Story of the World Bible Integration

As we are Christians, I wanted to teach more of the Bible stories than were included in Story of the World.  I thought teaching them alongside the history would be helpful to give context to the stories.   It was hard to know where to place some of the stories, as placing some of these precisely in history is not possible.   I'm not attempting to list all the stories here, just most of the major ones. I will list only the chapter EXCEPT where it makes sense to insert the Bible stories between sub-chapters.  Here's the order for our Old Testament reading...I will post a New Testament chronology later.

OLD TESTAMENT CHRONOLOGY

SOTW Introduction:  How Do We Know What Happened

Creation Story
Adam and Eve
Cane and Able

Ch 1 - The Earliest People

Noahs Ark

Ch 2 - Egyptians Live on the Nile River

Ch 3 -  The First Writing

Tower of Babel
(Also goes nicely around Chap 5)

Ch 4 -  The Old Kingdom of Egypt

Ch 5 -  The First Sumerian Dictator

Ch 6 - The Jewish People

God Speaks to Abraham

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

Joseph Goes to Egypt

The longer story of Joseph
(the SOTW version skips some parts)

Ch 7 - Hammurabi and the Babylonians

(Comparing Hammurabi's code to the 10 Commandments can go here,
even though the 10 Commandments Come Later)


Ch 8 - The Assyrians 

Job 
(Job is hard to date but considered very old...could go anywhere really.  There was space here.)

Ch 9 - India (River Valley People)

Ch 10 - Ancient China

Ch 11 - Ancient Africa

Ch 12 - Middle Kingdom of Egypt

Ch 13 - New Kingdom of Egypt

Ch 14 - Isrealites Leave Egypt

Isreal in the Wilderness
10 Commandments
Walls of Jericho
Isreal Enters Promise Land (Joshua)

Ruth
Samson
Deborah
Gideon
Samuel
Saul 

David
Solomon


Ch 15 - The Phoenicians
Elijah/Elisha
Story of Namaan
Hosea

Ch 16 - The Return of Assyria

Jonah
Jeremiah

Ch 17 - Babylon Takes Over Again

For this one, some of the Bible stories take place mid-chapter, so...

Nebuchadnezzar's Madness - Paragraph 1 - 3

Daniel Captured/Eating Restrictions
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego

Nebuchadnezzar's Madness - Paragraph 4 to End

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

NOTE ABOUT CHAPTER ORDER:  At this point, we decided to skip ahead to Chap 21, so I could do the whole story of Daniel in one place, then go back and read all the chapters on the Greeks.  That also makes it easy to do all the rest of the Old Testament stories before starting Ancient Greece.  But you wouldn't have to do that.   All the chapters I skipped to do later are grayed out below.

Ch 18: Life in Early Crete

Ch 19: The Early Greeks

Ch 20: Greece Gets Civilized Again

 

Daniel and Beltshazar - Writing on the Wall

Ch 21: The Medes and the Persians

 Daniel and the Lions Den

(Note, who "King Darius" is debated, but it's thought

that Cyrus the great put people over areas of his kingdom,

and that King Darius was who he placed over Babylon)

Rebuilding of Jerusalem (described in Nehemiah)

Esther

 ISREAL BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS

That's the end of the Old Testament stories, but between the old  and new testament, Alexander the Great took over the area where Isreal was.  He gave them a lot of freedom to practice their religion, but one of the Seleucids  did not, and oppressed the Jews greatly (the Seleucids were descendants of Seleucus, one of the four generals who ruled the areas conquered by Alexander the Great after his death).   This lead to the Maccabean revolt, which made Isreal an independant nation for a few hundred years.  The story of Hanukkah (outside the Bible) directly relates to this.   If you want to add some study of this,  a good place to do it is after Chapter 25.

NEW TESTAMENT

Story of the World puts both the birth of Jesus, a brief summary of his ministry, and his death, in Chapter 37.  You could use their retelling, adding some of the stories from his ministry in the middle, and stories from acts between chapter 37-38. 

Or you could replace this section completely, and take time out from SOTW to do a more thorough study of the New Testament at this point.   This would be the simplest way to do things, without changing the order of the SOTW chapters.  

So, that's the simple version.  Below is the more complex version with some supplemental history that's not in SOTW.

I wanted my child to learn more about the first 5 Roman Emperors, making connections with Bible stories as we learned about them, so that meant changing up the order of SOTW chapters at this point to be more chronological.  If you would like to do this too, below is the order I used (and some other useful dates).  SOTW also introduced Diocletian before Constantine, and while that is after the period of Biblical stories, I wanted to add some church history about the persecution of Christians under Diocletian, so I changed the order there as well (and added/changed some material in the chapters) to make that make more sense.   I'm still editing that text but I'll add it soon. 

The first five Caesars reigns are listed in purple below, and some other later Caesars mentioned in SOTW, in case like me you would like to add more info about them.

Augustus (REIGN 27 BC –  AD 14) 

-Augustus is covered by SOTW.  Jesus' birth/childhood happened during his reign
Ch 36:  The First Roman Prince
Ch 37 Section 1:  The Birth of Jesus

Tiberius (REIGN 14 - 37 AD)
Tiberius is not mentioned in SOTW.  Most of Jesus ministry, and his death and resurrection, happened during this period, as well as some of the early events in Acts.
Ch 37 Section 2:  Jesus Crucified and Resurrected

Caligula (REIGN 37  - 41 AD)

He is not mentioned in SOTW.  His reign was short because he was paranoid, ruthless, and insane, and was soon assassinated.

Claudius (REIGN 41 - 54 AD)
He is not mentioned in SOTW.  The grandnephew of Augustus, he was left with a limp and partial deafness from a childhood illness.  He probably survived Caligula's reign because he wasn't considered a threat.  He was chosen by the assassins of Caligula to be the next Caesar, and ruled fairly well.   A large part of the book of Acts took place under his reign.

Nero (REIGN 41 - 54 AD)
Nero is covered in SOTW.  It was only 3 years into Nero's reign when the Apostle Paul "appealed to Caesar" when charges were made against him in Jerusalem (Nero's persecutions of Christians had not begun yet then).   That persecution would start shortly after Paul was sent to Rome, and he would be killed there.  It's important to note that persecution of Christians didn't stay at this level after Nero.   For the period between Nero and Diocletian, Christianity, while not embraced, was not attacked to the same degree (though it differed under various emperors).   Because of this and that archeologists/historians no longer believe Christians hid in the catacombs (silverware found there the believe was for Funerary feasts, not because they were living there),I rewrote the "Christians in the Catacombs" section.

Ch 39:  Section 1 "Nero, The evil emperor" (Nero, Christian Persecution - Reign 54-68, Fire 64 Ad)
Ch 40 (Celts, Boadicea, 60-61 BC) - moved here because this happened during Nero's reign
Ch 39: Section 2. "Christians in the Catacombs"  (My rewrite "Christians in Rome"). 

Though I only covered the first five emperors with my kids, I'm including some others just for place markers here.

Year of 4 Emperors (68-69 AD)

Vespasian (REIGN 69-79 AD)
Ch 38 (Jerusalem Destroyed - AD 70)
Masada (AD 66 - 73)
Pompeii, Vesuvius erupts (AD 79, not long after the death of Vespasian)

Various Emperors

Diocletian (REIGN 284-305)
While persecution of Christians waned after Nero, it was reignited under Diocletian.   His reign was the worst and most widespread period of persecution of Christians after Nero (though, since he divided the empire, it mainly only affected his section of the empire). I felt it was important to have his story listed before Constantine, to give more weight to the changes that Constantine brought.
I included some info about Diocletian's persecution of Christians and re-wrote the chapters a bit to work

Ch 40 B (Diocletian Divides Roman Empire - 286 AD)

Constantine (REIGN 306-312)

Ch 39 C (Constantine, Reign 306 - 312)
Ch 41 Barbarians Attack  (Attila the Hun came between Visigoths and Vandals)
Ch 42 Fall of Rome

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