Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Discourse Analysis

by David Alan Black (Editor), Katherine Barnwell (Editor), Stephen Levinsohn (Editor)

An introduction to Greek discourse analysis with special emphasis on its practical application to the language of the New Testament. Part I of the book introduces some fundamental principles of discourse analysis. Part II analyzes the discourse features of selected New Testament texts.

Genres: Linguistics

319 pages, Paperback

First published February 26, 1993

Reviews

[Jeremy]

This is a helpful book in both understanding discourse analysis and moving beyond the level of word and clause study. The essays, however, do not all employ techniques of discourse analysis. In some cases, it appears that the authors simply included the term "discourse analysis" in their titles and then proceeded to use typical literary analysis, etymological studies, and background investigation to produce condensed commentaries of passages or books in the Bible. In other cases, however, normally the chapters written by linguists and translators rather than NT scholars, the techniques of discourse analysis are definitely observable. The first chapter, "Reading a Text as Discourse" by J.P. Louw, actually makes the book worthwhile all on its own.