BiBle STyle Guide - Get a Free Blog

30 The BiBle STyle Guide
bible society 2008
t
ten commandments
(also known as ‘the decalogUe’)
The ten laws that God is understood to have given to
Moses on tablets of stone. The laws are recorded in
both Exodus 20.1–7 and Deuteronomy 5.6–21. The
Bible actually describes them as the ‘ten words’ rather
than the ‘ten commandments’ (Exodus 34.28).
The formal term decalogue comes from the ancient
Greek phrase deka logous (‘ten words’). Neither does
the Bible number or divide the commandments; that
only happened later. As a result, Catholic and Lutheran
traditions number them differently to those in Jewish
and other Protestant traditions.
textUs receptUs
A version of the Greek New testament that was the
standard one during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries CE. The phrase is Latin for ‘received text’
and was used to describe the version in the prefaces
of certain editions. The Textus Receptus was the Greek
text used as the basis for the King James Version
of the Bible.
theology, theologian
(pronoUnced ‘theo-low-JUn’)
torah
Theology literally means ‘the study of God’. The
term for someone who studies/studied theology is
‘theologian’. There is no such word as ‘theologist’.
A Jewish word meaning ‘instruction’ or ‘law’. Sometimes,
it just means the Jewish law in general. Often, it’s used
to refer to the first five books of the Bible - Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (i.e. those
books otherwise known as the Pentateuch).
trinity
The Christian teaching that there is one God in three
‘persons’: God the Father, God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit. While the Bible does not spell out the
teaching of the Trinity in so many words (or even use
the term), many theologians agree that the basic
elements of the teaching (i.e. that there is only one
God, but that somehow the Father, Jesus and the Holy
Spirit are distinct yet also God in their own right) are to
be found within its pages.
The Christian writer Theophilus of Antioch was the
first to use the term (in Greek) at the end of the
second century CE. As such, some scholars insist that
ancient Greek language about God got inappropriately
smuggled into Christianity in the centuries following
the completion of the New testament.
On the other hand, others argue that the use of foreign
religious terms is common even within the Bible itself
(e.g. it was the ancient Babylonians who first called
certain angels ‘cherubim’ and the term ‘conscience’
came from the ancient Greeks). Nevertheless, the
extent to which technical terminology about God from
ancient Greece (e.g. ‘trinity’, ‘person’, ‘consubstantial’
etc.) should still be used today remains a matter of
debate among some Christians.
U
Uncial
(pronoUnced ‘UnsyUl’)
An uncial (or majuscule) text of the Bible is the usual
term for one copied onto parchment and written in
elaborate capital letters. Later copies of the Bible were
written in minuscule (lower case).