two models?

Michael Burer burer at bible.org
Thu Oct 24 06:20:41 EDT 2002


Wayne,

Your post is really helpful to me, and I appreciate it very much. You
confirm much of what I said and what seems intuitively to be the case.
It is not a matter of either/or but both/and. Thanks as well for the
resources.

I agree that higher-level structures are not emphasized in our training
and that most students never get there. Blame that on limited time in
the study of the language and the simple fact that you have to start
somewhere, and I imagine most everyone who started to learn Greek began
with morphology and then moved on to syntax of phrases and clauses.

As an aside, I don't see how a top-level down approach would ever work
for someone who is studying a language other than their native tongue. I
have had the privilege of studying several languages, a few for many
years now, and I just can't see that this would ever work. How could I
ever even start reading a foreign language text without knowing basic
morpho-syntactical information, relationships, and options? I have to
know how the French article works on the word and phrase level before I
can even begin to understand anything about how it might function on a
larger level.

By the way, the NET Bible does have DTS profs as translators and
editors, but we have a lot of folks from other schools, too. I don't
want anyone to get the impression that it is a DTS-only product since it
really is not.

Grace,
Michael Burer



-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Leman [mailto:wayne_leman at sil.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 11:51 PM
To: Biblical Greek
Subject: [b-greek] two models?


> Here's what I would like to see someone succinctly state: What makes 
> discourse analysis (or other comparable fields) better for studying NT

> Greek than the traditional methods that I imagine most of us learned?
>
> I'll make the first volley based upon what I know (which I'll admit is

> limited), and I look forward to being informed further on this matter:

> I do not see discourse analysis eclipsing morpho-syntactical analysis.

> Instead, I see them as complimentary or perhaps as a pyramid. One must

> learn accidence, morphology, and word formation in order to even start

> reading anything of a Greek text (or any foreign language text for 
> that matter). Then one must learn syntax of words and clauses to make 
> more sense of a Greek text. Finally, one must learn to handle the 
> discourse on its broadest level to understand a Greek text. You can't 
> learn Greek without studying the words, phrases, and clauses, but you 
> should not stop there either.

Mike, I agree with you that discourse study of Greek should not be seen
as being in competition with more traditional ways of approaching Greek.
Discourse study, in simplistic terms, helps us see the bigger picture
which is typically not dealt with well, if at all, by studying just
syntax at the sentence or lower levels of language. But there is far
more to language than just sentences. There are inter-sentential
relationships which are of critical importance to exegesis. Your mentor
intuitively knows this and that is why he and others like him at DTS
worked so hard on the footnotes in the NET Bible to indicate different
exegetical options for discourse-level exegesis (e.g. options for
antecedence of some pronoun, what some GAR refers to, the function of DE
in some passage).

BTW, another way to approach the study of any language, including Greek,
is top-down, instead of bottom-up. This approach has been used, with
mixed success in English comp. classes, encouraging students to, first
of all, just get out their feelings and ideas, and not be too concerned
with the details of grammar. Of course, some curricula or unmotivated
students stopped there and never learned the importance of English
subject-verb agreement, etc. Same goes for "new math" that left some
students not knowing their multiplication tables. And the same would go
for those who, with good intentions, approach the study of NT Greek
top-down. They might leave out studying the more basic levels of the
language, from which the higher levels are formed. We need both.

Our study of Greek is not complete until we, ultimately, get a good
idea, precis (summary), of the highest level arguments or narrative
points, and the relationships among them. Your colleagues do much of
this intuitively, as I read Bible book outlines posted on the BSF
website, and some of the evidence used to create (discover?) those
outlines comes from discourse level relationships.

People have been doing discourse analysis for millennia. It was done by
Greek rhetoriticians. It's been done in literary analysis. It's been
done by commentators who find the major arguments of a book like Romans.

What scholars like Stanley Porter, Bob Longacre, Stephen Levinsohn, Bob
Dooley, and others have done is bring better organization and some new
insights into what is often done intuitively by those who study the
biblical languages.

I think I might have a URL to my Discourse Analysis section of my Bible
translation website. Much of the material there would be relevant to
those studying Koine Greek. Let's see, try:

http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/index.htm#discourse

The info found on that site is by no means complete, but it is a good
start.

Enuf,
Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
SIL
http://committed.to/fieldtesting

> Michael Burer


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