On May 3, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) named The New Moody Atlas of the Bible by Dr. Barry J. Beitzel the 2010 winner in the Bible Reference & Study category as part of its annual Christian Book Awards. The award was announced at a banquet during the ECPA’s yearly Executive Leadership Summit in Nashville, Tenn.

“Every year, the Christian Book Awards establishes an industry standard of excellence for product quality and reader impact, and we are incredibly encouraged that Dr. Beitzel’s book has been recognized as meeting such high levels of distinction,” said David DeWit, an acquisitions editor for Moody Publishers. “The unique blend of academic scholarship, stunning four-color photography and detailed maps from a leading cartographer in Cambridge, England, makes this publication an invaluable resource for everyone from Sunday school teachers to seminary students and pastors.”

In its 304 pages, with 118 maps and more than 100,000 words of text, The New Moody Atlas of the Bible offers both topographical and historical information that accurately reflects evangelical Christianity. It integrates the geography of the Bible lands with the teachings of the Bible, providing useful commentary for detailed maps of Palestine, the Mediterranean, the Near East, the Sinai and Turkey. Pages of timeless information aid in sermon preparation and in personal Bible study.

Dr. Beitzel is a professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical University in Deerfield, Ill. His published mapwork appears in the NLT Study Bible, ESV Study Bible and NIV Study Bible.

The ECPA awards publications in the categories of Bible, Bible Reference & Study, Christian Life, Fiction, Children & Youth and Inspiration & Gift based on both editorial excellence and category-specific criteria. This year, 226 entries (published in the last year) were submitted by 33 ECPA member publishers for review and were scored by 72 judges.