Text-Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew

David Allan Dawson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781474231756
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474236140
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Modern linguistics is a relative newcomer in the scientific world, and text-linguistics, or discourse analysis, is one of its youngest disciplines. This fact has inclined many toward scepticism of its value for the Hebraist, yet much benefit is thereby overlooked. In this work, the author examines recent contributions to Hebrew text-linguistics by Niccacci, Andersen, Eskhult, Khan, and Longacre, evaluating them against a twofold standard of theoretical and methodological integrity, and clarity of communication. An extensive introduction to one particularly promising model of text analysis (from Longacre's tagmemic school) is given, and a step-by-step methodology is presented. Analyses according to this model and methodology are given of seven extended text samples, each building on the findings of the previous analyses: Judg. 2; Lev. 14.1-32; Lev. 6.1-7.37; parallel instructions and historical reports about the building of the Tabernacle, from Exodus 25-40; Judg. 10.6-12.7; and the book of Ruth in its entirety. Considerable attention is given to the question of text-linguistics and reported speech.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION, AND EXAMINATION OF SEVERAL RECENT PUBLICATIONS
• Chapter 2 EXAMINATION OF KHAN'S 'STUDIES' AND LONGACRE'S 'JOSEPH'
• Chapter 3 AN INTRODUCTION TO ONE MODEL OF TEXT ANALYSIS, AND A METHODOLOGY DERIVED FROM IT
• Chapter 4 TEXT-LINGUISTIC OBSERVATIONS ON NARRATIVE AND NON-NARRATIVE TEXT-TYPES
• Chapter 5 JEPHTHAH AND RUTH—REFINING AND TESTING THE HYPOTHESES
• Chapter 6 SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
• Appendix 1 THE TEXT OF JUDGES 2 (BHS) IN COLUMNAR FORMAT
• Appendix 2 THE TEXT OF RUTH (BHS) IN COLUMNAR FORMAT
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors