This GCSE RE Christianity quiz takes a look at stories and parables. In common with many faiths, Christianity has a rich collection of inspiring stories about its founder and early leaders, plus the excellent little stories that Jesus built into his teachings ~ the Parables, which were like little thumbnail illustrations in words. In this quiz we'll explore a selection of these to give you a 'flavour of the faith'.
Back in New Testament times there were few, if any, schools of a kind we would recognise, nor large disposable quantities of writing materials; and printing as we now know it was still virtually 1,500 years away, let alone any form of screen-based or electronic media. The pace of life was slower; many of the people Jesus met and dealt with would have been functionally illiterate, but perfectly intelligent in most cases and well used to living ‘closer to the land’.
Rather than risk putting off the majority who were not trained religious specialists, He couched his teaching about God in terms of everyday analogies: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like …’ followed by a little story about life on a farm or estate, for instance. Many of these are well-known still, even to people with no particular religious affiliation: often by their familiar titles such as ‘the Sower’ and ‘the Good Samaritan’.
The stories are miniature models of, and for, human behaviour ~ in some ways, not unlike Aesop’s Fables, which you may also have come across (e.g. of the Hare and the Tortoise) ~ and, also as with Aesop, there is usually a point or ‘moral’ to be drawn from the tale. Sometimes Jesus spells this out; in other cases it may be too obvious to need that.
Since Jesus’ ministry was bound up with the local landscape and its characters in other ways, we have also added a couple of questions touching on His miracles.