Logos 4 Beta Resource Wish List

Graceman said:

I don't know if it is appropriate or not but I would love to see these resources included in the beta resource list.

Maybe someone will chime in and say something better about these.

I got them when they first came out, because the promised to show me stuff I'd been missing, but have not found them to be very helpful. I've spent most of my studies recently in the epistles and so I can't say how helpful they may be in narrative or poetic literature. But in the epistles, unless I'm smarter than average (I wouldn't take that bet), they basically just restate the obvious.

I could be more specific, if you'd like. But that gets a bit technical.

Mike Aubrey said:

It sounds like the main issue is that you had hoped the DGNT would be looking at things it was never designed to.

Probably. But I'm at a loss to understand discourse apart from the literary devices language uses.

For example, in v.26 of the passage I cited there is a direct quote from Psalm 4:4a (LXX Ps 4:5a). Is not a quotation a discourse device? Paul then goes on with a reinterpretation/restatement of Psalm 4:4b. Is this not also a discourse device?  Yet neither the LDGNT nor the LHDNT note this nor the connection, between them. They are treated independently, when they are obviously connected. The connection is not grammatical, but discourse isn't about grammar (at least that's what they say), it's about choosing how to say what you want to say by making linguistic choices. Using a direct quote is a literary device, but isn't it also a discourse device? Restating and reinterpreting a quote is another linguistic device, but isn't it also a discourse device?

In v.26 by using a direct quote followed by a reinterpretation of the rest of the verse, he is doing, in effect what Jesus did when he said things like "You heard it said..." followed by "but I say to you..." I could make that point more strongly, and this is subject to interpretation, I know. But Paul is choosing to say something in a certain way in order to make a point.

Further literary structure must inform the discourse analysis to determine if the μηδε [mede] connects to the previous "sentence" or the previous two "sentences." To determine this, the listener would understand (IMHO of course), what Paul meant here -- that he is not merely stacking a list of do's and don't's but engaging the listener in the continuing discussion of what it means to take off the old self, put on the new, and why this is necessary.

If discourse is totally uninterested in the meaning of what is being said, or the way in which it is being said, then I question its value -- at least to me.

Chances are good that I don't really understand it (even after trying to read/understand the reference you cite), which is fine, but that makes it equally unuseful.

Mike Aubrey said:

Okay, a couple thoughts:

1) I really don't know who it is who says that discourse isn't about grammar. It's definitely very much about grammar - discourse is grammar (SIL/Wylciffe Bible Translators linguist & consultant, Robert Longacre, actually wrote a book entitled: The Grammar of Discourse.

I was reading the first paper of the page you suggested called "Discourse Grammar" by Steve Runge. Now I should have said that DA is not about traditional grammar, to make clearer what I was saying. But it seems to me that Mr. Runge is suggesting that grammar (traditionally understood) is not the focus of DA. That while DA is interested in, and may be a new way of thinking about grammar, it is not meant to supplant traditional grammar. I understood p.vi of that PDF to say that the project here is to do what traditional grammar has failed to do.

If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Mike Aubrey said:

2) Nobody said discourse analysis isn't interested in the meaning of what is being said. It's just interested from a different perspective. One of the major questions, especially for Greek, that DA deals with is: "Why do the phrases in a give clause appear in the order they do and how does that relate to the preceding context?"

Those were precisely the questions I was asking in Eph 4:25-5:2. I also suggested that neither the LHDNT, nor the LDGNT helped me answer that question.

If you can show me how it does, please do. I'm challenging the validity of DA, or at least it's usefulness. Either back away from the challenge or prove me wrong.

Mike Aubrey said:

In terms of the parallels of the section in question, the parallels are marked with the point-counter point sets, where clauses are organizes together to express a specific relationship: "POINT: The one who steals must steal no longer // COUNTER-POINT: but rather work with his own hands what is good."

Actually, you inverted the Point//Counter-point, in that verse (the Point=work; the Counter-point=don't steal). But my point is that this structure is repeated beginning with v.25 - v.32. In fact in vv31-32, there is a larger point//counter-point that is undocumented, and though the linguistic clue is just a "de" the contextual pattern requires seeing it this way -- and I think your average reader/listener would see it this way. The paper I cited above makes a big point about uses of "kai" and "de" but the LHDNT and LDGNT fail to deliver in this passage (IMHO), failing to note the connectivity implied in v.30 ("kai" which seems to me to imply continuity with, or further refinement of the ideas expressed in v.29), and in v. 32. ("de" which clues us in to the contrast between this verse and v.31).

But maybe I'm expecting what these resources are not designed to deliver. If so, help me understand what I'm missing.

Mike Aubrey said:

I'd very much be interested in working through with you exactly what you don't understand in the PDF I referred to, but I get the sense that you're not terribly interested in that. It sounds like your conclusions are already drawn and that's that. I consider that unfortunate -- particularly since these resources were supposed to be intended to make accessible grammatical material that would normally require several years of reading and study.

I think you misread me. My conclusions are based on my interactions with these resources in my studies (mostly sermon prep.). So far I have not found them helpful, and have, in fact, been frustrated by the little they seem to offer.Yes, I'm pretty sure about how I think about them, but that doesn't mean I'm closed to hearing a different story.

If you find these resources helpful, don't just tell me they're unique, show me by example how they are helpful. I have tried to be specific in my objections in the hopes that my specificity would help your rebuttal of my misunderstandings of how these resources are, or are not helpful. You continue to assert that they are, but you haven't shown that they are.

Please show me how you have found them helpful in your Biblical studies. Take it as a challenge, or an invitation. I'm genuinely curious.

I've bought these resources and they are sitting unused in my library. If I could make valuable use of them, I would love to!

Mike Aubrey said:

But it's fine and I won't push the issue any longer.

I know this is somewhat off the original topic of this discussion, but it seems worth pursuing, if only to come to some sort of understanding of what DA intends to deliver, and whether or not the above mentioned resources actually deliver what's promised.