Why hasn’t discourse analysis caught on in New Testament studies?.

Porter has been very influential in New Testament studies for both of my M.A. thesis topics (related to inter-biblical allusions and discourse analysis, respectively). Both of these topics push the boundaries of exegetical interpretation because these research topics relate to the most complex modes of human communication. For that reason, these analyses are notorious for being used to support more or less subjective analyses of the text. They get at the heart of what is a possible interpretation and what is more probable interpretation.

Porter has started to answer his question in at least 5 different ways, which I quickly summarize here…

1. D.A. compared to Old Testament studies.
2. D.A. compared to other linguistically-informed exploration of the New Testament.
3. D.A. is particularly difficult to get a handle on.
4. D.A. does not have the same supportive structure (like commentary and monograph series and journals dedicated to the field).
5. D.A. may have false expectations associated with its use (especially in relation to “objective” or “non-objective” readings.

Porter’s last paragraphs…

For whatever reason, discourse analysis has not garnered the recognition that other approaches have. However, that is not to say that it does not have much to offer. I believe that a robust and linguistically well-grounded discourse method—especially one that is grounded in functional language analysis—can potentially offer much for interpreters of the Bible—perhaps more than other, more traditional approaches. It can help the interpreter to focus upon the text as a text, and be able to speak more precisely about the features that make up such a text. It can provide a language to differentiate the various functions that parts of the language play in communication of meaning. It may be able to help to differentiate the ideas of a text from the means by which these ideas are communicated. The focus on units larger than the clause, while also realizing that clauses are made up of smaller units, brings an inherent balance to a discipline such as New Testament studies that runs the risk of being either too focused upon big ideas (often called theology) or too fixated on small units (such as an individual word).

Readers may be interested in knowing about the founding of BAGL—Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics—a peer-reviewed international journal dedicated to the linguistic study of ancient Greek. See www.macdiv.ca for details. The journal welcomes discourse analytical submissions as well.

This is all very good. I need to respond.

Today, I was wanting to say “compromise the integrity of” but I couldn’t arrive at those words. I used the computer thesaurus that is linked to Word on my computer to find a synonym for ‘weaken’ but that didn’t help. Then I tried ‘stability’ and that didn’t help either. Then I caught the notion that the phrase I was looking for was related to ‘truth’, so I looked that up. The first word in the generated list that seemed to help just a little bit was ‘uprightness’, but then I saw ‘integrity’ and I realized why I thought that ‘truth’ had something to do with the phrase I was looking for.

I knew at that point that I had half the phrase, but to my great disappointment, my brain was still not helping me come up with the first part of the phrase. So I decided to search Google for an online collocational dictionary, and it gave me this online version of the Oxford Collocational Dictionary for Students of English as the first hit…

http://5yiso.appspot.com/

I tried it and typed in ‘integrity’ in the search function. Wow!

It yielded collocations with ‘integrity’ organized by word class: adjectives, verbs, prepositions, and phrases. What I needed was a verb. I was quickly reminded that we can…

• have integrity
• lack integrity
• lose integrity
• restore integrity
• ensure integrity
• maintain integrity
• retain integrity
• defend integrity
• preserve integrity
• safeguard integrity
• threaten integrity (I thought, “Is this what I was looking for? No, it doesn’t quite click yet, but I know I’m getting warmer!”)
• compromise integrity (There it is!)
• impair integrity
• undermine integrity (That would have worked too!)
• destroy integrity
• question integrity

Wow, what a great resource! Now, can I get that on my local machine so I don’t have to access the Internet to get it?

photo by Kahunapule Johnson

The context here is the mountains, swamps, and jungles of Papua New Guinea. And the course of study is Biblical Greek Grammar. But the reasons we need to develop a mobile phone correspondence course for follow-up after an initial course may fit your context as well.

Here are 6 reasons we need to develop this course…

1. “I know enough Greek to be dangerous.” We are currently compounding this unfortunate situation. Every two years, we run an Intro to New Testament Greek course for PNG Bible translators followed by an Intro to NT Greek Exegesis course. However, for the past four years, the exegesis course has not run for one reason or another. We often don’t have enough students registered to run the course, and those who are interested are not prepared enough after the first course to enter the second. But if we don’t run the exegesis course, we might as well not start them off. It’s too dangerous to know just a little Greek! Many a false claim have have been made by those who know just enough Greek to think they know what they’re talking about.
2. 6 weeks is not enough to cover a one-year introductory course. The follow-up exegesis course is intended to have the first year grammar course as a prerequisite, but the 6-week intensive course has been progressing at a slower and slower pace over the years in order to help the participants be more successful. We think this is good. It’s better that they learn well what we cover rather than to try to keep up with an insane pace and get through the whole textbook with little understanding. A follow-up correspondence course could help the students finish the first year grammar.
3. “Train and dump” is culturally inappropriate. Papua New Guinean leaders in the Bible translation movement are explicitly asking for something that goes beyond our traditional training system. Learning within the Melanesian context means that it best happens when connected to real life practical experience and application. Classroom learning when divorced from application of that new knowledge and skills in practical experience will not be truly understood or utilized. A correspondence course could help bridge the gap between classroom instruction and application in the real world of village life and the work of translation.
4. Relationships are key. Papua New Guinean learners don’t simply want their heads filled with knowledge. They desire for mentor relationships with those who care about them as real people. Being real people means that they are connected to many other people with a history and a story to tell. This goes beyond the particular academic subject that may have brought student and mentor together in the classroom. Thus, regular communication in a follow-up correspondence course would not be limited to passing the questions and answers back and forth. It would also be an opportunity for relationship, storying, and encouragement.
5. We need to evaluate our training effectiveness, but we often do not have contact with course participants after the final day of class. If we run a follow-up correspondence course, we not only increase our chances of maintaining contact with the participants in order to determine the long-term effectiveness of the training, the continuing involvement in the subject matter will substantially boost the likelihood that our training will be proven effective.
6. Mobile phones are used in remote PNG villages. Communication is generally quite poor in the country, but mobile phone service is quite good and on the rise even in many remote areas of the country. Correspondence by post, email or internet are not viable options for many people in Papua New Guinea. Many candidates for this course may live most of the year many hours or even days from a post office, much less an internet connection. However, in the past four or five years, mobile phone service has been heavily marketed to the needs and situation of the 80% rural population in the country.  The digital network service is constantly expanding, and it is not unusual to find charging and balance top-up stations located off the beaten path even in remote villages.

Not everyone has access to mobile phone reception in PNG, and in such cases, HF radio scheds or communication via an intermediary at a regional center may be more appropriate. Others, on the other hand, may have access to email and internet.

Therefore, I am hypothesizing that a follow-up correspondence course could be designed with the limitations of mobile phone text messages and radio scheds in mind. This would not preclude others, however, from opting for the convenience and added benefits of email, the Internet, and social media if they have the capability.

Has anyone done anything like this? Any thoughts?

Since we didn’t decide until yesterday that we would be doing this study, I gave them a quick reading assignment to prepare: James 1:1-2 and 5:19-20. James is written to the twelve tribes living in the Diaspora. The people of God who have been scattered. By the end of the letter it is clear that this is no mere geographical designation. It is written to brothers and sisters who have wandered off the path of truth. And it is written to brothers and sisters who are in such a relationship with God that they can be His instruments to steer their wayward family members back onto the path of life.

Peter talks about participating in the divine nature through the promises of God (2 Peter 1:4), and James has his own message along these lines. In the beginning of the letter, James lays out a contrast between our own evil desires that lead to death (James 1:14-15) and the desire of our heavenly Father to give us new birth through his word of truth (James 1:17-18). This divine word is the only thing that can truly inspire us with godly wisdom, save us from the filth around us, and give abundant life to our mortal souls.

By the end of the letter, James presents a picture of the church accomplishing through prayer what only God can do: healing the sick, forgiveness of sins, stopping the rain and making it rain again (James 5:15-18). When we come alongside a wandering brother or sister in Christ and turn them back to God, we participate in the nature of God by saving others from death and covering over a multitude of sins (James 5:19-20). Surely, the prayer of a righteous person is very powerful since it is God who makes it effective (James 5:16).

May we each not forsake our first love (Revelation 2:4). May the love of God well up within us and overflow to all those around us.

A friend wrote me this morning and said, “It’s 2011. . . Isn’t it a little bit late to be holding a review session on Jackson-McCabe’s “Logos & Law” (pub 2001)? ”  Indeed. Why is there now a book review session on this work, ten years after its appearance (13 years if you count the date of its appearance as a doctoral thesis)? It certainly seems a bit odd.

Apparently this panel discussion occurred three days ago, but I haven’t seen any blog postings about it. I’m curious to hear what came of this discussion. For my part, I suggest that the book review submitted by Matthias Konradt in the Journal of Biblical Literature in the Spring of 2003 (vol. 122, no. 1) was quite adequate. I copy here Konradt’s concluding remarks…

Jackson-McCabe has enriched the discussion of the understanding of the “word,” which is important for the general understanding of James, with a new and interesting variant. Especially important in this context is the case he makes for not rashly isolating different strands of traditions. His interpretation of James, however, does not bear critical scrutiny. Contrary to Jackson-McCabe‘s assertion (see, e.g., p.133), the phrase ἔμφυτος λόγος can hardly be proven to be a terminus technicus on the basis of seldom, widely strewn, and—in addition—inexact references. Furthermore, Jackson-McCabe does not discuss other usages of ἔμφυτος at all (Philo, for example, uses this word only in the context of vices). And a passage such as Barn. 9.9 (ὁ τὴν ἔμφυτον δωρεὰν τῆς διδαχῆς αὐτοῦ θέμενος) plays no part in Jackson-McCabe‘s analysis.

However, the fact that Jackson-McCabe does not succeed in invalidating the traditional objections to the Stoic interpretation of 1:21 is more important. That the logos as innate human reason has an external form in the “law of freedom” is hardly a sufficient explanation for the phrase “to receive the logos,” or, respectively, “to hear and do the logos.” To use the terminology of Apos. Con. 8.9.8, the νόμος γραπτός is precisely not what is to be received in James, but rather the ἔμφυτος λόγος itself. Most of all, Jackson-McCabe passes over the traditio-historical roots in the early Christian tradition of 1:18 and 21, which are central to his interpretation. The two-part scheme in 1:21, in which the negative part is formulated with ἀποτίθεσθαι, has a number of early Christian parallels that belong to the context of postconversional instruction (Rom 13:12–14; Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:8–10; 1 Pet 2:1–2), and these are the only occurrences of this scheme. Moreover, Jas 1:18 corresponds closely to 1 Pet 1:23–25 (Jackson-McCabe dismisses it too quickly; see p. 191). This strongly suggests that James has taken over the entire sequence in 1:18, 21 from an early Christian tradition, which interpreted conversion as a (re-)birth through the word of the gospel leading the convert to the truth, and combined this with the admonition to follow this word from now on. In this context, ἔμφυτος is to be read as a reference back to the birth metaphor in 1:18. And the law in Jas 1:25 is not identical with the word or its external form, but rather is one side or aspect of it.

Furthermore, Jackson-McCabe‘s interpretation of the “lights” in Jas 1:17 is hazardous at best. There is no hint at all in the text that James intended to create an analogy between the “lights” and the human race. Finally, 1:18b does not comment on the exalted position of humans in creation, but the ἀπαρχή is the part of God’s creatures set apart for him. Philo (Spec. 4.180) uses the word with reference to the chosen nation (cf. Rev 14:4; 1 Clem. 29.3), and in following this traditional line Jas 1:18 refers to those who became God’s possession by converting to the Christian faith in a similar manner.

Alien(n)ation: Reading the Epistle of James through the Psychology of Migration
Program Unit: Psychological Hermeneutics of Biblical Themes and Texts
Margaret Aymer, Interdenominational Theological Center

The epistle of James addresses itself to “the exiles in diaspora.” This paper suggests taking this framing seriously. Using the psychology of migration developed by John Berry and nuanced by diaspora theorists like Avtar Brah, this paper demonstrates that James proposes a migrant stance of alienation vis-a-vis the community’s relationship with home and host culture. Further, James creates a “diaspora space” (Brah) of an “alien nation,” one that exists in but is “unstained” by the cosmos. The paper goes on to suggest the implications of the proposed migrant stances of James and of other New Testament authors for communities that use these ancient texts as scripture. It argues that the “scripturalization” of texts with different migrant stances as the central identifying referent of a community impacts the identity, political engagement, and world stance of that community, regardless of whether the community is, itself, made of migrants.

Redundancy, Discontinuity and Delimitation in the Epistle of James
Program Unit: Hellenistic Greek Language and Linguistics
Steven E. Runge, Logos Bible Software

The letter of James contains a number of instances of nominative or vocative forms of address in contexts where the addressees are already well established. These expressions often co-occur with what form criticism has labeled “disclosure formulas,” and are sometimes associated with marking boundaries within the discourse. This paper examines the role that semantic redundancy plays in judgments about the discourse function of these expressions. It also considers the role location plays on these judgments, both with respect to the clause and the paragraph. It will be demonstrated that when these expressions are not semantically required, they serve as an alternative means to conjunctions for marking new developments within the discourse, and thus play an important role in delimiting pericope boundaries within the epistle.

“…the Scripture Speaks against Envy”: Another Look at James 4:5
Program Unit: Pastoral and Catholic Epistles
Clinton Wahlen, Biblical Research Institute

Despite the predominantly negative usage of phthonos in Greek literature, including its NT usage, a long-standing consensus understands God to be the subject of the clause with pros phthonon in James 4:5. This paper, following a brief survey of proposed solutions, will present a viable alternative that makes better sense of the syntax of the verse within its immediate context (vv. 1-10).

Theme: Book Review: Matt A. Jackson-McCabe, Logos and Law in the Letter of James (Society of Biblical Literature, 2001)
Program Unit: Pastoral and Catholic Epistles

Felix H. Cortez, Universidad de Montemorelos, Presiding
Mariam Kamell, Regent College, Panelist (20 min)
Darian Lockett, Biola University, Panelist (20 min)
A. K. M. Adam, University of Glasgow, Panelist (20 min)
Matt Jackson-McCabe, Cleveland State University, Respondent (30 min)
Discussion (40 min)

Over at the LivingLetters blog I have posted several times in the last week about the process of Bible translation in our multi-language project in Papua New Guinea. My wife also has a number of posts that relate to our life in PNG and our desire to translate the good message of hope and trust in God in our everyday lives.

We pray that our lives would be living letters of recommendation for the people who have trained us up in the faith. Also, that our written translations would not just be letters on the page but words of life for those whom we serve. May these friends be living letters that testify to the work of the Spirit in our ministry.

However, I think Runge is still riding the fence a bit and perpetuating a misconception about asyndeton that contradicts the linguistic theory of markedness that he has already summarized. He’s right on when he says this:

The use of asyndeton indicates that the writer chose not to make a relation explicit. The relation must be gleaned from the context (p. 22).

And he’s also right to suggest that “asyndeton can be used at points of discontinuity” or “in contexts of close connection, such as moving from generic to specific” (pp. 22-23). But that is the extent of what Runge says about asyndeton used to express continuity. Nothing else. On the other hand, the weight of his discussion promotes the idea that asyndeton does NOT mean what other connectives mean:

Levinsohn summarizes the use of asyndeton in non-narrative by stating that since explicit connectives are used to indicate clause relationships such as strengthening, developmental, associative, or inferential, “the use of asyndeton tends to imply ‘not strengthening, not developmental, not associative, not inferential, etc.‘ ” (p. 23, citing Levinsohn, Discourse Features of New Testament Greek, 2nd ed., p. 119).

But that is only one side of a much more carefully nuanced description by Levinsohn:

Strictly speaking, the absence of any conjunction between sentences of a Greek text should imply only that the author offered no processing constraint on how the following material was to be related to its context… In practice, however, New Testament authors tend to use a conjunction whenever the relationship with the context concerned is strengthening (γὰρ), developmental (δὲ), associative or additive (καὶ), or inferential-cum-resumptive (ὅτι), etc. Consequently, asyndeton tends to imply “not strengthening, not developmental, not associative, not inferential, etc.” This is why asyndeton is often the norm when the relation of the following material to the context is not logical or chronological. [At this point, Levinsohn includes a footnote in which he suggests asyndeton as the norm for orientation, restatement, and associative (comment and parenthetical) relationships.]

Asyndeton is found in two very different contexts in non-narrative text:

• when there is a close connection between the information concerned (i.e., the information belongs together in the same unit)
• when there is no direct connection between the information concerned (i.e., the information belongs to different units).  (Levinsohn, p. 118)

At this point, Levinsohn includes a footnote in which he suggests that one may recognize when no direct connection between juxtaposed information is intended by the presence of vocatives and orienters (complement-taking predicates). I don’t agree with Levinsohn on this point. These devices may be included precisely to draw attention to the next development in the argument whether or not it relates to the previous passage. On this point, Iver Larsen argues that a vocative is

a rhetorical device, not a structural device, and it functions to establish a closer relationship with the hearers.” (“Boundary features in the Greek New Testament,” Notes on Translation, vol. 5, 1991:51)

The default assumption in any communication is that consecutive units do relate. I don’t believe that just because an author may typically use particular connectives to explicitly convey specific relationships that the use of asyndeton in other places means that those relationships are not implied. It may simply be the difference of whether those relationships are explicitly indicated with a conjunction or implicitly included with asyndeton. Sometimes making the relationship explicit says too much, or skews the argument, or betrays the persuasive power of the author too soon and ruins the chances for successful and convincing communication.

Thus, asyndeton is best understood as the unmarked form that may implicitly include a broad range of semantic relationships. But the way that Runge presents asyndeton, with the weight of its supposed significance falling on discontinuity, contradicts what he has already summarized about markedness:

The default option is considered ‘unmarked’ for the qualities found in the other members of the set. The quality may or may not be present.  The choice to use a marked form represents the choice to explicitly signal the presence of a quality that would only have been implicit if the default were used (pp. 11-12).

Whether the relation is explicit or implicit is very different from saying that the unmarked use of asyndeton implies that those logical relations are not present at all. ‘Unmarked’ means that a feature is not explicitly included. It does not follow, however, that a feature is explicitly excluded.

In my recent thesis addressing discourse concerns in the Letter of James, I have discussed the extensive use of asyndeton in that letter. Scholarship in James has too often erred in assuming that asyndeton implies discontinuity. That idea follows the outdated approach to James made popular by Dibelius in the early 20th century that the letter is composed of a string of unrelated sayings and shorter discourses. Yet, it is very enlightening to interpret the possible functions of asyndeton in the same letter if we follow the default assumption of coherence (as humanity universally does with almost any communication).

Here is the description of asyndeton that I have proposed in discussing the Letter of James. It follows the theory of markedness more closely…

Although the interpretation of explicit conjunctions is often a matter of inferring implied semantic information, the prevalence of asyndeton (the lack of conjunctions), means that coherence and text organization must be determined even more frequently on the basis of implied logical relationships. With 80 instances of asyndeton after 1.1, other bases must be recognized for grouping many units together, including implied semantic relationships. This is also true for larger spans. Investigating the possible logical relationships where asyndeton shows up at higher discourse levels is often neglected. It is difficult since the possibilities for coherence are multiplied with larger spans of text. The major difficulty with analyzing asyndeton is that it may represent either of opposite ends on a scale of cohesion. The two units may be so closely related that no conjunction divides the thought. Or, the units may be so distinct that no conjunction is necessary. If asyndeton is considered to reflect continuity, the extent of each unit being related and the implied logical relation are also unspecified. These determinations must be made from other contextual clues. If anything, asyndeton may indicate the author’s desire to not emphasize any specific relationship. Asyndeton is often found between spans that have some kind of continuity and discontinuity, and for that reason, an explicit conjunction may have communicated too much. (Pehrson, “Mitigation and Intensification of Persuasive Discourse in a Koine Greek Letter: Coherent Macrostructure in the Letter of James,” pp. 58-59)

I see now that what I have described above is somewhat close to what Levinsohn describes for asyndeton. We both recognize the possibility of asyndeton being able to reflect either continuity or discontinuity. However, I am much more ready to find continuity (even if it is a more loose or broadly defined continuity) where Levinsohn may see a change in major or minor topics (cf. Levinsohn, p. 119).

Levinsohn also suggests that asyndeton and other connectives are used differently by different New Testament authors:

The ways in which καὶ and δὲ are used in John’s Gospel do not correspond exactly with how they are employed in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts. This is because two other forms of linkage are employed in John’s Gospel in contexts in which καὶ and δὲ would have occurred had the material been written in the style of the Synoptics. One of them is asyndeton (the absence of a conjunction), which is John’s default means of conjoining sentences (Poythress 1984:331), instead of καὶ. John’s other common marker of linkage is ὅτι; he uses it as a low-level development marker in certain contexts in which the Synoptics and Acts use δὲ. (Levinsohn, pp. 81-82)

Such variance of usage between different authors is a good argument that supports the idea that “choice implies meaning.” Yet with asyndeton, we must not take this too far and conclude that asyndeton cannot mean what other connectors mean. Rather than being a question of either-or, it is probably more of a scalar notion. Asyndeton may imply the same relationship as other connectives, but it does not express it explicitly. There may be a difference of degree for the particular relation, or asyndeton may be an intentional move in the rhetoric to even momentarily hide the relationship. Good argumentation is not always immediately clear. Asyndeton may allow the movement of the argument to be realized only after more of the story is heard, and then with the benefit of gaining a better hearing.

So, I disagree with Runge somewhat in the details. As he says in the preface,

The reader still bears the responsibility of synthesizing and interpreting the analysis and can choose to reject a claim just as one might with most any other scholarly resource. (p. xix)

But I’m still loving this book. Runge is a good conversation partner. And it’s good to go back to Levinsohn and other discourse studies while reading him.

If you know anything about what my latest research has been in applying discourse linguistics to the interpretation of the New Testament, you’ll know why I’m so excited. Too often, exegesis is limited by a narrow view of the meaning of words and sentences without considering how those words are used in the wider contexts of whole discourses with patterns of use within a language community (and even patterns shared cross-linguistically). Many have touted the benefits of discourse linguistics for exegesis, but it looks like this might finally be the work to bridge the much-needed gap in introducing the theory to a wider audience in the academic world of New Testament studies.

After reading the foreward by Daniel Wallace, I immediately thought back to Wallace’s own introduction to his Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (1996) and why he excluded discourse analysis from his treatment of Greek grammar. In Runge’s preface, he himself cites Wallace’s reasons for leaving discourse considerations out. But I think Runge got Wallace’s sentiments a bit wrong! In only one sense can Wallace be said to be in the camp with those who “believe that linguistics and discourse studies have overpromised and underdelivered.” Wallace was still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled, still waiting for the delivery, but not because he doubted the value of discourse linguistics. In fact, Runge only cites the first three of Wallace’s four reasons for excluding discourse. The fourth one was the most promising, and the one that kept me waiting for a book like Runge’s: “(4) Finally, DA is too significant a topic to receive merely a token treatment, appended as it were to the end of a book on grammar. It deserves its own full-blown discussion.”

I’ve only read through the first chapter of Runge so far, but already, I’m very pleased with the kinds of things that he is challenging NT scholarship with…

Choice implies meaning

If a writer chose to use a participle to describe an action, he has at the same time chosen not to use an indicative or other finite verb form. This implies that there is some meaning associated with this decision. Representing the action using a participle communicates something that using a different mood would not have communicated. Defining the meaning associated with the choice is different from assigning a syntactic force or from determining an appropriate translation. It requires understanding what discourse task is performed by the participle that would not have been accomplished by another verb form. (p. 6)

Semantic or inherent meaning should be differentiated from pragmatic effect

Most languages do not have specialized devices that are singularly devoted to prominence marking. It is far more common to find a nonstandard usage achieving specific pragmatic effects. Greek is no exception. The use of the historical present for forward-pointing highlighting exemplifies this. Using a grammatical construction in an ostensibly wrong or unexpected way has the effect of making something stand out. The pragmatic effect achieved is dependent upon the discourse context in which it occurs. The devices described in the chapters that follow exploit some departure from an expected norm to achieve a specific pragmatic effect. Distinguishing semantic meaning from pragmatic effect is critical to providing a coherent and accurate description of the device and its function within the discourse. Neglecting this distinction leaves you with “messy discourse”! (p. 9)

Default patterns of usage should be distinguished from marked ones

To summarize, markedness theory presupposes that one member of a set is the most basic or simple member, called the “default” member. All of the other members signal or “mark” the presence of some unique quality, one that would not have been marked if the default option were used. The marked options are described based on how they uniquely differ both from the default and from one another…. Some English conjunctions distinguish semantic continuity versus semantic discontinuity (and versus but). The conjunctions καί and δέ do not encode this semantic constraint, leading them to be listed under both connective and contrastive relations [in Wallace]. The messiness of this overlap is caused by the mismatch of the feature to the framework used, not by the overlapping features that are marked.  καί and δέ are unmarked for the feature of semantic continuity or discontinuity. (p. 11, 13)

Prominence

The primary objective of using the various discourse devices is to attract extra attention to certain parts or aspects of the discourse–that is, to mark them as prominent…. Regardless of whether we are looking at a scenic view, a piece of visual art, or even listening to music, we are constantly making judgments about what is “normal” and what is “prominent” based on the devices used to signal prominence. (p. 13-14)

Contrast

Since prominence is fundamentally about making something stand out in its context, marking prominence typically involves creating contrast with other things in the context. Contrast, in turn, presupposes that a person recognizes the underlying pattern. Even if we cannot verbalize the pattern, we can still perceive contrast. (p.16)

Kamell, Mariam J. 2010. “The Soteriology of James in Light of Earlier Jewish Wisdom Literature and the Gospel of Matthew.” Ph.D. thesis. St Andrews, Scotland: University of St Andrews.

ABSTRACT:  The epistle of James has been neglected in NT studies, caught between its relationship with Paul and the claim that it has no theology. Even as it experiences a resurgence of study, surprisingly no full-length survey exists on James as the epistle of “faith and works.” Approaches to James have neglected its soteriology and, in consequence, its theological themes have been separated or studied only in connection with Paul. As “moral character,” however, “faith” and “works” fit within a coherent theology of God’s mercy and judgment. This study provides a sustained reading of James as a Jewish-Christian document. Because James presents the “faith” and “works” discussion in context of “can such faith save?” (2:14), the issue becomes one of soteriology and final judgment. Both the “law of freedom” and the “word of truth” demand faithful obedience—the “works.” Moreover, God’s character and deeds in election form the basis for human “works” of mercy and humble obedience, while future judgment is in accordance with virtuous character. It has been established that James shares methodology and concerns with prior wisdom literature. This thesis therefore examines key ideas developing across the Jewish literature and Jesus’ teaching as presented by Matthew, and highlights developing views God saving and judging his people. Within the first two chapters, James gives a high view of God’s work in calling and redeeming, providing wisdom to his people, and instilling long-anticipated new covenant that they might live in obedience, humility and purity in accordance with his character and will. Because of God’s saving work, he justly judges those who fail to live mercifully, while his mercy triumphs for those who obey. God begins the work and sustains those who ask; but only those who submit to the “perfect law of freedom,” whose faith works, receive mercy when God enacts his final justice.

Chandler, Christopher N. 2010. “Blind Injustice : Jesus’ Prophetic Warning Against Unjust Judging (Matthew 7:1-5).” Ph.D thesis. St Andrews, Scotland: University of St Andrews.

ABSTRACT: This dissertation seeks to provide a plausible alternative to the consensus interpretation of Jesus’ “do not judge” teaching in Matt 7:1-5. While the overwhelming majority of recent interpreters understand “do not judge” (7:1) and its concurrent sayings such as “take the log out of your own eye” (7:5) to promote a non-judgmental attitude, this monograph seeks to situate this block of teaching within a Jewish second-Temple judicial setting. To this end, an overview of the judicial system during the second Temple era is provided, after which it is argued that Matt 7:1-5 is the Matthean Jesus’ halakhic, midrashic comment upon the laws for just legal judging in Lev 19:15-18, 35-36 by which he prophetically criticizes unjust legal judging. Jesus’ brother James takes up this teaching in Jas 2:1-13, using it to exhort Jewish Christian leaders who judge cases within Diaspora synagogues/churches. Such an alternative interpretation of Jesus’ “do not judge” teaching in Matt 7:1-5 matches well other passages in Matthew which likewise speak of judicial, brotherly conflict such as 5:21-26 and 18:15-35. Some early Christian writers who quote or allude to Matt 7:1-5 reflect a judicial understanding of these verses as well, often relating Matt 7:1-5 to Lev 19:15-18, 35-36 and/or drawing parallels between Matt 7:1-5 and one or more of the NT judicial texts which, this thesis argues, is related to it (Matt 5:21-26, 18:15-35; Jas 2:1-13).