Uses of GAR

Dr. Dale M. Wheeler dalemw at multnomah.edu
Wed Sep 25 11:46:54 EDT 2002


Steven Lo Vullo wrote:

>Hi all:
>
>Since we have Dr. Wheeler's ear, I thought I would take the opportunity
>to ask a question that has been on my mind for some time now, and may
>be of general interest. I think Iver has commented on this before, so I
>would welcome his input (and that of others) as well.
>
>As I have been reading through and diagramming the GNT, I have taken
>special note of the conjunction GAR. Accordance tags it two ways,
>conjunction coordinating explanatory (796x), and conjunction
>subordinating causal (241x).
<snip>

Greetings Steven:

You've got my ear...but it will take a little while for my brain to get 
involved...(-:

A couple of things (and not by way of excuse); the original tagging on the 
GRAMCORD MorphGNT was done by James Boyer of Grace Seminary, and while I've 
checked lots and lots of things in the process of doing two major upgrades 
and several minor upgrades over the past 15 years, I've not been able to go 
through everything (I've been a bit buried in the MorphBHS and MorphLXX for 
the past 6 or 7 years, but both of those fixes/upgrades are coming to an 
end soon; at least the first major revisions to them both in about 20 
years), but I'm going to be going thru the GCGNT check, updating and adding 
hopefully starting later this year.

So, the bottom line is that I really don't know the answer to your question 
off the top of my head.  I certainly agree with you about Rom 7:1.

I'd appreciate it if you'd send me directly any questions or suggestions 
that you have about the GCGNT; I look at them all and keep them in a file, 
and if they are egregious enough I fix them and do an interim release.

As to how to distinguish these GAR's, the two tags used in GC are: (1) 
Coordinating, Explanatory, and (2) Subordinating, Causal, as you have also 
observed.  In explaining this to my students I use the terminology of 
Causal = Direct Reason and Explanatory = Argumentative Reason (ie., GAR is 
used to introduce supporting information within the structure of an 
argument; in an exegetical outline I have them state it as "The reason 
[Paul] can claim that...").  Off the top of my head (my diagrams are at 
school), I'd probably diagram BDAG's ##1a-d "cause or reason", #2 
"explanatory", and #3 "inferential" as subordinating; ##1e, 1f, 4 as a 
sign-post continuing a previous thought in general.  I don't recall ever 
diagramming a GAR as a full coordinating conjunction with branches, like 
KAI or DE; thus the GAR's GC tags as Coordinating, Explanatory could be 
diagrammed either as sign-post or subordinating, depending on their 
function within the argument and how tight the link between the GAR clause 
and the preceding clause is, ie., if the GAR is explaining the main idea of 
the preceding clause or if it is just picking up the general idea of the 
preceding clause(s).

Blessings...

***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Research Prof., Biblical Languages          Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan St.                                  Portland, OR 97220
V: 503-2516416                                 E: dalemw at multnomah.edu
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