Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Discourse Analysis and the Meaning of Biblical Texts

Discourse analysts contend that grasping the macrostructure of a text is key for determining textual understanding. We must not only look at individual lexemes, morphemes or examine basic syntax. Discourse, paragraphs, sentences, constituent structures, and context serve as the sine qua non for examining textual communication.

When I talk about the context of a passage, I am not simply referring to the (immediate) literary context of a passage; to really ascertain the meaning of a text, it seems that one must consider the religious, political, and social context of a particular discourse.

A work that nicely sums up the aforesaid issues, and helps one to move from intermediate to advanced biblical Greek is "Biblical Greek Exegesis: A Graded Approach to Learning Intermediate and Advanced Greek" by George H. Guthrie and J. Scott Duvall (Zondervan).

This work explains how to diagram Greek sentences: it also contains a number of texts that allow students of NT Greek to work on parsing and discourse analysis as students personally advance in their Greek studies.

Please see https://books.google.com/books?id=TdkJlOqiEnIC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=Biblical+Greek+Exegesis:+A+Graded+Approach+to+Learning+Intermediate+and+Advanced+Greek&source=bl&ots=TYVzWcWQV7&sig=e7hUuQPFAHgrmlNP5mjXAyDmiiE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=o6njVJ68OYLCsATwtYLgAg&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Biblical%20Greek%20Exegesis%3A%20A%20Graded%20Approach%20to%20Learning%20Intermediate%20and%20Advanced%20Greek&f=false

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