The Bible Style Guide
A free resource that's great for youth leaders
Ignore the title. Listen to the sub-title. It’s not about style, it’s “a resource for journalists and broadcasters” (and in my opinion youth leaders, and one or two others).
The Bible Style Guide (BSG) is the British Bible Society’s latest attempt at protecting journalists, broadcasters, and bloggers from making complete fools of themselves when it comes to talking about the Scriptures. In their own words, “whether you’re covering Creationism or Zionism, or want to know your apostle from your epistle, The Bible Style Guide is here to help you get started.”
The majority of this short 75-page PDF is taken up by an exhaustive A-Z directory of Biblical terms and issues. Some examples of the timely issues the BSG addresses include environmentalism, sexism, science and the Bible, and homosexuality. In addition to these more controversial topics, the BSG also gives helpful definitions of a number of Biblical terms that many of us have heard before but never really understood. Things like the Eucharist, Deuterocanonical, and Pseudepigrapha.
There’s are a few other sections to the BSG that if you can get past the RollingStone-like formatting are relatively helpful. These include topics like ‘How the Bible came together’, ‘Interpreting the Bible’ and ‘Changes to the Biblical Text’.
I’d happily recommend this short PDF to any youth leader having trouble answering some of those trickier questions, or to anyone wanting to widen their biblical vocabulary. It’s a great little resource, and even better- it’s free.
Download the BSG here.
Stay in the loop