Galatians 1:1-5 - Segmentation Bunnytrail (2)

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RandallButh
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Joined: May 13th, 2011, 4:01 am

Galatians 1:1-5 - Segmentation Bunnytrail (2)

Post by RandallButh »

Στεφανος ἔγραψεν
Syntax remains important here because it helps directs how to put the pieces together. Many of the important signals for doing so are located at the left edge of these units, e.g., οὐκ ... οὐδὲ ... ἀλλά .... But there are places later on, especially the anacolutha in chapter 2, where the syntax is simply abandoned. There is no whole to construe syntactically, only a series of fall starts and rabbit trails. I would also suggest that syntax alone is not sufficient to grasp Eph 1:3-14, because the monstrosity is simply too big to keep entirely in one's active memory until the very end.
Your last comment is very appropriate for cognitive and reading studies. A stream of communication does have certain time limits, or length limits. This should help the interpretive process, because the ancient author and audience had to process these things orally at some point. These letters were intended to be read outloud.

An author or audience have a certain small length of time, maybe 2 seconds, in which to encapsulate a reduced form of the message and hold it in memory for linking with other encapsulated pieces. If something doesn't get reduced into a storable unit piece, then everything collapses in short time. A person can experience this even in their mothertongue. Take an unread sentence in some text. Cover it before getting a glimpse of it. Then slowly uncover one word at a time while momentarily glancing anywhere, so that no more than one word is seen per second, without seeing the earlier words. After a few seconds the meaning is blank. If not, then the reader has been doing some secondary conscious memory work to overcome the meaning collapse.

This may help a reader today, since it can point out areas in Eph 1.3-14 where someone may have naturally read fairly fast to cover enough ground, and it will also focus on natural segmentations that an audience used to store the little piece-units of meaning that are strung together. It even ties into relevance theory because some "exegeses" might require too-high demands on processing.
this is also related to things like reading an underdifferentiated script like an unpointed Semitic language. there are times when one reads along a stream of words and gets to a point where it is obvious that one took the wrong fork in the road and one rereads the sentence.
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Galatians 1:1-5 (Segmentation)

Post by Stephen Hughes »

This post would really be better suited a bit further up the thread, but anyway...
Stephen Carlson wrote:I ... suggest that the first step is to break the period down into its colons (κῶλα) or intontation / information units, each can be phrased in a single breath and basically corresponding to one idea (referent, state, or event). ...

1a Παῦλος 1b ἀπόστολος, 1c οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων 1d οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου 1e ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς 1f τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν, 2a καὶ οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ πάντες ἀδελφοί,

2b ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Γαλατίας·

3a χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, 4a τοῦ δόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν 4b ὅπως ἐξέληται ἡμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ αἰῶνος τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πονηροῦ 4c κατὰ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς ἡμῶν, 5a ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων· 5b ἀμήν.
I don't know what kind of emphasemic (or ghostly) reading you are imagining? But are you serious about beginning to read a text with one-word-one-breath colons?
cwconrad wrote:In Gal 1:1 ἀπόστολος οὐκ ἀπ᾿ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι᾿ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν I don't see that segmenting this overmuch really assists understanding how the text means.
To take the old man's point further, I would say that epistolographically there are 3 parts (as I have taken out the plethora of carriage returns in quoting SC) in this section, and I have no problem reading your 1a -2a or 3a-5b all together with deliberate intonation (and no shortness of breath). I have separated 2b from 2a because that is what letters written in Greek do.

I think that by segmentising too narrowly in your 1a - 2a has lost the force of ἀπό given in your 1c but carried through in sense to your 1e. ie ἀλλὰ (ἀπὸ καὶ) διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ (ἀπὸ καὶ διὰ) θεοῦ πατρὸς κτλ.
Stephen Carlson wrote:
1a Παῦλος
Nominative name. As an initial segment/colon, it is a topic frame to establish Paul as the topic for the following segments. It promises a finite verb for a prediction, which we won't quite get (cf. 2b).
Ordinarily, yes that is what a nominative leads one to expect, but not at the beginning of a letter. cf.
Acts 23:26 SLBGNT wrote:Κλαύδιος Λυσίας
τῷ κρατίστῳ ἡγεμόνι Φήλικι
χαίρειν.
Stephen Carlson wrote:
1c οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων
A negated prepositional phrase. It is still telling us something about the topic, Paul: that he's not from (a group of) people.
Stephen Carlson wrote:While I think it's necessary to supply something to complete the sense, I have preferred to read in a cognate participle like ἀπεσταλμένος, much like what the NRSV, NIV, and NASB did by explicitly adding "sent."
By hypersegmentising the relationship between this ἀπό and the ἀπόστολος (now colonified separatedly) has been obfuscated. By using a preposition the verb is implied, ie when thinking in Greek, the verb (ἀπεσταλμένος) is parallel-processed (think something else when you read the one thing) from/along with the noun ἀπόστολος, it is not "read in" [tense change in quotation].
Stephen Carlson wrote:
1d οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου
... he's not any person's agent
Although we might think that the verb of δια here might be διατεταγμένος (which is a more long-term "standing order" than the immediate and once off application of κελεύειν cf. διαταγή v. κέλευσμα), perhaps because there is a position / role involved (ἀπόστολος) there is a temptation to imagine that the verb could be ἐφίστημι (LSJ B.II sense), but that would imply that the position of "Apostle" (at that point of history) was more of an authority figure in the church not a service (ministry - διακονία) role.
Stephen Carlson wrote:
1f τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν,
A participial phrase in the genitive. The case shows that it is is now commenting upon God in 1e.
I think actually the αὐτὸν (rather than ἑαυτόν - BTW I think that the temptation to look at it Uncially "ΑΥΤΟΝ" and suppose an αὑτόν might work in the LXX but not in the GNT) shows that it refers to God the Father (not to Jesus Chirst).
Stephen Carlson wrote:Epistolary conventions would have us mentally supply an appropriate and predicable verb, like γράφουσι.
Lol! There is another interesting thing about letters, and that is that they need to be "delivered" ἀπόδος/-τε! (LSJ I.7)
Last edited by Stephen Hughes on October 11th, 2013, 11:04 am, edited 2 times in total.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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