Teaching Top Down Analysis

clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Mon May 1 12:45:43 EDT 2000


on 05/01/00 6:06 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> What is it, Clay, that you were taught about "top down analysis" in English
> Bible classes; if I knew that, I might have some better conception of what
> it is that you are suggesting as something desirable to institute in
> teaching ancient/Biblical Greek at the elementary level.

Carl,

It is has been 25 years but I will do my best to remember.

I had an English bible class on the Pentateuch where I remember being taught
that the book of Genesis had a macro structure that could be organized
around some verbal expression, I think it was something like "This is the
book of the generations. . ."

The class on Pentateuch really opened my eyes since it had never occurred to
me before that an historical book was anything more than just a collection
of narratives glued together in sequence.

To understand the Hebrew word  "toledoth" (generations) in Genesis 5:1 one
needs to go beyond the notion of a dictionary definition and look at the
macro structure of Genesis to see that this word has a function for breaking
large blocks of text. This concept was completely new to me and worked a
sort of revolution of sorts in my approach to biblical literature.

This was my first exposure to the idea of a discourse boundary.
  
Clay

--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062





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