A New Theological Journal (Promissio), and how to analyze and rank it.

**Corrected "per page" to per paper" on 3/11/2026.** 

I was interested to discover a new online journal the other day, Promissio: A Journal of Confessing Theology (open access, click here), with Winter 2026 being the first issue. My initial impression of it is fairly positive. In the midst of my ongoing quest to become the most thorough and helpful chronicler of academic journals for biblical studies, however, this new journal raises two questions for me: (1) How do I know it's legit? and (2) Where do I rank it in my list?

The first question becomes all the more significant since there are "predatory journals" out there even in biblical studies (I have seen them) that are not qualified to publish articles, and there are also journals, such as Religions and HTS Theological Studies that I would not consider "predatory" but which nonetheless have dubious academic credentials because they charge authors exorbitant prices while mass-producing hundreds of articles a year. Let me illustrate that with Religions: in 2024, this journal published 12 online-only issues. The first issue (Jan 2024) contained 140 articles. The second issue contained 110 articles. The twelth issue contained 159 articles. Average that out over 12 issues = 136 articles per issue (even though a few of those would have been invited articles, free from the authorial charge). Now Religions, as of June 2025, charges $2,193.15 per paper converting from Swiss Francs). If we subtract 36 articles an issue, on average, as invited articles and thus free from charge, we end up with 1,200 articles a year, which comes out to more-or-less $219,300 a year from "Article Processing Charges." This is absurd, and most definitely the complete opposite of best practices for academic journals in biblical studies. In my opinion HTS Theological Studies is even less respectable than Religions these days, because in addition to their similarly-staggering author fees and mass-producing of articles, they have had to retract quite a few articles (e.g., vol. 79, no. 4; August 2023) and published (without retraction) an article that defended Haman and seemed to imply that the Jewish people were villains in the book of Esther (see my response in JSOT).

Now, I am pleased to report that Promissio passes that first test, evidencing no hint of profit-based mass-production. The journal does not, so far as I can tell, require that the author pays (and in my opinion no respectable journal in Biblical Studies, to my knowledge, does charges authors with the exception of OTE [at much lower rates than Religions]). In addition, the first issue has a very reasonable four main articles plus two review articles.

The second test is to check the editorial board. I sampled three, including Paul R. Hinlicky (general editor), who is quite well-published as a Lutheran theologian, clearly an excellent choice to add academic credibility to a journal. I had more difficulty analyzing the two others on the editorial board I randomly chose, however, in that they seemed to lack credentials in the area of peer-reviewed scholarship. Now, the journal does state that "All manuscripts for publication are reviewed by two scholarly peers in the area of the subject matter"; still, my main question for Promissio would be: "Are the peer-reviewers for the various articles themselves published specialists in regards to the content of the paper?" A fair analysis in this regard, however, would require a more thorough analysis of the editorial advisors and their CVs.

The third test would be to look at the journal's description of itself and its description of the article submission process. Both of them are generally solid, from an academic perspective, with one area of extra commendation. The journal's purpose can be summed up in this paragraph:

"The title of the journal, Promissio, points to the essential form of the word of God as the promise of forgiveness, life and salvation vouchsafed for us in the resurrection of Jesus the crucified Messiah. The subtitle of our journal points to the theological task as confessing concretely the liberating Lordship of Jesus with all that entails in the articles (articulations) of the faith in him for every new context as that has been heard afresh in the proclamation of the promising gospel. Promissio will be a journal that does confessing theology in continuity with the Lutheran Reformation by integrating the disciplines of theological exegesis of Scripture, church history, dogmatics and missiology that have been harmfully siloed in the modern period."

The area of extra commendation is that Promissio specifically mentions retractions and how it would handle them, not something I've seen too often in other journals.

One minor note regarding the design of the website (in case anybody from the editorial staff happens to read this): As of writing (2/27/26, 11:43 am Central US time) the page entitled "About the Journal" does not actually appear in the drop-down menu entitled "about." Consequently, it's a bit difficult to find the "About the Journal" page, which should ideally be in a prominent position.

So where should we place Promissio in the rankings? Although I overall liked what I saw, and the articles in the first issue seem to be pretty solid, it initially goes at level 4, just because it is brand new, but as soon as it begins to be cited in scholarly literature (even if that is primarily Lutheran literature), I would probably bump it up to level 3. Hypothetically this could go up to level 2 if it turned into one of the main Lutheran journals and was noticed significantly by non-Lutherans. For that reason we might see Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly eventually bumped up to level 2, even though the SBL handbook does not list it. Denominationally oriented journals can indeed go fairly high, which is why at the suggestion of somebody in the comments section of my original post I bumped up Andrews University Seminary Studies to level 2.

A New Resource to Bring German Scholarship to English-Speaking Students

I was surprised the other day to find an article in a journal abbreviated "AGNTS." I was not familiar with that acronym, and as a self-styled "expert" on journals in biblical studies (trying to write a book on the topic; no luck yet finding a publisher!), I was puzzled that I had not yet encountered this journal, nor could I for the life of me figure out what the abbreviation would stand for! ("Anglican Greek New Testament Studies"?? "The Articulate Gazette for New Testament Scholars"?? "Articles for the Glorification of Neo-orthodox Trinitarian Studies"??)

As it turns out, AGNTS stands for a journal entitled Accessible German New Testament Scholarship, a one-of-a-kind publication which promises to be a very helpful resource. It is accessible here.

Now, I took two semesters in German for my PhD (basic German, and then the brutally difficult theological German), both classes under a native speaker (and major Johannine scholar), Dr. Andreas J. Köstenberger, and I was most definitely not his best student (theological German had three results: "pass, fail, or do remedial work"; I got the third option). I have nonetheless tried to quote directly from German sources in my academic work (I'm rather proud of my original translation of Julius Streicher's disturbing perspective on the book of Esther, published in my article in JSOT in 2024). Also, because the Lord is awesome and has a sense of irony, I married a wonderful German woman from Hamburg who can now provide me with even further help on my academic research in German! Nonetheless, I welcome all the help I can get with interacting with German sources.

In a nutshell, this journal, edited by Wayne Coppins and Jacob N. Cerone (a fellow SEBTS grad) provides you with "a curated collection of significant contributions to New Testament scholarship from the German-speaking world" (from the introduction by the editors). This includes both past German scholars (e.g., Peter Stuhlmacher, who passed away just last year) and current German-speaking scholars (Christoph Heilig, University of Zurich), translated from German into English. This volume consists solely of previously published material, and so far all of it was translated by Wayne Coppins (kudos! That's a lot of work).

The article most relevant to my own research is Stuhlmacher's "The Tübingen Biblical Theology of the New Testament--A Retrospective," originally published in 2017 in Theologische Beiträge. Having just finished teaching New Testament Introduction, however, I also noted with interest William Wrede, "Letter to Adolf von Harnack on Jesus as Messiah and Paul as New Beginning."

Although not your "normal" academic journal, AGNTS promises to provide some valuable material for students of the New Testament, and I am greatly looking forward to future volumes.

Ranking Academic Journals: A Sample of what I hope the Final List Will Look Like

Some time ago I wrote "Peer-Reviewed Journals Pt 2: The Top 100+ Academic Journals for Biblical Studies," which has turned out to be my most popular post on this rather obscure blog that I publish, with 12,000+ hits and a significant number of comments. I am hoping to publish a book on academic journals in biblical and theological studies (I'm submitting proposals to publishers right now), a book which will cover everything from how peer-review works, predatory journals, "author-pays" journals, and journal articles as a "metric" evaluation (fairly or unfairly) for one's academic value. One chapter in the book will also offer a word of admonition to editors and peer-reviewers on behalf of all the would-be authors who have felt that they wasted their time with a particular journal or been treated unfairly. (With fourteen published academic journal articles and three more forthcoming, I have a lot of experience with the process. In addition to publishing, I have also peer-reviewed for a major evangelical journal).

In this book, I intend to include an intensely researched 4-tier listing of journals, significantly improved from the original posting. This is based on my firm belief that such online rankings as Scopus, while possessing value for ranking journals in "religion" in general, are almost worthless for ranking journals in the narrower fields of Christian biblical and theological studies (I discuss this in the book).

Here is an example of what I hope the final list will look like, using just the tier-1 journals. (The list will almost certainly change based on the surveys I intend to conduct. For the record, of my 17 journal articles only two of them are in this top-tier, so I feel that I am being objective. Also, I am open to feedback on these rankings, and those on the earlier post, but only from people that have actually published peer-reviewed material).

This is only the 1st tier out of 4 tiers.

 

Title and abbreviation	Years	Affiliation and/or   publisher	What sort of paper does it publish?	Misc.
Biblica (Bib)	1920–present	Pontifical Biblical Institute	Broad, biblical studies in general (including extra-canonical Christian literature)	Maximum of 55,000 characters; articles published in “English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.” No author fees.
Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research (BASOR). Multiple previous titles.[1]	1919–present	ASOR; The University of Chicago Press	Ancient Near East archaeology, society, and languages	Maximum of 12,000 words.
Catholic Biblical Quarterly (CBQ)	1939–present	Catholic Biblical Association of America	Broad, biblical studies in general (including extra-canonical Christian literature)	Maximum of 10,000 words.
Dead Sea Discoveries (DSD)	1994–present	Brill	“. . . the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their cultural, historical, and archaeological contexts” (from website).	Only British or American English.
Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses (ETL)	1924–present	KU Leuven and Université catholique de Louvain	“all aspects of theology and canon law” (from website).	Publishes articles in English, French, and German.
Harvard Theological Review (HTR)	1908–present	Harvard Divinity School	“. . . the history and philosophy of religious thought in all traditions and periods, including Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Christianity, Jewish studies, theology, ethics, archaeology, and comparative religious studies” (from website).	12,000 words is the upper limit (with some exceptions). Note that I am open to debate as to whether or not HTR belongs in tier-1, especially after the whole “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” issue.
The Jewish Quarterly Review (JQR)	1889–present	University of Pennsylvania Press	Jewish studies, but broad, including biblical, theological, philosophical, and cultural matters.	12,000 word limit.
Journal for the Study of the New Testament (JSNT)	1978–present	Sage Journals	New Testament studies, but broad.	Generally prefers 5,000–10,000 words.
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament (JSOT)	1976–present	Sage Journals	Old Testament studies, but broad.	Generally prefers 5,000–10,000 words.
Journal of Biblical Literature (JBL), formerly known as the Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis.	1881–present, with a hiatus of 1 year (current title 1890–present)	Society of Biblical Literature	Very broad, anything connected to Old and New Testament studies, as well as discussions of the nature of modern biblical scholarship itself.	Quarterly. Upper limit of 10,000 words, including footnotes.
Journal of Early Christian Studies (JECS), formerly known as The Second Century (SecCent).	1981–present (current title 1993–present)	North American Patristics Society; John Hopkins University Press	Church History, from C.E. 100–700.	Upper limit of 12,500 words (with endnotes). Adamantly declares that it does not charge author fees, and warns against websites claiming to represent Hopkins Press that charge a fee.
Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages (JNSL)	1971–present	Stellenbosch University	Publishes “linguistic, translational, literary, text-critical, historical, religious and cultural issues related to Ancient Near Eastern texts and societies, as well as articles addressing theoretical issues underlying these fields” (from the website). Elsewhere clarifies that ANE “includes Nubian, Coptic and Ethiopian studies.”	Bi-annual. 6,000 words is considered the approximate maximum amount.
Journal of Religious Ethics (JRE)	1973–present	Wiley Online Library	Not limited to Christianity and Judaism; includes discussions on a variety of ethical issues including climate change and AI. Also includes “historical studies of influential figures and texts” (from the website).	Prefers between 8,000–10,000 words, though willing to consider longer articles in special cases.
Journal of the American Oriental Society (JAOS)	1843–present	American Society for Premodern Asia (formerly the American Oriental Society)	Very broad, including studies on the culture, history, and religion of the Ancient Near East, Islamic Near East, South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and Eastern Asia.	“Preferably not exceeding 15,000 words, including footnotes . . .” The author retains the copyright for their journal article.
Journal of Theological Studies (JTS)	1899–present	Oxford Academic	Very broad, “the entire range of theological research, scholarship and interpretation” (from the website). Covers New Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, Church history, textual criticism, etc.	Biannual. “The length of articles in the Journal ranges from less than 1,000 to over 30,000 words” (from the website).
Maarav: A Journal for the Study of the Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures (Maarav)	1978–present	University of Chicago Press	The journal “is devoted to the texts and verbal objects of the ancient Levant featuring Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician, and related languages” (from the website).	Biannual.
Mission Studies (MIST)	1984–present	Brill; International Association for Mission Studies	The journal intends to be “a forum for the scholarly study of Christian witness and its impact in the world, and the related field of intercultural theology, from international, interconfessional and interdisciplinary perspectives.”	Triannual. Prefers articles about 6,000 words long, but with some “reasonable leeway,” including footnotes, etc., but not including “Tables and Figures” (from the website).
New Testament Studies (NTS)	1955–present	Cambridge University Press; Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas	Broad, anything related to New Testament studies and early church history.	Quarterly. Will publish articles in English, German, and French. Limit of 8,500 words, including footnotes.
Novum Testamentum (NovT)	1957–present.	Brill	Broad, anything related to New Testament studies and early church history.	Quarterly. Will publish articles in English, German, and French. Limit of 8,500 words, including footnotes.
Old Testament Essays (OTE)	1987–present	Old Testament Society of South Africa	Broad, anything related to the Old Testament, both Hebrew and Greek.	Triannual. Word limit of 7,000–10,000 words, including footnotes, etc.  Publishes in English,,  German. Requires that authors pay a fee of 400 Rand per page (equivalent, as of 9/10/2025, to $22.89 per page), if accepted for publication.
Philosophy	1926–present	Cambridge University Press; Royal Institute of Philosophy	Broad, anything related to modern and ancient philosophy, including overlapping concerns from language, religion, medicine, etc.	Quarterly Upper limit of 10,000 words.
Revue biblique (RB), two other former names[2]	1892–present (current name from 1946)	L’École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem	Very broad, virtually all matters relating to biblical studies, including Old Testament, New Testament, ANE archaeology, and church history.	Quarterly. Publishes articles in French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Scottish Journal of Theology (SJT)	1948–present	Cambridge University Press	Covers “systematic, historical, and biblical theology” (from the website).	Quarterly. Prefers articles of 5,000–6,000, with 8,000 words as the upper limit.
Theologische Zeitschrift (TZ)	1945–present	University of Basel	The focus of this journal is on theology, but also how various “subfields of theology” can enter “into an interdisciplinary conversation” with other subfields, including subfields from non-theological disciplines.	Quarterly.  Publishes articles in German, French, and English. Maximum of 60,000 characters (this would probably come out to a maximum of 10,000 words).
Vetus Testamentum (VT)	1951–present	Brill; International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament	Broad, everything related to Old Testament studies.	Quarterly. Publishers in English, French, and German. Prefers articles less than 8,000 words, as well as “short notes” (2,000–3,000 words).
Vigiliae christianae (VC)	1947–present	Brill	Publishers material “of an historical, cultural, linguistic or philological nature on early Christian literature written after the New Testament, as well as on Christian epigraphy and archaeology” (from the website).	Five issues per year. Publishes articles in English, French, and German.
Zeitschrift für alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (ZAW)	1881–present	De Gruyter Brill	Broad, anything connected to the Old Testament and early Judaism.	Upper limit of 38,000 characters, including footnotes and spaces. Quarterly. Publishes articles in English, French, and German.
Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (ZNW)	1900–present	De Gruyter Brill	Broad, anything connected to the New Testament.	Biannual. Publishers articles in English and German.

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[1] Initially Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, then Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (1922). Current title from 2022 onward.

[2] Began as Revue Biblique in 1892, switched to Vivre et Penser in 1941, then returned to Revue Biblique in 1946.

Regarding academic journal articles, part 3--Journals that can be spiritually beneficial

In previous posts (here and here), I have discussed the importance of journal articles for academic research, including the top evangelical journals and the top journals for biblical academia overall (a ranking that is open to constant revision!). Now I'd like to discuss something a bit outside "normal" academia, namely specific journals that can challenge you spiritually (and by "challenge you spiritually," I don't mean "Good gravy, that's the worst heresy this side of Marcion! I must immediately post something on social media comparing it to Nazis!"; instead, I mean "Possess the potential to help me become a better servant of Jesus Christ").

1. Themelios: available here. My hat is off to this journal for offering an excellent blend of academic and practical. Although not devoid of solid academic articles (I'm thinking especially of Edward Glenny's ground-breaking discussion of different theological approaches to the LXX), this journal consistently publishes material that is meant to speak directly to the Christian's spiritual life. It trends towards the Reformed-Calvinistic side, but nonetheless has very helpful material even for those not of that theological persuasion (including myself!). Case in point: D. A. Carson ("the Albert Pujols of New Testament scholarship" [you may quote me on that]) writes an excellent mediation on "Subtle Ways to Abandon the Authority of Scripture in Our Lives."

2. Emmaus Journal: once again, an excellent hybrid of academic material and practical theology, published by the faculty of Emmaus Bible College. Back issues up until 2012 (as of this moment) are available on Galaxie Software. EMJ consistently deals with practical, church-oriented matters. Case in point: volume 13.2 (2004), the dialogue between Jay Swisher and Lisa Beatty on "What Kind of Music Does God Like?" (I greatly appreciate Lisa Beatty's gentle corrective to Jay Swisher that music being "intelligible" is very important!). Another example: David J. MacLeod in vol 21.1 (Summer 2012) offers a theological and practical discussion on Christian singleness (a discussion that has been often neglected).

3. Faith & Mission: this used to be the official journal of my own alma mater, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. It is no longer published, and has been more-or-less replaced by the Southeastern Theological Review, which probably has higher academic standards (and, too be fair, STR itself quite often has excellent articles). However, F&M had some excellent practical-minded, church-oriented articles, especially in the 2000s after the completion of the conservative resurgence. I think, for example, of David R. Beck's helpful theological and practical study of "Evangelism in Luke and Acts" in the Spring 2003 issue of Faith & Mission (vol. 20.2). F&M provides solid examples of scholarship combined with readability and practical value.

Plenty of other practically-minded journals exist, of course (for example, Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Priscilla Papers both focus on the relationship of men and women and how that plays out in the church and in the home, although the two journals approach the matter from two radically different perspectives!). Furthermore, even among top-tier mainstream journals, occasionally an article will crop up that has practical ramifications. For example, the [in my humble-but-correct opinion] excellent article by Hae-Kyung Chang, "The Christian Life in a Dialectical Tension? Romans 7:7-25 Reconsidered" in Novum Testamentum 49 (2007), on the second page of the article, makes it clear that Chang's exegesis is directly concerned with the practical-theological ramifications of this passage for Christian counseling. [And, for the record, Chang's article convinced me of his position, broadly speaking; thus I cite his article favorably in my dialogue with Steven Cowan in JETS vol. 55.4].

In conclusion, "academic study vs. spiritual application" can be a false dichotomy. Reading academically may, in fact, benefit you spiritually.

On the humorous side, I conclude with this excellent quote by John Wesley, which I found in Dr. Beck's article discussed above. Wesley once received a letter from a man saying "The Lord has told me to tell you that he doesn't need your book learning, your Greek and your Hebrew." Wesley responded:
"Thank you sir. Your letter was superfluous, however, as I already knew the Lord has no need of my 'book-learning' as you put it. However—although the Lord has not directed me to say so—on my own responsibility I would like to say to you that the Lord does not need your ignorance either."