Religious and Theological Abstracts Help
Search Religious and Theological Abstracts
Religious & Theological Abstracts - On-Line Tutorial
There are two types of Searches: SIMPLE and ADVANCED
The SIMPLE SEARCH may be appropriate for many of your inquiries. Examples:
- Church State - finds all records containing the words "church" AND "state" [not case sensitive]
- "book of common prayer" - finds records with this exact phrase
- Gen 15 - finds records with references to Genesis 15
- Wildcard (*) - moral* finds: moral, morals, morality, moralist, etc.
SEARCHING TIPS:
- Do NOT include articles or prepositions (except in exact phrase searches)
Enter: light gospel john NOT the symbol of light in the gospel of John
- RTA finds ALL terms in the database. A search is NOT limited to a thesaurus arbitrarily devised by an editor.
- Be aware of multiple ways a term might appear:
LXX/ Septuagint; Moses/Mosaic; health care/healthcare; Koran/Qur'an;
Common abbreviations: OT NT; USA; HIV; WCC; CPE; SBC
- Bible books: Use "book of Ruth"; "book of job"; "book of acts" to search entire books.
The ADVANCED SEARCH allows greater flexibility
- WITH ALL THE WORDS: same as SIMPLE SEARCH 1.
- WITH THE EXACT PHRASE: same as SIMPLE SEARCH 2.
- WITH AT LEAST ONE OF THE WORDS: the Boolean OR
Example: To find records discussing "theology" AND "Kant", OR "theology" AND "Hegel":
With all the words: theology;
With at least one of the words: Kant Hegel
- WITHOUT THE WORDS: eliminates unwanted terms
Example: Narrow down the search to unmarried people:
With all the words: for "singles" (this also finds "singles out")
Using without the words: out (will narrow down your search)
- AUTHOR: allows searches for authors of articles, e.g. Rahner; Derrida; Jones, R; Brown, George
- TITLE: allows searching for term(s) appearing in the title of an article only. You can choose between two search modes:
Title word(s)- finds all terms appearing only in titles of articles. NB As a rule, a title term might provide more in-depth coverage of a topic
Exact start - allows search for a specific title you may have in mind
- TITLE or ABSTRACT: Searches for terms in the Title and Abstract fields but NOT the Author field
This allows searches for e.g. gospel john without including authors by the name of "John"
- DATE RANGE: allows limiting searches to articles published in a particular year or range of years.
Example: Finds articles on NT canon published in 2000 or later
With all the words: canon NT
Date Range: 2000+
- SCRIPTURE CITATION: Allows searching for specific biblical references.
Examples: Gen 3 John 3:16 Exod 20 Isa 40 Romans 8
- JOURNAL: Allows searching for abstracts appearing in specific periodicals. Journal names must be selected from the list.
Examples: Religious Studies Theology Today