It’s due in the penultimate week of term (the week before last).

Your task is to write a brief biography of Jesus, explaining the link between what he did and who Christians believe him to be. The handout with all the details you need is here.

Resources:
Basic introduction to Jesus’ life
BBC Religion – Life of Jesus
ReligionFacts.com – Life of Jesus

You can also use the New Steps in RE: Book One book, which has a whole chapter on the life of Jesus, as well as the other books around the classroom.

Below is a list of resources to help you out. There are also lots of books in the classroom, particuarly New Steps in RE: Book One.

General Help
REOnline – Places of Worship
BBC Religion – Places of Worship in pictures

Sikh Gurdwaras

Sikh temples are quite interesting because they have a “langar”, a food hall for everyone to use (Sikh and non-Sikh), which shows their belief in the equality of all human beings. They also have a special “bedroom” for their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, which they treat as a person and so put to bed every night.

Sikhs.org – the Gurdwara
LearningLive
Gurdwara virtual tour

The Jewish Synagogue

Jews have met in the Synagogue for many centuries. It is not so much that the structure of the building tells us about Judaism, but they have lots of special things in there which tell us about them. You might talk about the idea that different Jews called their place of worship by different names and explain why.

Chabad.org – Interactive Tour
BBC Religion
JewFAQ.org

Christian Churches

There are lots of different kinds of churches – it would be excellent if your presentation showed some of the differences between them!

RE:Quest – Virtual Tours
h2g2 – Church Layout

Muslim Mosques

There’s loads of stuff to find out about mosques. There is meaning in both what the building looks like, and lots of stuff to say about what happens inside too!

Birmingham Council of Muslims – Virtual Mosque Tour
BBC Religion
Hitchams School Mosque website

This work is due in on the last lesson of term. If it isn’t finished in time you’ll be expected to do it during the last lesson of term while the rest of us are watching a DVD.

There’s lots of information on this website:

• Art of Jesus’ birth
• Art of Jesus in other cultures
• Art showing the 99 names of Allah
• Islamic Geometric patterns

However, they do use shapes and patterns to make art which represents different things.

Symbolic structure
Repeating patterns can represent the order Allah has put into the world, and can also represent the unchanging his laws.

Symbolic Shapes
In Islamic patterns many of the shapes have meanings:

• Circle – A symbol of Allah who has no beginning and no end. The centre can also be a symbol for Mecca, towards which Muslims face to pray.
• Triangle – A symbol for three aspects of human beings: body, mind and spirit.
• Square – The four elements of the world: earth, water, wind and fire.
• Hexagon – This can be created from six circles placed around a seventh. As seven is a perfect number, and circles are perfect the hexagon represents heaven.
• Star – Often represents the spread of Islam because the points of the star spread out from the middle. (Thanks Bisshu for reminding me about this)

Here are some examples, which you might be able to explain:

Have a look at some of the pictures from this website and use them to illustrate the point that Jesus is for everyone.

Of course, all of the pictures tell us different things about Jesus too. You will do even better if you can explain what else these pictures might say about Jesus. I have a little book explaining each one if you want to try this.

• Jesus is fully human AND fully God.
• Jesus somehow reconnects human beings to God.
• Jesus, the “light of the world”, brings God’s peace.
• Jesus is the most important person ever to live.

The main picture we looked at was Botticelli’s Nativity:

Do you remember the things we talked about? Your essay needs to try to explain what they mean:

• Jesus is right in the middle
• Jesus is naked
• Angels and human beings are hugging at the bottom
• A demon is running away in the bottom right
• Angels are coming down out of heaven

Here are some of the other pictures. Remember to ask yourself…

• Who or what is the main thing in the picture? How do you know it is the main thing?
• Where is the light coming from?
• What can we tell about the way the main characters are feeling? How can you tell? What is it trying to say?
• What is happening in the rest of the picture? What do these things tell you about the main bit?

Ghirlandaio’s Nativity:

Previtali’s Nativity:

Rubens:

Your poster needs to include:

• A picture of the name in Arabic
• What the name means and its number
• How you say the name in English
• Verses from the Qu’ran that include the name
• Extension: Some Muslims believe that if you say the name enough you will be blessed. What blessing does the name your are looking at bring?

Websites to use (beware – some count “Allah” as the first name, but we are not using this name. On these sites you’ll need to add 1 to the number I give to get the right name):

• Start with Wikipedia. The number I give you will be in this list. There are more links at the bottom.
• Use Art Islamic.com to get pictures of the names in Arabic. You may have to do a little searching…(this website counts Allah as the first name, be careful)
• IslamicPath.org has information about the benefits of using each name, as does BreatheIslam. Both use “Allah” as the first name.
• Sufism.org has some useful information
• Use Quran.com to look up verses

Good luck!

• Religious Art: BBC Muslim Art, Wikipedia Islamic Art, Islamic calligraphy, Christian Art, or ask Mr Bigg to see “The Christ We Share”, which includes many different pictures of Jesus; Understanding Christianity 3, pp. 22-3. Make sure you look at a variety of religious art so you can do analysis.
• Ghosts and Life after death: BBC article; Ghost Village; New Steps in RE Book 3, Chapter 7; Discovery, Chapter 4; People and Their God, Chapter 8. Make sure you consider several points of view so you can do analysis.
• Religious War: See what you can find out about the Crusades using Google, or perhaps look at Muslim Fundamentalism. Perhaps ask Mr Bedford, as this is quite historical.
• Hindu Gods: There are lots of books in the classroom, or you could start by looking here. The main question to analyse is how there can be only one God, yet many Gods at the same time…
• Vietnamese Buddhism: Here’s a start. The thing to analyse is how Vietnamese Buddhism is different from other forms of Buddhism.
• Does God exist?: There are various ways to approach this one. See what you can find out about the argument from design (that the world is too complex to have happened by chance therefore there must be a designer (God), or look at the argument from experience that refers to people’s experience of God as proof God exists. Try here for a general introduction. Make sure you look at a view arguments and try to explore their strengths and weaknesses in your analysis.
• Christian Worship and Churches: There are loads of books that will help you out on this one, or try here, or have a look at La Sagrada Familia, one of the most famous modern Cathedrals. To do analysis here you need to think about how the design of a church reflects Christian beliefs. For really good analysis you could think about how different kinds of churches show different Christian beliefs…
• Religious Footballers: Here is a good start. See what else you can find on Google. To do good analysis on this you need to look at how the players’ religious faith affects their life and football.
• Stuff about Jesus: Come and see me on this one to be clear on what exactly you want to look at.
• Judaism: I know you’ve already done some fantastic work on this! What I’d love to see now is some writing to accompany it that shows some analysis. A key celebration each year is the Passover (or Pesach), and you could look at how this feast remembers the story of the Jews leaving Egypt. I’ll find you some books on this…
• The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: Your first job is to find out about the Four Noble Truths and explain what they are. Next, perhaps you could analyse how they relate to other Buddhist ideas, or what these ideas mean for real Buddhists?

You chose 5 rules of your own as the rules you would have if they were the only rules in the world. We then used thinking hats to help us consider our rules. The basic idea is that rules are a nice easy way to make ethical decisions. It is easy to know what is right and what is wrong when you have rules.

Unfortunately there are two problems with rules. Firstly, rules can multiply as people make new rules for every situation. Secondly, sometimes rules can be interpreted badly and don’t allow much flexibility depending on the situation.
For homework there were three questions to be answered on the back of the sheet.

For homework you need to answer the questions on the back of the sheet. If you finished it during the lesson then well done! No homework for you!