Bible

About this course

Eighth grade is the year the course starts to feel academic. The survey strands still walk both testaments, but now with dates and structure attached: the three sections of the Hebrew Bible, the primeval history of Genesis 1 through 11, the division of the kingdom in 931 BC, the seventy years of exile, the intertestamental period, and the distinct portrait of Christ in each Gospel. Bible study skills move past method into interpretive frameworks, teaching the inductive method, the covenant structure of Scripture, the redemptive-historical approach, predictive prophecy, and a full lesson on typology, working through the Passover lamb, the brazen serpent, Jonah, Aaron's priesthood, and Adam as the figure of Christ. Church history covers the Apostolic Fathers, the Roman persecutions, how the canon of Scripture was assembled, the Nicene Creed and the defense of the Trinity, Augustine, the Great Schism, the Waldensians and Francis, Wycliffe and Tyndale, the Anabaptists, and the Puritans.

The year is 180 lessons across 15 units, one per school day, at about 25 minutes each. Eight strands rotate, with seven of them coming around twice at increasing depth. A lesson is a substantial piece of expository writing organized under headings, quoting and citing the King James text throughout, and defining its technical vocabulary as it goes. Every lesson ends with a ten-question multiple-choice quiz that grades itself.

What most distinguishes this year is how the ethics unit handles the questions Christians actually argue about. It opens by naming four ethical frameworks, then takes up capital punishment by laying out the case from Genesis 9:6 and Romans 13 alongside the case from mercy and nonresistance, and takes up war by presenting Just War theory with all seven of its classical criteria beside the Anabaptist case for nonresistance from the Sermon on the Mount and the Schleitheim Confession, and then says plainly that both traditions take Scripture seriously and neither should be held with arrogance. The same even-handedness runs through the lessons on political authority, wealth, and environmental stewardship. Sexual ethics is taught as covenant faithfulness and purity rather than as biology. Expect your student to read a good deal on their own and to bring real questions back to you and your family.

What the course covers

• Old Testament survey with historical structure, dates, and the exile
• New Testament survey from the intertestamental period through Revelation
• Typology, covenant structure, and the redemptive-historical method
• Inductive, topical, character, and cross-reference Bible study
• How the canon of Scripture was assembled
• Church history: the Fathers, Nicaea, Augustine, the Schism, Wycliffe, Tyndale
• The Reformation, the Anabaptists, and the Puritans
• Apologetics: cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments; the resurrection
• Contested ethics: capital punishment, just war and pacifism, wealth, technology
• Worldview applied to education, science, government, economics, and the arts

What your student will be able to do

• Identify an Old Testament type and the New Testament reality it prefigures
• Read a passage in its covenant and redemptive-historical context
• Explain how the biblical canon was recognized and why it can be trusted
• Lay out both sides of a contested Christian ethical question fairly
• Present the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments and their limits
• Analyze a film, song, or news story for the worldview underneath it

Scope and sequence

All 15 units of Bible for Grade 8, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 180 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 180 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.