Apologia Educational Ministries iWitness Book Review

Apologia Educational Ministries has come out with another amazing series. I was happy to be able to review books from the iWitness series. I received the iWitness Biblical Archaeology, New Testament iWitness, and the Old Testament iWitness for this review.

The iWitness series is for many different ages, the reading level is more suited for ages 11 an up. The cost of are iWitness Biblical Archaeology($14.00), NewTestament iWitness($14.00), and the Old Testament iWitness($14.00).

iWitness books are written by Doug Powell. These are softbound books and are around 60 pages. The books are laid out in fun format that makes the books to look like it would be an ancient book. The pages are all unique using different fonts that are placed to look like an old journal or maybe a modern day scrapbook. The pages are thick and glossy.

 

iWitness Biblical Archaeology

I think this was the one I was most excited about as archaeology has always fascinated me and the fascination has rubbed off on my kids. It was even more exciting reading about the places I visited in Israel last spring. It begins by explaining what archaeology is and then building upon it with the many discoveries.

 Ancient Shilo

This covers a lot of the archaeological discoveries that have been revealed in modern history. This is jammed packed with pictures of places, artifacts, scripture references that pertain to the location or item. Archaeology gives proof to those who would be skeptical of God’s word.

Did you know that different ancient cultures that have a myth on a great flood killing off everyone except for one family? There are lots of other interesting topics to discover:

The Flood

Looking for Noah's Ark

Egyptian Chronology

The Exodus

The House of David Inscriptions

YHWH Inscriptions

Sennacherib's Siege of Jerusalem -(Finds at Nineveh)

Sennacherib's Siege of Jerusalem -(Finds at Jerusalem)

Old Testament History

Dead Sea Scrolls

Oldest Old Testament Copies

Hadrian and Constantine

Jesus' Judges

Jesus' World

Jesus' World- (Jerusalem)

New Testament Locations

New Testament Inscriptions

The Burial Shroud of Jesus?

Old Testament iWitness

I am a strong believer that the Old Testament is the foundation of our beliefs and that it all points to our Savior Jesus. As a Messianic Believer who observes the Biblical Feast and we are familiar with the Jewish history and oral traditions this one was interesting to see how it was presented to others. I think Doug Powell did a wonderful job presenting terminology, culture, and even Jewish thought in a respectful way.

 Masada

Then there is an explanation of the Catholic Bible and Protestant Bible and the history of how it is laid out and why certain books aren’t included. Old Testament iWitness also touches on the topic of archeology.

 Qumran

Just understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls and the book of Isaiah includes too much archeology to not discuss it. We know that the book of Isaiah is accurate because of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Copying

Canon Criteria

Tanakh

Canon Formation

Septuagint

Torah

Prophets

Documentary Hypothesis

Covenants (And Near East Treaties)

Nevi'im

Major Prophets

Minor Prophets

Ketuvi'im

The Scrolls

Wisdom Books

History Books

Intertestamental Period

Apocrypha

Vulgate

Apocrypha Acceptance

Apocrypha Canonization

Dead Sea Scrolls

Archaeology

New Testament

Timeline

NewTestament iWitness

Pool of Siloam

Are you curious as to how the New Testament and the history of how the books went through the process throughout the ages to be placed in what we now consider the New Testament? Or maybe you want more information about who wrote them?  The New Testament has more copies than any other ancient book that has been discovered and the good news is that the accuracy of the New Testament is like 99%. To me that is very reassuring that we are reading the same thing that the authors wrote.

Canon Criteria

Athanasius

Eusebius

Church Fathers

Muratorian Canon

The Gospel

The Apostle

Apostolic Fathers

Apostolic Age

Synoptic Problem

Hymns and Creeds

Rejected Books

Canon Certainty

How it was Copied

Number of Copies

Copying Methods

Differences in the Copies

Manuscript Families

Textual Criticis

Recovered Text

I enjoyed reading this to my children. Both of the kids enjoyed the information and it brought on some great conversation with my kids about God’s word. I love it when I can give my kids an education that is from a Christian worldview.

Little Man actually ended up reading iWitness Biblical Archaeology on his own because he thought it was too intriguing to wait for me to finish it during school. He actually got a double dose of iWitness Biblical Archaeology with me reading it as a read out loud and him taking it upon himself to read it. My family has learned a lot from this thought provoking series. I don’t have anything negative to say about any of these books. This is a great series and I look forward to more books to come out in this series next year.

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