Lexicons and theological dictionaries in SBL style

I'm using the latest version of the SBL handbook style. When citing a lexicon or theological dictionary (§6.3.7), SBLHS wants an footnote like
Hermann W. Beyer, “διακονέω, διακονία, κτλ,” TDNT 2:81–93.
But, the closest I seem to be able to get is
Hermann W. Beyer, “διακονέω, διακονία, κτλ,” TDNT, n.d., 2:81–93.
I've set up the citation as a "dictionary entry" in Zotero, but is there a way to suppress the "n.d." notation to keep it from coming up when I cite a source that I've entered in this way?

Thanks so much for the advice!
  • I think we'll likely have to adjust the style -- that shouldn't be hard.
  • Okay. Thank you so much!
  • As an additional piece to the question posed above, SBL style requires that some resources be cited by abbreviation only in the notes, e.g.:
    LEH, s.v. “ἐνθύημα.”
    But then a full regular entry should still appear in the bibliography. There are quite a number of cases where there is an abbreviation that SBL style specifies that is to be used instead of the regular footnote.

    Using just this abbreviation isn't hard with subsequent references. We can manipulate the "short title" field to give the appropriate entry and then select not to show the author names. But, would there be a way to trigger this behavior for the first citation of a given resource as well?
  • edited February 20, 2020
    At least with the SBL style, the situation I mentioned above on 25 January 2018 with the example from LEH can be handled via the "Annote" variable in the "Extra" field as discussed in this thread.

    The situation I described above on 1 November 2017 is, however, more complicated than I then indicated.

    What SBL style wants for theological dictionaries (§6.3.7) is like this on the first reference:
    Hermann W. Beyer, “διακονέω, διακονία, κτλ,” TDNT 2:83.
    I can now get this output with the SBL CSL style (updated 19 June 2019) by using the entry title in the "Title" field and then the dictionary abbreviation in the "Dictionary Title" field.

    Then in the bibliography, there should be only the base dictionary, irrespective of how many articles are cited from it. Thus:
    Kittel, Gerhard, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. 10 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976.
    I'm guessing the best way to handle the bibliography might be to edit a Zotero-created bibliography to (1) remove all the individual articles from a given theological dictionary and then (2) add back one reference to the full theological dictionary itself stored as a separate resource.

    But then in subsequent references to the same article within the body of a document, the citation should be only:
    Beyer, TDNT 2:85.
    I can get close by specifying <i>TDNT</i> in the "Short Title" field, but this adds double quotation marks around and an extra comma after the short title in subsequent citations. Thus:
    Beyer, "TDNT," 2:85.
    Does the style need to be adjusted to accommodate the required subsequent reference output? Or is there some other way I should massage the data in the Zotero record than I've tried so far?

    Thanks so much!
  • That's a tough one. I don't think there's an easy way to handle these kind of requirements. Currently, there isn't even an official way to handle this on a style basis. That said, there are hackish and unsupported ways that you can use if you are editing a style for yourself (you won't be able to upload it to the style repo):

    1. The currently used citation style processor (citeproc-js) will process whatever you feed it. It will not check if your input is valid against the specs. So you can use your own fields, or even your own types. (E.g., you can add type:theological-dictionary-entry in the Extra field, and add appropriate conditions to your style.)

    2. The extended CSL variant CSL-M knows an attribute exclude-types that can be set on the bibliography element (see https://citeproc-js.readthedocs.io/en/latest/csl-m/#exclude-types-extension).

    So, you could introduce a new type and use this to to format your subsequent citations, and exclude all items of this type from the bibliography. You'd still have to manually add the dictionary itself to the bibliography, but this is as good as it's going to be.

    Again, such a style is non-standard compliant. Zotero will throw errors when you install such a style, but it will work nevertheless. Just keep in mind that there's no guarantee that a style that works today will still work tomorrow as these things are unsupported. (Citeproc-js's author @fbennett has repeatedly stated that he has no inclination to change the way things currently work, but, given that a successor to citeproc-js is under heavy development, just be informed that certain tricks might not be futureproof...)
  • Thanks @maier.de. I think I see what you're getting at. But I'm afraid my CSL is next to non-existent. So I'll keep playing around with things on the data entry hack front as ideas come to mind and see if I can get any closer.

    Appreciate your thoughts!
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