Participant Reference and Narrative Cohesion
clayton stirling bartholomew
c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Thu Mar 9 01:41:18 EST 2000
Joe,
Thanks for your response and the suggestion (humorous) that more work
needs to be done on this question.
>From: "Joe A. Friberg" <JoeFriberg at email.msn.com>
>Subject: Re: Participant Reference and Narrative Cohesion
>Date: Wed, Mar 8, 2000, 2:05 PM
>
> I wonder what the results would be if the same criteria were applied to the
> trial and crucifixion scenes of the gospels??
I am not going to take the time to try this analysis on the passion
narratives but I did try it on the visit of Jesus to his home town in
Mark 6:1-6. The results are listed below, showing the participant
reference to Jesus.
1 (1) occurrence of #1 Full Explicit Subject
1 (0) occurrences of #2 Abbreviated explicit subject
6 (6) occurrences of #3 Non-explicit subject
10 (2) occurrences of #4 Non-subject participant
I had to make a few judgement calls. First I didn't know how to handle
the arguments of ESTIN in MK 6:3, so I called hOUTOS a #2 and all the
others following EISTIN #4's. I also broke some rules by including
references to Jesus which were in the recorded speech of his critics. It
seemed like this was a good thing to do but I also kept separate numbers
which exclude the recorded speech shown in () above.
I will offer some general observations about this distribution of the
participant references. The only reference to Jesus which fits the
criteria for #1 does not appear until verse 4, well into the scene. I
would speculate that this can be explained by the high level of
persistence of participant references to Jesus in the preceding context.
In plain words, Jesus is already there and does not need to be
introduced in Mk 6:1.
If you factor out the recorded speech of Jesus critics then there is
only one qualifying participant reference in the whole scene which would
support forgounding in the sense that it was presented in Gustavo
Martin-Asensio's article. In other words, Jesus is not a mover and
shaker in this scene. Also Jesus mostly talks in this scene and only
heals a few people at the end which is sort of mentioned in passing. So
according to the two major criteria applied to the Stephen story (Acts
6-7), Jesus is not a foreground figure in this scene.
If you focus your attention on the participant references to Jesus in
the words of his critics, a pattern emerges which might suggest that his
critics are speaking in a demeaning way. Their first several references
to Jesus in Mk 6:2-3 are #4's (TOUTWi, TOUTWi, AUTOU). If you exclude
the dubious classification of hOUTOS in verse three as a #2 then all of
critic's references to Jesus are #4's. This is intriguing.
I think Gustavo Martin-Asensio's article is valuable because it draws
this type of analysis to our attention, even if one might not be willing
to accept his conclusions.
Thanks Joe
Clay
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
PS
Since you are from Arlington Texas, perhaps I will ask you some
questions about R. E. Longacre's book The Grammar of Discourse, off list
of course.
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