ApostateAbe

In order to get a better sense of the scholarly "establishment" of the New Testament, I am compiling a list of New Testament journals and other periodical publications, and I would be happy to receive additions and corrections. Each item on the list should fulfill these requirements:

• Focuses on the New Testament, topics within the New Testament, or subjects that include the New Testament.
• Publishes only articles that are tested with rigorous peer review.
• Lacks explicit ideological biases.

Here is my current list. For now, it is alphabetical.

• Biblica - http://www.bsw.org/Biblica/
• Biblical Archaeology Review - http://www.bib-arch.org/
• Biblical Interpretation - http://www.brill.nl/bi
• Harvard Theological Review - http://www.hds.harvard.edu/htr/
• Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus - http://jhj.sagepub.com/
• Journal for the Study of the New Testament - http://www.sagepub.com/journalsProdD...=Journal201750
• Journal of Biblical Literature - http://www.sbl-site.org/publications...l_noLogin.aspx
• Journal of Early Christian Studies - http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/earl/
• Journal of Religion - http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/page/jr/brief.html
• Journal of Theological Studies - http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_jo...olj/about.html
• New Testament Studies - http://journals.cambridge.org/action...ournal?jid=NTS
• Novum Testamentum - http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/0048-1009
• Scottish Journal of Theology - http://www.ptsem.edu/sjt/
• Vigiliae Christianae - http://www.brill.nl/vc
• Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche - http://www.degruyter.de/journals/znw/

After the list is complete and correct, I would like to rank the journals according to their intellectual "prestige." One blogger made a ranking of "importance" according to how often a journal was cited in books, which is pretty good, but it is not quite the same as "prestige," which I would define as how well a journal is trusted by the recognized experts. There probably is not a systematic way of making such a ranking, but it is sufficient to simply get the opinions of a small sample of experts (or non-experts well-familiar with the field).

spamandham

The problem is, you don't know a priori who the experts are. Ranking journals by frequency of citation is the usual approach used in the sciences to establish journalistic prestige.

ApostateAbe

OK, so the ranking done by the blogger has your vote, and that is cool by me. I am hesitant to accept it primarily because it mixes the ideological scholarship with the critical scholarship. But, maybe the same method can be reworked by excluding the ideological books from the input or maybe just the ideological journals in the output.

spamandham

Unless you already are an expert, how are you going to discern the experts from the riff-raff?

ApostateAbe

If we need a definition, the experts are normally the people who have doctoral degrees in the subject from state-accredited educational institutions and have professorships in state-accredited educational institutions. Normally, I would also include the requirement that they have articles published in respected peer-reviewed periodicals, but the end goal of this enterprise is to define a respected peer-reviewed periodical.

spamandham

Heh, keep going. You've almost got me convinced that journal citations are what determine expertise. It's exceedingly rare for the untrained to end up heavily cited, which is why journal citations are pretty much the litmus test.

Anyone who is heavily cited is considered an expert. The same holds for journals too.

Toto

Biblical Archaeology Review is a popular magazine. I don't think it positions itself as a scholarly journal, although it does contain articles by recognized scholars. The audience, however, is the lay public with an interest in "Biblical archaeology," a phrase that is out of favor among academics. I don't know what sort of peer review it would use.

DCHindley

Just from looking at it, you have a variety of journals.

In some, research oriented articles predominate, others are oriented towards theological/interpretive articles, some specialize in articles by up & comers, others again are oriented towards "popular" audiences. I would sort them first by type (research vs theological interpretation vs popular), then by citation in research monographs (not popular books like Crossan's Birth of Christianity).

How does one find out which journals are cited more than others? Are we talking about the statistics we find in Amazon web pages for the books they have for sale, or is there another source?

"Prestige" is probably too subjective.

DCH

andrewcriddle

One could track citations using the Arts_and_Humanities_Citation_Index or possibly the Social_Sciences_Citation_Index

Andrew Criddle

Zaphod

I am glad to hear that your motivations are so objective. I would hate to think that you are doing this in order to bolster your assertions that the probabilities of the Mythical Jesus are too low for serious contemplation, as evidenced by the collective opinion of "established" New Testament scholars.

Because if that were true, one might mistakenly come away thinking that your constant and insistent presence here has more to do with a mission to rehabilitate the HJ to preserve your own religious worldview, rather than as the objective quest for truth. And that would be silly!