Places Visited

Our project in Downpatrick Young Archaeologists’ Club has led us to discover how many different beliefs there are in our world. This religions’ tree has been created to illustrate this.

2 Digging Our Faith

Faiths OF Our WOrlD

Learning about other faiths “We never knew of so many faiths in our world.” Alfred Chester Beatty (1875–1968) was a rich American who settled in Ireland. He spent many years travelling to Asia, China and Japan, collecting religious objects wherever he went. He arranged for his collection to be placed on public display after his death, hoping people would be as inspired and enlightened by other religions as he was. Before we visited the Chester Beatty Library we really only knew of two faiths; Christianity and Judaism. These are part of our own religious background and part of our religious education at school and church. We discovered there are many different faiths in the world. We were amazed to see these wonderful items on display in the Chester Beatty Library, during our visit.

We found out lots of new things: • The first Christian gospels were written in Greek on leather-covered papyrus. • Jewish scriptures were written on scrolls in Hebrew. • Arabic is the language of the Qur’an. Many followers of Islam learn to recite the Qur’an in Arabic. • Muslims use a qibla to find both the direction of Mecca and to calculate the time for prayers.

there are three main religions in india - hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. • Krishna is a blue god that Hindus pray to. • Jainism believes there to be 24 enlightened beings, or Jinas. • Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak (1469 – 1539). Sikhs believe that there is one god, before whom all people are equal. This faith began in the Punjab area of Pakistan. • In Sumatra, holy scriptures were written on books made from bark.