Copying the Bible

Not long ago while browsing Anne Elliott’s blog I read how she has her children copy the Bible (not just verses, but the whole Bible) for their copywork time. This is an idea she got from the Klein Family who got the idea from Art Dappen who got the idea from the book of Deuteronomy:

When he [Israel’s king] takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel. (Deut. 17:18-20, NIV)

Art Dappen wrote a book, a compilation of some of his thoughts on the subject, called The Education of Kings. (pdf / mp3)

His thoughts on the matter (very basically) are that if we are called priests and kings (Rev. 1:6), and if we are called to imprint the word of God in our minds, teach them to our children, and talk about them all the time (Deut. 11:18-21), and if Jesus directs us to seek his kingdom first, then all the rest will follow… (Matt. 6:33) then we should put God first in everything, including our homeschooling, give him the first, best part of our day and spend time imprinting his Word in our hearts while we copy it down in a book. He does a much better job of explaining this all so read his book (or listen to the mp3). It’s not very long, I found it very enlightening.

This sounded pretty good to me so we’ve started. The first day flowed really well with my normally change-hating child actually loving the idea. All was peace and quiet at the table… it was wonderful!

Then the novelty wore off and we’re now dealing with more noise and time-wasting, but I’m sticking with it. I think everything will normalize at some point and we’ll find a happy medium and hopefully my children will all learn to love it as I love it because…I love copying the Bible. It’s so relaxing and it gives me time to think about what I’m writing as my writing speed is much slower than my thinking speed. Try it, you might like it.