The significance and importance of the various beliefs, issues and practices to Catholics today should be explored throughout the sections. This should include reference to how the Bible informs a Catholic’s understanding of the topics and how approaches to the issues are underpinned by philosophical arguments and ethical theory as applicable.
OCR
Component Group 1 - Christianity Belief sand teachings & Practices - Worship • The structure of church services, for example Anglican Communion service, Roman Catholic mass, Quaker meeting, Greek Orthodox service and Methodist Sunday morning worship • The concept of worship • Purposes of worship • The role and importance of liturgical worship for some Christians •The role and importance of informal/charismatic worship for some Christians • The role and importance of individual prayer, private prayeranddevotionforChristians • The role and importance of private and public worship to Christian communities and individuals •Different interpretations and emphases given to sources of wisdom and authority by different Christian denominations
WJEC
2.2 Unit 2 PART A - Christianity - Core beliefs, teachings and practices Beliefs - The Bible Ø As Word of God, authority, sacred scripture (Deuteronomy 4:1-2) inspiration and revelation Ø As a collection of writings based on context, audience, society, authors' intentions Ø Uses/usefulness (2 Timothy 3:16-17); absolute law, guidance, use during worship and ceremonies (Christening, Marriage, Funerals) Ø Differing ways of interpreting biblical writings: literal, conservative, symbolic, biblical myth Ø Bible in relation to other sources of authority, e.g. conscience (Romans 2:14-15), family, reason, society, situations, civil law, circumstances
Component 2 (Route A) Study of Christianity - Salvation ➢ Law: Word of God; inspiration and revelation; differing ways of interpreting biblical writings; Bible in relation to other sources of authority.
Eduqas
Component 2 (Route A) Study of Christianity - Salvation ➢ Law: Word of God; inspiration and revelation; differing ways of interpreting biblical writings; Bible in relation to other sources of authority.
Transcript
Holy Books: The Bible
Alistair McConville The Bible is a collection of books. In fact, the word Bible means a collection of books, and it's divided into two. There's the Old Testament, which is composed of 39 small books, and there's the New Testament, which has 27 small books.
Eddie Arthur The Old Testament was written in Hebrew with a few bits in Aramaic.
Alex Wood The Old Testament is the story of God creating the world, and Israel, who are his chosen people.
Tanya Walker Some of it is poetry, some of it is biography, some of it is straightforward narration of history.
Alistair McConville Books of law, for example. This is Leviticus, which tells the early Jewish people how to live. Poetic books like the Psalms, which would have been put to music. This is Proverbs, which is philosophical reflections, really. There are books of prophecy, like Jeremiah, that explain what God is saying about the future of the Israelites.
Alex Wood The Bible is all about God's rescue plan, and that plan really comes into play when Jesus comes into the story, and that's the beginning of the New Testament.
Alistair McConville The New Testament talks about Jesus as the Messiah, the Christian fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies.
Alex Wood The point is that Jesus is God's Son, and he came to keep God's promise that we will be with God forever.
Eddie Arthur The New Testament was written in Greek because Greek was understood right across the world at that time.
Alistair McConville There's a collection of biographies of Jesus, those are the Gospels. There are letters from various important early Christians, and it has apocalyptic works that are predicting how the world's going to end. Most people don't think of God as having literally written the Bible with a pen and paper. Rather, they think that God inspired human writers to record those things that God wanted to say.
Eddie Arthur If you read the book of Revelation, John said, an angel told me to write this down.
Alistair McConville Sometimes it's clear that they are speaking for themselves about their own understanding of what God has said or done.
Eddie Arthur Luke says, I asked a lot of people. I did a lot of reading, and I've written this up.
Alistair McConville As people continue to write about Jesus, it became important to make a final decision about what was going to be in the Bible. Lots of bishops came together when the Roman Empire became officially Christian, to discuss which books that they already knew and respected should be in the official version of the Bible, and which shouldn't.
Tanya Walker So the Bible is actually made up of 66 different books, written by over 40 different people across a span of around 1500 years, across three different continents, three different languages, and loads of different genres. There's all sorts of different things going on, and when we come to read the Bible, we, we bear in mind what kind of text am I reading and how is it appropriate to interpret it?
Alistair McConville How to interpret individual passages varies. So in the Catholic Church, for example, only the church has the authority to explain to Christians what the Bible means. In the Protestant church, more characteristically, individuals have greater scope to interpret the Bible for themselves.
Tanya Walker Some of it is poetry, and we're meant to read it allegorically, metaphorically, it's hinting at different things, but it's not meant to be taken literally.
Alistair McConville Some Christians say that Genesis, for example, is a historical account of the beginning of the world. Other Christians say that Genesis tells us something true in a metaphorical way.
Tanya Walker Other bits we realise, okay, the person who was writing this section meant and intended for it to be read as straightforward history.
Alistair McConville The Gospels are a really important part of the Bible. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, four different books, each of which gives an account of the life of Jesus.
Tanya Walker This is exactly how it happened, the people are saying, these are our eyewitness accounts of what happened. But then, of course, some of the things that Jesus says are stories. He tells parables, and we're not to take them literally, but we're to understand that in that story there is a meaning that we're to take and to apply to our lives.
Alex Wood I think loads of us find reading the Bible really difficult, and I definitely was like that. I never read the Bible, and whenever I did, I found it really tricky to understand. It wasn't really until I joined a church and I met a friend and he explained how to read the Bible, where to start, which bits to read, and since then, I've found reading the Bible one of the most fulfilling things that I do.
Tanya Walker So you may have noticed that Christians write in their Bible, or that their Bibles are very worn through sometimes. This is because Christians believe that it's the meaning that's important and precious, and not the paper and ink itself.
Eddie Arthur And from that we have the notion that the Bible itself can be translated. The important thing is that it's available in the language of the people who are reading it.
Tanya Walker Now, it's been translated into over 2000 languages. That's ten times more than any other book.
Eddie Arthur This is a New Testament in a language called Guéré from the Ivory Coast. (Reads from the bible). There is no one way that people do translation. In Ivory Coast we worked in a mud hut, with solar panels on the roof, and a laptop plugged into that and discussed the text in Greek, seek to express it as clearly as possible in Guéré, and then go through a rigorous process of review checking, editing. It took longer to revise it than it did to do the initial translation.
Alex Wood On Sundays, we read the Bible together. Somebody will step up onto this stage here, they'll open the Bible and they'll find a particular passage, and then we'll all grab our Bibles where we're sat, and we'll have a look at it together. The most important thing, I guess, is for that preacher or that speaker to explain how the passage is relevant to us today, how is it going to make a difference to our lives?
Alien Abduction: Christianity – Orbiting Earth at this very moment, the alien survey ship “Pantheon” is abducting people to collect data about their belief systems. Reverend Harry is beamed into the interrogation chamber to answer questions about Christianity.
Transcript
Alien Abduction: Christianity
Robot Survey ship Pantheon orbiting planet: Earth. Dominant life form: Human. Belief system: Various. More information required. Scanning for samples. Welcome to survey ship Pantheon. Our mission is to investigate the culture of your planet, and you have been selected to represent your belief system. Please state your name.
Harry Harry.
Robot Religion.
Harry Christian.
Robot Holy book.
Harry The Bible.
Robot Holy building.
Harry The church.
Robot Symbol.
Harry Um, that would be the cross or a crucifix.
Robot You will now be asked a series of questions from the categories on screen. You have 30 of your Earth seconds to provide a satisfactory answer to each one. Failure to comply will result in matter dispersal. Are you ready?
Harry Yep.
Robot Stand by. Choose the first category.
Harry God.
Robot What do you believe about God?
Harry I believe that God created the whole world, the universe and everything in it. That God created humanity for a purpose and a reason, and that God wants to know us and wants us to know him. God revealed himself to us through the Trinity. There is one God, but there are three parts of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and God lives through us through the Holy Spirit, he's with us in the power of the spirit always.
Harry Life after death.
Robot What do you believe will happen to humans after death?
Harry Um, Christians believe that death is really the beginning, not the end, so when we die, we can go to be with God in heaven. The Bible teaches that there's some kind of judgement, God wants to judge sin and remove sin from his ultimate creation, so all of us will stand before God and will be judged. The good news is, is that Jesus takes that judgement for us, so the Bible says that if we turn to Jesus, then he will bear that judgement for us. So that's what I believe.
Harry Beginnings.
Robot How did your religion begin?
Harry The beginnings of Christianity are in Judaism. Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was a Jew, he lived as a Jew, but he developed Judaism and taught his own message. So Jesus lived his life in a in a provocative way, he performed miracles, he taught different teachings. But ultimately the beginnings of Christianity, certainly the beginnings of the church, are in the death and resurrection of Jesus, that's when our religion began and broke away from Judaism, and that's where we are today.
Harry Everyday life.
Robot How does your religion affect everyday life?
Harry Um, as a Christian, I try and read my Bible and pray every day, but also as a Christian we have to try and live the teachings of Jesus. So everything that Jesus taught, we have to put into action. That means we need to love people, we need to show justice, we need to seek to change the wrongs that are in the world and really demonstrate the love of God to everyone we meet. That's not always easy, but every day we need to be trying to do that, to demonstrate the love of God for his creation. Festivals.
Robot What is the most important festival in your religion?
Harry The biggest festival in our religion is probably Christmas, that's the one that most people know, but I don't think it's the most important. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus and Jesus had to be born, but the central message of what Christians believe is that Jesus died and rose again, and we celebrate that at Easter. At Easter we remember that Jesus died, he was crucified, nailed to a cross, but he rose again three days later. The festival of Easter celebrates that, his death, his coming back to life, his rising again.
Harry Rites of passage.
Robot What is a baptism?
Harry Oh, good question, baptism. There's two kinds of baptism. Sometimes we baptise babies, and often that's with a sprinkling of water, sometimes when we baptise adults, it's by a full immersion, fully underwater. Baptism marks a new life, so the sprinkling of water is washing away our old life and our old sins, or even in a full immersion, we're kind of buried under the water, and then we come back out into new life. It's a symbol of new life, new beginnings and starting again.
Harry Random.
Robot Why are there so many different types of Christian?
Harry Oh gosh, good question. There are different kinds of Christians, like, there are Roman Catholics, Church of England, Pentecostals, Baptists, Methodists. Not because they believe different things, largely we believe the same thing, but because people express themselves in different ways. So we all like different types of music or different food or things like that, and so the different types of Christians emerged, because we want to talk to God in different ways, and we hear from God in different ways, and that's why different types of Christians emerged today.
Robot Thank you. Your answers are satisfactory. Matter dispersal beams powering down. You will now be returned to Earth, human. Goodbye.