As part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received the books iWitness Biblical Archaeology, New Testament iWitness, and Old Testament iWitness from Apologia Educational Ministries to review
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The iWitness series of Christian apologetics books is great for the whole family. The reading level is for ages 11 and up. You can read an interview with Doug Powell ,the author and designer of the iWitness books, on the Apologia website.
Apologia Educational Ministries iWitness Books Review
iWitness Biblical Archaeology, $14, contains information on many archaeological discoveries. These discoveries confirm historical information that is contained in the Bible. The book gives background information about the discoveries. There are also pictures of the discoveries, and in some cases, pictures of where they were found.
The two pages below cover the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery, there are also two more pages for the Dead Sea Scrolls. On these two pages, you can see a picture of the ruins of Qumran, a picture of a scroll, a picture of one of the first scholars to authenticate the scrolls. The text covers names, dates, and the history of the scrolls.
Old Testament iWitness, $14, is a visual tour of the Old Testament. This book covers who wrote the books of the Old Testament and how they were assembled. This book does not go book by book of the Old Testament, but rather covers topics such as the manuscripts and how they were copied, Torah, Prophets, covenants, the scrolls, wisdom & history books, the Apocrypha, and much more.
Old Testament iWitness includes many quality pictures of scrolls, other artifacts, and many people of the Old Testament. These are obviously pictures of paintings and drawings, except for a couple that are reenactment type pictures, such as a Rabbi with a scroll.
New Testament iWitness, $14, covers how the books of the New Testament were written, who wrote them, why they were chosen to be included, and the methods used to copy the books. Like the Old Testament iWitness book above, this book does not go book by book of the New Testament. It covers many topics including Church Fathers, The Gospel, The Apostle, Apostolic Fathers & the Apostolic Age, Hymns & Creeds, the Rejected Books, Recovered Text, and more.
New Testament iWitness contains many quality pictures of scrolls, paintings and drawings of people mentioned.
There were a couple of things I didn’t like in these three iWitness books. The pages are so full of pictures and text, that they are hard to read. Some of the fonts used are really hard to read. There are no table of contents, or indexes in any of these three books. One or both of those would make it much easier to use these for Bible study. As it stands now, if you are trying to look up something specific, you have to look through the whole book to find it.
That said, I really do like all three of these books. They are full of solid information, with quality pictures. I do like that each book has a Bibliography and a list of image credits in the back.
There are two more books coming to the iWitness series next year, World Religions, and Heresies & Cults. Based on what I have seen in the three books I reviewed, I do plan on buying these when they become available.
To see what other homeschoolers have to say about Apologia Educational Ministries iWitness books, click the graphic below.
