A First Footnote

The information provided in the first footnote should consist of the following, in the order given here:

Author, Title (in italics), Publishing Information, Page Numbers.

The publishing information is placed in parentheses and follows the sequence:

editor; translator; number of volumes; edition; series; place of publication; publisher; date.

e.g. 

AUTHOR                        TITLE                                                          PUBLICATION INFORMATION       PAGES

Andrew Davey, Urban Christianity and the Global Order (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrikson, 2002), 14-15.

Note the use of punctuation and parenthesis to separate the elements.

Here are some other points regarding information included in the first footnote reference:

Author: The first name of an author or editor should be provided wherever possible.

Title: All words in a title should be capitalised except articles, coordinating conjunctions and prepositions, unless they are the first or last word in a title or subtitle. (For works in languages other than English, see SBLHS §7.1.3.4 and §§7.1.3.7–9.)

Edition: Note that SBLHS does not use superscripts with ordinal numbers (4th not 4th) and it uses 2d and 3d rather than 2nd and 3rd.

Series: Where a book is part of a series you should use the established abbreviation for the series, if there is one. See SBLHS § 8.4. There are also standard abbreviations for significant reference works and journals. These too are listed in SBLHS §8.4. You will also find the standard abbreviations for journals listed at the following site: http://http-server.carleton.ca/~zcrook/JournalAbbr.htm Where SBLHS does not provide an abbreviation for a series (or a journal title), you should either provide the name in full or create your own. In the case of the latter you will need to provide a list of your own abbreviations at the end of the paper.

Place of Publication: If more than one location is given on the title page, use only the first. If a location is not well known, a reference to the state or country should follow after a comma. References to states of the USA should use the standard abbreviations, not the two-letter postal code abbreviations. These can be found in SBLHS §8.1.1 and at websites such as: http://www.stateabbreviations.us/

Where the place of publication is not provided and cannot otherwise be ascertained, the abbreviation „n.p.‟ (no place) is used.

Publisher: The publisher's name should be abbreviated in both footnotes and bibliographies by the omission of terms like Press and Publishers, except in the case of university presses and one or two others (e.g. Oxford University Press; JSOT Press; Free Press). An ampersand, rather than and, should be used in a publisher's name (e.g. T&T Clark; Hodder & Stoughton).

Date: Where the date of publication is not provided and cannot otherwise be ascertained, the abbreviation „n.d.‟ (no date) is used.

Page Numbers: Actual page ranges should be given. Avoid f. and ff. Arabic numerals (i.e. 1, 2, 3) are to be used in bibliographic data. The only common exception is for pages with Roman numerals in the front matter of books. See SBLH §4.2.1.

NOTE: When commenting in a footnote on an issue, or discussing the view of a writer, and there is a need to cite the source, it is best to put the comment or observation first and then conclude with the reference, adopting the style for a first footnote reference. Below are two examples which can serve as a model:

1 More speculative – but suggestive and worth considering – is the theory that Paul is reflecting a Christian midrash on the Akedah based on link words. See M. Wilcox, “ „Upon the Tree‟ Deut 21:22-23 in the New Testament,” JBL 96 (1977): 85-99.

2 Note the perceptive discussion by Mark A. Seifrid, “Blind Alleys in the Controversy over the Paul of History,” TynBul 45 (1994): 73-95.