GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS TO TC: A JOURNAL OF BIBLICAL TEXTUAL CRITICISM

  1. General Information

    1. TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism (TC) is an electronic journal, and copies of articles are distributed by a variety of means and in a variety of formats. TC accepts full- length articles, shorter notes, and solicited reviews. All comments below regarding articles apply equally to shorter notes and reviews as well.
    2. All articles submitted to TC should be sent to the general editor in electronic form (FTP, e-mail, or 3.5-inch diskette). Acceptable formats are Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or ASCII, and material may be submitted in either Macintosh or PC form. Submission of hardcopy along with the electronic copy is optional.
    3. All articles published in TC are copyrighted by the journal and the author. For a fuller statement of the copyright agreement to which authors must agree, see the Author's Copyright Agreement.
    4. All authors of articles accepted for publication will receive a copy of their article after the editorial process, but prior to publication. Authors are expected to review the copy carefully, check for mistakes, and promptly inform the general editor whether any corrections need to be made.
    5. Authors are expected to follow the guidelines in this document to the greatest extent possible, and numerous deviations from the standards established here may result in the author being notified that revision is necessary prior to formal review. Matters of form and style that are not dealt with explicitly in this document are subject to the decision of the general editor. Because TC is an international journal, and because some matters such as vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation vary to some extent from country to country, no attempt will be made to force artificial standards upon the articles, as long as they are internally consistent. The latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style may be used to determine proper style if the matter in question is not addressed specifically in the present document.

  2. Languages (Ancient and Modern) and Transliteration

    1. TC accepts articles in the following languages: English, French, German, and Spanish.
    2. Any ancient language is permissible in an article, but text in an ancient language should be encoded in one of the following ways.
      • The text should be surrounded by opening and closing tags indicating the language being used. Appropriate tags may be found in the document entitled Standard Tags for Ancient Languages. If a language to be used is not referred to in this document, the author should communicate his or her desire to use the language to the gernal editor, who will provide the author with an appropriate tag. The text itself should follow the transliteration scheme associated with the language in question. A list of valid Transliteration Schemes for Encoding Ancient Languages may be perused to find the appropriate values. For example, the first part of Genesis in pointed Hebrew would read b:r"$iyt bfrf) )e:lohiym. Note that right-to-left languages are transliterated left-to-right.
      • As an alternative to the tagging method, authors may choose to download and use the public domain fonts provided on the SP Fonts Web site. Authors who choose this option must use either MS Word or WordPerfect (Mac or PC) and save their documents in RTF (rich text format). Further information on these fonts may be found in the README files associated with each font on the FTP site.
    3. Generally speaking, ancient texts should be presented in the original script. In the case of some languages, however, particularly those normally written in either cuneiform or hieroglyphics (e.g., Ugaritic, Akkadian, Hittite), but also those without extensive literary remains (e.g., Phoenician, Nubian), transliteration may be preferable. If transliteration is used, a standard transliteration scheme should be used.

  3. Citations of Ancient Texts and Quotations of Modern Texts

    1. Titles of biblical books (including apocryphal/deuterocanonical books), Qumran works, as well as references to pseudepigraphal, Gnostic, patristic, rabbinic, and other ancient works should appear in Roman type. If the author of a book is known (also traditional appelations, such as Ps-Dionysius), the author's name should appear in Roman type and the title of the book in italics. An exception is made for the Apostolic Fathers, such as the letters of Ignatius, which are entirely in Roman type.
    2. When using exact references, authors and titles should be abbreviated, if possible, and punctuation, except as separators, should be avoided (e.g., Eus HE 3.3.2). Click here for a list of acceptable abbreviations. A colon should be used to separate chapters from verses in biblical and pseudepigraphal references; the unit separator for all other works should be a period (full stop). Inexact references (i.e., to whole books or chapters) should spell out the name of the work (e.g., "The creation account in Genesis 2 suggests ...").
    3. Authors may use published translations of ancient or modern works (with the appropriate references), or they may provide their own translations if they so desire (with a note indicating that the translation is their own). However, they are encouraged to cite their sources in the original languages, particularly when their argument is based on the passage in question. Modern translations of the Bible may be indicated by using the appropriate abbreviation.
    4. Simple citations of sources should be done by using in-line parenthetical references, as follows: (Tov 1992a:234-236; K. Aland 1990:15, 18). Note that full page numbers should be used, even for consecutive page references.

  4. Footnotes and Bibliographical References

    1. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively and, in an ASCII document, arranged together at the end of the article (MS Word and WordPerfect use their own formats). Only content footnotes are permissible; otherwise, as mentioned above, parenthetical in-line references should be used.
    2. Bibliographical data should be presented in a compact form consistent with the use of parenthetical in-line references. Words such as "series," "Press," and "Verlag" may generally be omitted, except in the case of university presses, Scholars Press, and Neukirchener Verlag. Standard abbreviations for journals and book series should be used. For example:

      Tov, Emanuel 1992a. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress.

      Tov, Emanuel 1992b. "Interchanges of Consonants between the Masoretic Text and the Vorlage of the Septuagint." In Fishbane and Tov (ed.) 1992: 255-266.

      Fishbane, Michael; and Tov, Emanuel (ed.) 1992. "Sha'arei Talmon": Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

      Aland, Kurt (ed.) 1990. Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

      Epp, Eldon J. 1974. "The Twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism." JBL 93: 386-414.

  5. Other Guidelines

    1. The abbreviations BCE and CE are to be preferred over BC and AD.
    2. Authors should use gender-inclusive terminology whenever appropriate to the context.


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