JBL is published quarterly and includes scholarly articles, critical notes, and book reviews by members of the Society.

Aside from the current issue, the past three years of JBL are freely available to the public in PDF form after registering on the SBL website.

Previous issues, back to 1881, are available in the JSTOR Arts and Sciences III collection.

[3] In 1916, the SBL secretary passed on to the members a communication, from the Third Assistant Postmaster General of the United States, refusing to give the JBL the second-class rate discount for scholarly journals, "on the ground that it was not scientific.

"[3] "The Journal of the Society for Biblical Literature in the United States was published in Leipzig through World War I down to the Nazi period—yet for the most part this feature showed up only when it became a problem for delivery after Germany began to be devastated after 1916.