Journal - CATR

CATR gratefully accepts articles, book review submissions, and book review requests from potential contributors and publishers. Contributions to CATR are especially welcomed in areas such as theological exegesis of selected biblical texts; concerns of theological method; the role of Scripture in theology and ethics; the history of reception or history of interpretation of biblical texts; hermeneutical challenges in theological exegesis; and major review essays interacting with key books, whether contemporary or classical.

We are happy to provide publishers with pre-publication reviews of their submitted material upon request.

Submissions should be of academic quality and tone, and should generally conform to the standards laid out within The SBL Handbook of Style for Biblical Studies and Related Disciplines: Second Edition (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), supplemented by the Chicago Manual of Style: Sixteenth Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). All submissions will be evaluated through blind peer-review, edited, and potentially shortened for suitability for publication. Although the CATR editor makes every effort to promptly acknowledge all submissions, it is important to note that the initial review process generally takes a minimum of three months.

• Only typed English language submissions will be accepted for publication. Authors have the choice of consistent American, British, or Canadian English spelling. However, American style punctuation should be used. Submissions must demonstrate a sufficient mastery of English grammar and syntax, and otherwise clear, academically appropriate language in order to receive consideration. Authors should thus take great care in avoiding cryptic language, run-on/awkward sentence structure, and/or spelling errors.
• Article submissions should be made by e-mail attachment in either *.doc or *.rtf format, and can be sent to the CATR General Editor. Book review submissions should be made in the same fashion, and can be sent to the CATR Book Review Editor, Rick Wadholm with “Review” in the subject header.
• Essays should generally not exceed 10,000 words. The preference of book reviews is 800-1200 words.
• Submissions should include a cover page that includes the title of the essay, the author’s name and affiliation, and an abstract of no more than 250 words. The abstract should also appear on the first page of the main text of the essay.
• The main text of the essay should be double spaced and in 12 point font, with no additional spacing between paragraphs or sections. Footnotes should be single spaced and in 10 point font, unindented (except in the case of a subsequent paragraph contained in the note; in that case the first sentence of the new paragraph should be indented), with a single blank space separating each note.  A single space should separate the number of the note from its text. The full name of authors along with complete titles as they appear in the respective publication of sourced material should be cited in the initial reference. “Ibid” should not be used for repeat sources in consecutive notes. Only the author’s last name followed by a shortened title and page number(s) should be used when referencing a repeat source. Indented quotations should be single spaced. Margins of at least 1 in. are to be left on all edges of the paper.
• Headings and Sub-headings should be left-aligned, and non-numbered. First-level headings should be in bold, with each main word capitalized. Second-level headings should be in italics only, with each main word capitalized. Any third-level headings should also be in italics, but with only the first word capitalized, and set at the beginning of the first paragraph of the section followed immediately by a period (rather than as a separate line above).
• Submissions should contain footnotes rather than endnotes. The format of footnotes should conform to The SBL Handbook of Style. Bibliographies or reference lists are not accepted.
• Words to be printed in italics (e.g., titles of books and periodicals, foreign words) should be italicized in the essay. Words and letters to be printed in caps should appear in caps in the essay. Letters to be printed in small caps (e.g., BCE, CE; MS, MSS) should appear in that fashion in the essay.
• Quotations of five or more lines in any language should appear as a separate indented paragraph, and without opening and closing quotation marks. Respect for accuracy in verbatim quotations demands that the spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and abbreviations of the original be reproduced exactly, even if they differ from the style of this journal. Should a quotation contain an error, this may be indicated by [sic] or [?], at the author’s discretion. As with all matters of grammar, the author should take care to use ellipses correctly. If portions of quoted material contain italics or any other form of emphasis (e.g., bold, underline), the citation should include the phrase, “emphasis original,” preceded by a semicolon following the page number. If emphasis is added to quoted material, this should be done by italics only, and should be indicated instead by the phrase, “emphasis mine.”
• Citations and abbreviations of ancient texts, as well as commonly used journals, periodicals, reference works, and serials should conform to The SBL Handbook of Style. The full title of all secondary sources should appear in footnotes. When quoting biblical texts, full chapter and verse numbers should be given. Books of the Bible without chapter or verse should be spelled out in the main text. All digits should be linked by means of an en-dash (e.g., Phil 3:1–3; 1 Tim 2:8–3:13; Chr 9–11; Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 244–47). Inclusive numbers should be used (e.g., 166–69; but 103–104, etc.).
• Authors have the choice to either transliterate or use true fonts for Greek or Hebrew terms. Please use the fonts available on the SBL website (https://www.sbl-site.org/educational/biblicalfonts.aspx). These fonts are free, publicly available, and suitable for either Macs or PCs. Greek should be accented, but Hebrew should be unpointed unless the pointing is vital to the sense. If terms are transliterated, the conventions provided in The SBL Handbook of Style should be followed.
• Whether or not one transliterates, an English translation should normally accompany at least the first occurrence of any ancient language word. Quotations from other languages (e.g., German, French) should be translated if in the main text; the original may be reproduced in a footnote if it is important.
• The submission should not include any reference to the author, whether in the body of the essay or in its footnotes (for example, statements such as “See my essay…,” or “As I have argued in…”). Should the essay be accepted for publication, such references, if strongly preferred by the author, may be included in the final draft at the discretion of the editor.
• When dashes are used (instead of parentheses or commas) to separate clauses, they should be em-dashes—without spaces—and not hyphens or en-dashes with or without spaces (hyphens and en-dashes join words, while em-dashes separate words or phrases).
• Reviews should include a brief overview of the main arguments and themes of the material reviewed, as well as a substantive and descriptive evaluation of the reviewed content.
• On other issues of style, contributors should closely consult The SBL Handbook of Style.