Relevance of Greek Discourse Studies to Exegesis and Textual Criticism

Stephen Carlson (Hypotyoseis) draws the attention to Stephen H. Levinsohn's online article, “The Relevance of Greek Discourse Studies to Exegesis," Journal of Translation 2 (2006) 11-21. In particular the article treats three discourse-related areas which, according to the writer, tend to be handled unsatisfactorily in exegesis: the order of constituents in the clause and sentence, the presence versus absence of the article with nouns, and the significance of the conjunctions used. Stephen Carlson rightly points out that these areas are of great significance for textual criticism as well.

Two years ago I had a fine student, Annika Ralston, who is acquinted personally with Levinsohn as she has been involved in work with Summer Institute of Linguistics. Anyway, she wrote an essay under my supervision: "Discourse Analysis and Interpretation: A Test Case in Matthew 24–25," and it is available here.