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, Three 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. Three forms cover nearly everything 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.
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
When one figure or theme is too large for a single page, a set of connected, color-coded pages — each with its own focus, held together as one study.
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 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