Thursday, July 05, 2007

New Testament Exegesis: Step 5C

After a long pause I'd like to get back to where I was with NT exegesis:
So far we have looked at:
1) Spiritual preparation.
2) General introduction.
3) Literary context.
4) Provisional translation
and we had started going through:

5) Grammatical Analysis.

Now we shall cover the part c of this step:
5.c) Labeling the semantic functions:
e.g.

Go therefore and make disciples _______________COMMAND
......................................of all nations, ____LOCATION
.............................baptizing them _________MEANS
................................ in the name _________RELATIONSHIP
.....................................of the Father______SPHERE 1
.................................... and of the Son______SPHERE 2
....................................and of the Holy Spirit,_SPHERE 3


This is helpful as it shows how these phrases relate to one another.
Notice I put baptising as a participle of means. This is how some grammarians interpret the participle of 'baptising' as relating to the command of 'make disciples'. If this is correct then it shows us that baptising (and teaching which is also a particple) is one of the ways in which we make disciples.
This could be very helpful information for people wanting to know how to disciple people.
Jesus lists 2 participles of means for discipleship: Baptism and Teaching.

B.T.W Not everyone sees these as participles of means, but even if this were so, they should at least show us 2 elements that are characteristic of discipleship.

Below I have written out a list of possible semantic functions to use in your lists:

ASSERTION
EVENT
ACTION
QUESTION
DESIRE
EXCLAIMATION
EXHORTATION
WARNING
PROMISE
PROBLEM
RESOLUTION
ENTREATY

TIME
SEQUENCE
PROGRESSION

PLACE
SPHERE
SOURCE

MEASURE
OBJECT
CAUSE
RESULT
PURPOSE
MEANS
MANNER
AGENCY/AGENT
REFERENCE
ADVANTAGE
ASSOCIATION
RELATIONSHIP
POSSESSION

BASIS
INFERENCE
CONDITION
CONSESSION
CONTRAST

DESCRIPTION
EXAMPLE
EXPANSION
QUESTION
ANSWER

INTRODUCTION
CONCLUSION
SUMMARY
LIST
SERIES
PARALLEL


God bless
D