A-Level Resources                                                                          Back to Anthologies Contents Page

Introduction to A-Level Anthologies

for New Testament

Origins

The anthologies appearing on these pages are for use with:

                        Edexcel Unit 4: Religious Studies - Implications : New Testament

The originals can be found by searching on the Edexcel site: www.edexcel.org.uk

 

Format for these Papers

Each of the anthologies from the New Testament section have been taken and formatted in a form to emphasise the detail of the contents.

The meaning has not been changed and few words have been ommitted (simply to fit A4 pages more easily); it is purely the format which has been changed, from essay to bullet-style with underlining, emboldening, colouring etc. to emphasise content.

This formatting has been carried out by this site's editor and the student is invited to copy these pages and even reformat them if different things stand out differently to them. The object of the exercise is to facilitate learning and different students will prefer different approaches. If this approach is not to your taste, please do not use them.

 

The Content of the Papers

These anthologies have been chosen by Edexcel and appear to cover a wide variety of authors. Some authors are clearly committed Christians (e.g. F.Morison in "Who Moved the Stone") while others are clearly atheists (e.g. B Russell in "Why I am not a Christian - Defects in Christ's Teaching"). Other writers write from an obvious position of clear belief in the Biblical records, while others are obviously uncertain.  Nevertheless there is here, an excellent resource to help all students, whatever their personal beliefs, to examine the events recorded in the New Testament.

We feel it would almost be remiss of us if we failed to point out two additional skills that students of the New Testament would find useful:

1. The ability to examine verses of Scripture both in context and in the context of the wider teaching of the whole New Testament. This latter element is most unlikely to be possible for the student who has little background knowledge or experience of the New Testament yet that, no doubt, will be part of your learning process over the period of your A-Level study. Jumping to conclusions or being unaware of the variety of possibilities is a common error, one which you may observe in Russell's paper - but we leave you to find that out!

2. Confusion over discrepancies or so-called contradictions is common in those who have never thought through the subject. If you want help in doing that you may wish to jump to our Apologetics Page 27, "Questions about Reconciling Contradictions" and then use your 'back button' to return here.

 

Copying these Pages

Please feel free to either copy the entire page or copy and paste the text into Word or similar. Remember these pages are simply formatted in the way they are to facilitate learning - if this stlye suits you. The layout on the web page has been kept as near as possible to that found on the A4 pages from which we worked. In future essay answers you will not want to copy the style or even headings you find here.

Otherwise we hope you find these pages useful.