Topic: Holy Books
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
Component 1: The study of religions: beliefs, teaching and practices - Christianity - Introduction /pre-work Worship and festivals - Different forms of worship and their significance:
• liturgical, non-liturgical and informal, including the use of the Bible
• private worship.
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?
Holy Books: The Torah – A Rabbi and two Jewish scribes (who happen to be married – to each other, not to the Rabbi) describe the Torah – what it contains, how the scrolls are copied, and the ways in which the Torah is used in worship.
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
Component 1 - The study of religions: beliefs, teaching and practices - Judaism - The synagogue and worship - The written law (Tenakh) and the oral law (Talmud) and their study, use and significance in daily life.
Edexcel
Area of Study 1 – Judaism - Section 1: Jewish Beliefs - The nature of the Almighty: how the characteristics of the Almighty are shown in the Torah, and why they are important in Jewish life today, including One, Creator, Law-Giver and Judge, including reference to Genesis 2.
OCR
Component Group 1 - Judaism - Practices -Worship• The structure of the synagogue service •The importance of the synagogue, in relation to the following religious features: •• Design •• Artefacts •• Synagogue services •• The role of the synagogue within the Jewish community •• Worship in the home •• The place of worship in the home •The significance of the Ark, the Bimah, the lack of representation of G-d, the Ner Tamid and the Mikveh • The nature and importance of the Torah readings, other readings, prayers and sermons •The connection between the synagogue and the Temple • Issues related to worship and the synagogue, including the length and structure of synagogue services and different uses of Hebrew in the service • Common and divergent emphases placed on the features of a synagogue by different Jewish groups, including separating women and men in an Orthodox synagogue •Different interpretations and emphases given to sources of wisdom and authority by different Jewish groups
Prayer• The role and importance of prayer in Jewish worship, including the Amidah (the standing prayer) • The role and importance of private prayer for Jews • The importance of: •• The three daily periods of prayer •• The concept of spontaneous prayer •• Recitation of the Shema •• Recitation of Grace after meals •• Teaching children to pray •• The direction faced when praying •• Prayer and the observance of the Mitzvot in the home • The importance of prayer for praise, confession, thanks giving and supplication.
Law• The form and content of the Tenakh (the Written Law) • The Chumash and the Sefer Torah • The nature of the Talmud (the Oral Law) •The relationship between the Talmud and the Torah, including the ways in which the Talmud is used in relation to the Torah • The use of the Torah in the synagogue • The use of the Tenakh in private worship • The way that the Torah provides structure to the life of a Jew, including the use of the Neviim and Ketuvim in public and private worship •The significance of the use in daily life of the Tenakh and the Talmud •Issues related to the law, including the different views held amongst religious Jews regarding the nature of the Torah and the Talmud • Common and divergent emphases placed on the Tenakh and Talmud by different Jewish groups •Different interpretations and emphases given to sources of wisdom and authority by different Jewish groups.
WJEC
2.1 Unit 1 PART A - Part A Judaism - Core beliefs, teachings and practices - Practices - Worship in the home and synagogue The importance of the synagogue: internal features- aron hakodesh (ark), ner tamid, bimah, Torah, Ten Commandments, seating Reading of the Torah during synagogue worship Diverse practices within Orthodox and Reform synagogues – worship and the role and gender of the Rabbi The importance of the home for worship in Judaism: challenges and benefits of observing Shabbat (Exodus 20:8-10) 2.2 Unit 2 PART A – Judaism - - Core beliefs, teachings and practices Beliefs - Sacred Texts Importance of The Tenakh (Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim) as revealed and/or inspired Word of God Importance of the Talmud
Eduqas
Component 3 (Route A) - Option 4: Judaism - Practices - The Synagogue ➢ Features of different synagogues in Britain: significance of bimah, aron hakodesh, Torah scrolls, ner tamid, seating, minyan; Exodus 20:4-5
Transcript
Holy Books: The Torah
Rabbi Benji Stanley Torah the word means teaching. The way teaching is often given in Judaism is through books.
Avielah Barclay The Torah has a lot of valuable lessons and a lot of interesting things to say, even to people who are not Jewish.
Mordechai Pinchas That's totally correct, because the reason that the Torah was given in the desert, for everyone to see, was that everybody has a piece of the Torah.
Rabbi Benji Stanley People sometimes call it the Five Books of Moses, because he's one of the main characters, and also he was involved in writing them down. So Torah can mean the five books, or it can mean all those books and conversations that have grown up around the five books, with people trying to figure out how to live responsibly and kindly.
Rabbi Benji Stanley We read the five books of Torah on a scroll written in Hebrew.
Mordechai Pinchas So the Torah is really five books in one.
Rabbi Benji Stanley Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, and Deuteronomy. Or actually the Jewish terms for those books are Bereshit, Shemot, Vayikra, Ba Midbar and D'varim. So at the beginning of the Torah, we have the story of creation, the story of Adam and Eve, the story of Noah, and then we have the story of Abraham, who had a child, Isaac, and the first book of the Torah tells us about their travels and their missions.
Mordechai Pinchas Second book is called Shemot, Exodus, and that's about the Jews who were stuck in Egypt, and then they were freed from slavery, lots of miracles, and then moved off on to their journey to the Promised Land, which is Israel.
Rabbi Benji Stanley Moses leads the people to Mount Sinai, and Moses runs up the mountain, has some conversations with God, and then carries some of God's laws down the mountain on two tablets of stone.
Mordechai Pinchas The third book is kind of a bit of an interruption. It's called Vayikra, and it's about the priests and the offerings, and it's lots and lots of rules.
Rabbi Benji Stanley Nowadays in Judaism, we don't sacrifice animals, but we do give up our time, in order to think about how to behave well in the world.
Mordechai Pinchas And then the fourth book is Bamidbar. It's all about the wandering in the desert for 40 years, really, that's about them stopping being slaves and learning to actually be a people.
Rabbi Benji Stanley They tend to complain a lot. They argue with Moses, they argue with God, but eventually they're getting towards a new land, and that's what we have in the fifth book of the Torah.
Mordechai Pinchas Finally, the last book just before they go into Israel is Moses telling them all the rules, reminding them of everything that's been happening. That's called D'varim, Deuteronomy.
Rabbi Benji Stanley Moses dies just before the people enter the land of Israel. So in a way, the five books of Torah end with Moses being buried.
Rabbi Benji Stanley The Torah scroll is treated with great respect. So it has clothes like a queen or a king. It has wonderful silver crowns and it has this special robe. Now we undress it on Saturday morning during our service, and also some synagogues have services on Monday and Thursday morning as well, when you would also undress the scroll in order to read from it. Hagbah means lifting up, and it's a moment when someone lifts up the scroll so the whole community can see the section which is going to be read, and you would show all directions so that everyone can see it. (Reads passage from the Torah in Hebrew)
Avielah Barclay We read the Torah from right to left, and we read it using something called a yad, which means hand in Hebrew. And as you can see, there's a little hand carved at the end of this, and we use it to point at the letters as we read them.
Rabbi Benji Stanley We don't want to touch the parchment, the stuff that the scroll is written on directly with our fingers. And that's one of the reasons we also dress the scroll so that when we're not using it, it's well respected. It's in its special ark, which is where the scroll lives, where the scroll is kept.
Avielah Barclay The scrolls that we use today are essentially the same as the first ones written thousands of years ago, because we can only copy from one to another, and then it has to be checked three times, because one mistake can change the whole meaning of what it says. It's important for it to be written by hand. A computer can print out a book that you can read, and you can still learn it that way, but you can't use it in public ritual because it hasn't been imbued with the holiness that a person with a soul can give to it.
Mordechai Pinchas So originally all the Torahs were written with one of these. This is a reed quill. Nowadays most people use a feather. This is a swan's quill. But this quill is from a vulture. The bird we can't eat, so I can't use it to write. The parchment sheets, they're joined together with animal sinew and gold plated needle.
Rabbi Benji Stanley But the book is never finished. You can roll up the scroll, but really, the scroll continues. In all those conversations we have about what does this mean and how does it affect my life?
The Gospel of Luke – The Resurrection – In the last of three dramatised extracts from Luke’s Gospel that tell the Easter story, we see the disciples pass from the depths of sorrow as Jesus is buried, to the heights of joy when he returns from the dead (Luke 23: 50 to 24:47).
Courtesy of The Lumo Project.
The Gospel of Luke – The Crucifixion – In the second of three dramatised extracts from Luke’s Gospel that tell the Easter story, we see Jesus’ trials and his crucifixion at Golgotha – the Place of the Skull (Luke 22: 54 to 23:49).
Courtesy of The Lumo Project.
The Gospel of Luke – The Last Supper – In the first of three dramatised extracts from Luke’s Gospel that tell the Easter story, we see the events leading up to Jesus’ arrest – from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the Last Supper (Luke 19:36-48; 20:19-26; 21:37 to 22:34; and 22:39-54).
Courtesy of The Lumo Project.
