Authoring Standards
One Standard, Whatever the Subject
I built the templates behind Project Context so that every study — whoever or whatever it's about — is held to the same content standard. That's what lets you rely on a page you've never read before, and move from one study to the next without recalibrating each time.
This page lays out what that standard actually asks for. It's mostly about content: what each study has to answer, what sources it has to stand on, and what has to be true before it's allowed to publish. Style matters too — but only in service of content, which I come back to near the end.
A standard isn't about making every page look the same. It's about making every page illuminate the author's intent with the same care.
One Standard, Four Kinds of Study
Scripture doesn't come in a single shape, so the template flexes to fit the subject — while the bar underneath stays constant. Four forms cover the analytical studies on the site:
Character Study
The subject is one biblical figure. A fixed set of required sections, with optional depth added for major figures whose stories warrant it.
Book Study
The subject is one book — Tanakh or New Covenant. Its literary architecture, its place in the larger story, and its central theology, read as the author built it.
Thematic Study
The subject is a theme that moves across the canon — built through several texts, with a hub that frames the argument and parts that develop it.
Multi-Page Suite
Any of the above, scaled up. When one subject is too large for a single page, a set of connected, color-coded pages — each with its own focus, held together as one study.
Alongside the studies, the site publishes two other formats — discussion guides and LLTSE scripture editions. They serve different purposes, so they carry their own backbones, laid out further down.
What Every Character Study Must Answer
For a character study, these are required — no exceptions. They're the questions every profile has to answer before it can call itself complete:
Who they are, where they appear, and why they matter.
The arc of their story, with key Hebrew or Greek at the pivotal moments.
Where they sit in the book, and how the author shapes them.
The major theological ideas their story carries.
The world they lived in — and how Scripture both echoes and counters it.
How their story fits the larger creation, fall, and redemption pattern.
How their story leans toward Christ, with specific New Testament connections.
What it means for personal life and for the community.
Real prompts for discussion and teaching, not filler.
The academic sources the whole study rests on.
Optional Sections — and When Each Applies
Beyond the required core, a study can add optional sections for greater depth. Each one has a specific trigger, and it's added only when the text actually meets that criterion — never to fill space. Here's every optional section and exactly what has to be true for it to appear:
The figure shows clear creation, fall, and new-creation parallels — New Adam/Eve typology, garden imagery, or advancement of the seed promise.
At least three significant linguistic patterns are present in the figure's narrative.
The figure is an active party to a covenant — an international treaty, clan alliance, marriage covenant, or a personal covenant with God.
The figure has five or more genuinely distinctive features — a "first," an "only," something unprecedented in Scripture.
The New Testament draws on Jewish interpretive tradition not found in the Old Testament itself — for example, Jude citing 1 Enoch, or Paul's reading of Sarah and Hagar in Galatians.
The figure has a song in the text: Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, or Mary.
Restraint is part of the standard
Depth is earned by the text, not manufactured to fill a template. A short study of a minor figure isn't a study that fell short — it's a study that stayed honest about how much the text actually says.
The Backbone, Format by Format
The character standard above is the deepest in the family. Every other format carries its own required backbone — a fixed set of things it must deliver before it's complete. The principle never changes; only the shape does.
📖 Book Study — Tanakh & New Covenant
How the book is built — its structure, movements, and design, read the way the author shaped it.
Where the book sits in the larger story, and what it inherits from and hands on to the books around it.
The book's core theological claims, stated and defended from its own text.
The Hebrew or Greek vocabulary the book turns on, in its own script.
Where the book leans toward Christ, with specific New Testament connections.
The academic sources the study rests on, at the same minimums as character studies.
🧵 Thematic Study
One clear, stated claim the whole study argues — not a survey, an argument.
The specific passages the argument rests on, examined rather than proof-texted.
The theme traced in order — how it develops from Tanakh through the New Covenant, not a flat list of occurrences.
A conclusion that ties the anchor texts back to the thesis and says what the theme means for the whole story.
Sourced like every study — the claims trace to the scholarship.
💬 Discussion Guide
The Scripture the session is built on, named up front — the guide serves the text, not the other way around.
A clear flow with honest time estimates, sized for the setting it names — small group, one-on-one, or family.
Prompts that open discussion rather than test recall — no filler, no questions with only one right answer.
Leader notes separated from what the group sees, so the guide works in the room, on a phone, in real time.
Guides built on a published study inherit its sourced claims — a guide never introduces theology the studies haven't done the work to support.
📜 LLTSE Scripture Edition
LLTSE is a formatting methodology, not a translation. Every edition credits the translation to its source and the formatting to Project Context — never blurred.
Indentation and lineation follow patterns the text actually carries — parallelism, triads, creeds, chiasms recognized in scholarship — not patterns imposed on it.
Not a word of the source translation is added, cut, or altered in the name of structure. The layout changes; the text does not.
The Structured Edition (for study) and the Scroll Edition (for continuous reading) present the identical text — only the presentation differs.
The Content Bar
These are the non-negotiables — the things that make a study scholarship rather than opinion:
A minimum by depth — 15+ academic sources for a major figure, 10+ for a moderate one, 5+ for a minor one.
Chicago format, with each source tagged to the sections it actually supports — so you can find the scholarship behind any claim.
Every substantive claim ties back to a cited source, not to a hunch.
Hebrew leads for Old Testament figures, Greek for New Testament — shown in its own script, used because it matters, not for decoration.
Every link resolves to a page that actually exists before the study publishes.
No placeholder text and no boilerplate sentences. The figure speaks, not the template.
Style, in Service of Content
I care how these pages look, but never for its own sake. The hard part of Bible study usually isn't finding information — it's aggregating it. A commentary here, a video there, a lexicon entry, a map, a chart, all in different places and different mediums. A page earns its design when it pulls those together so you actually take them in.
So every visual choice has a job to do:
- A timeline when sequence is the point — so an arc reads as an arc.
- A diagram when the structure is spatial — chiasms, mirrors, and patterns you can't feel in a paragraph.
- Color-coding across a multi-page suite, so you always know where you are in the larger story.
- Hebrew and Greek in their own script, because the words carry weight that transliteration loses.
- Restraint everywhere else — no decoration that doesn't help you understand.
If a visual doesn't help you understand the text better, it doesn't belong on the page.
Before Anything Publishes
Every page passes a checklist before it goes live. A plain-language version of it:
- All required sections present and substantial — no gaps, no filler.
- Sources meet the minimum for the study's depth.
- Hebrew and Greek in the right place, and done right.
- Every cross-reference points to a page that exists.
- Reads well on phone, tablet, and desktop.
- Nothing left half-built.
Whatever study you open, it's been built to this same standard — so you can trust the page, and follow the one story it's part of.
Related
→ How a study is made (the workflow) → Browse all studies → About Project Context