It's taken a couple weeks, but I nearly have a working bibliographic rendering for SBL style ready. I'm hosting the .lua and .mkvi files I have so far, as well as a test .bib and .tex file, on GitHub at https://github.com/jjmccollum/context-sbl. The look of the rendering seems to be correct for all of the examples, so the last remaining tasks mostly concern some lower-level technical issues.

Because of the way that SBL style renders entries that are contained in other works (e.g., a chapter in a book that is part of a multivolume collection), it seemed natural to accommodate this by allowing entries to have cross-references to other entries. The rendering process can then be handled through recursive subcitations with different alternatives. In general, I handle these subcitations with the \textcite command, so that "higher-level" entries are not added to the list when they are only subcited.

An important guideline that I still have to implement works in the opposite direction: it says that entries in certain categories should not be added to the list, but the books or collections containing them should be. I think I could make this work for the subcitation using the \listcite or \cite command recursively. But is there a way to conditionally handle whether or not to add the entry to the list after I invoke the \cite command, or is this built into the \cite command at a low level? If I had to, I could define an \autocite command that does all of these checks first, but if it's possible to keep the common \cite command instead of forcing users to use a different command, that would be preferable.

Thanks!

Joey