Old line from a poem.
I am teaching a once a week kids’ class on historical figures and cultures starting in September. I am actually really looking forward to it. I’ve gotten most of one class done. I think I am overplanning and I will have too much to do, but better that than the other way, I think.
Most of the students at the school are Christian and the stated mission is to promote the study of God. So this course is based off stories in the Old Testament. We look at them and then we look at the history around them.
First week we are studying Egypt brick building, housing, and mummies. (The mummies are more for comic relief for the younger kids.) We got there from Joseph and Moses.
Second week we are studying the Assyrians and how scary they could be. Jonah and his fish are getting us there.
Third week we are studying the Philistines and the Phonecians. I think. We’re getting there from Goliath and Elisha. We may not actually do the Phonecians. I haven’t decided yet. Plus, it probably depends on how much info I have.
Fourth week we are looking at what it meant to be a shepherd, three thousand years ago. That should be interesting.
Then we switch to fighting techniques. I was hoping to get the video of Conquest’s Weapons of the Bible, but the History Channel doesn’t have it. Blast them! And they aren’t repeating the series. I’d buy them all if I had too, just to get that one. –Of course, if I had them all I would probably show some of the others later.
At that point I switched and went mostly into non-Bible related historical stuff. Although I do get to Alexander the Great in terms of Hanukah and the Festival of Lights for which Jesus went to Jerusalem.
We’re going to study Hannibal, Diogenes, Hippocrates, Ctesias, Plato, Solon, and some other dudes after that.
This summer I’ll probably be trying these ideas out on my boys. Although my youngest could possibly be in my class in the fall.
coincidence! Racking my brain to remember name and writer of poem beginning, “The Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold”. Any clues? Your program sounds splendid.
the poem was written by Lord George Bryon
The poem is “The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Byron:
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
It describes an incident in the Old Testament, when Jehovah destroyed the entire Assyrian army when they had had the temerity to attck the chosen people!
In addition I might say that the anapaestic tetrameter gives a good rollicking rhythm to the whole, rather like that other anapaestic classic “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” 😉
I learned “The Destruction of Senacherib ” in school 60 years ago. The line(s) I remember so vividly are: –
“The angel of death spread his wing on the blast and breathed in the face of the foe as he passed”, etc., etc..
Biblicly there are so many battles around those times (see also Jehosapht) that one wonders how they manged to do so much prolific “BEGATTING” to keep the nations from disappearing altogether.