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Mitigation and Intensification of Persuasive Discourse in a Koine Greek Letter: Coherent Macrostructure in the Letter of James
Abstract and Figures
A longstanding debate continues regarding coherent structure in the Koine Greek
New Testament Letter of James. I argue that multiple linguistic perspectives confirm the
central theme of trust in divine grace and mercy as foundational to Christian behavior.
Applying Lakoff and Johnson’s cognitive semantics theory to James, a faith-journey
conceptual metaphor structures the life of faith according to the source-path-goal image
schema with a born-of-grace conceptual metaphor reflecting the source. Using Longacre
and Hwang’s discourse theory, I describe James in terms of discourse type, notional
schemata, macrosegmentation, skewing, paragraph relations, verb/clause salience, and
embedding. A prototype approach reveals James as a persuasive text with embedded
hortatory and expository units. Movements of mitigation and intensification most clearly
reveal the coherent structure within the text’s profile and peaks. The controlling theme is
ultimately derived from the above investigations in terms of van Dijk’s theory of
macrostructure.
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Stemmatology is the discipline that attempts to reconstruct the transmission of a text on the basis of relations between the various surviving manuscripts. The object of this volume is the evaluation of the most recent methods and techniques in the field of stemmatology, as well as the development of new ones. The book is largely interdisciplinary in character: it contains contributions from scholars from classical, historical, biblical, medieval and modern language studies, as well as from mathematical and computer scientists and biologists. The contributions in the book have been divided into two sections. The first section deals with various stemmatological methods and techniques. The second section focuses more specifically on the various problems concerning textual variation.
An earlier volume on Studies in Stemmatology was published in 1996 and opened the most actual state of the art in stemmatology to a broad audience. That first volume was very well received by stemmatologists and also gave an impulse to new research, as several articles in the current volume clearly illustrate.
Both volumes are of interest to scholars in (historical) linguistics, literary studies, Bible studies, classical studies, medieval studies, and history.
This outstanding book provides an in-depth historical study of the place of Jesus in the religious life, beliefs, and worship of Christians from the beginnings of the Christian movement down to the late second century.
Lord Jesus Christ is a monumental work on earliest Christian devotion to Jesus, sure to replace Wilhelm Bousset’s Kyrios Christos (1913) as the standard work on the subject. Larry Hurtado, widely respected for his previous contributions to the study of the New Testament and Christian origins, offers the best view to date of how the first Christians saw and reverenced Jesus as divine. In assembling this compelling picture, Hurtado draws on a wide body of ancient sources, from Scripture and the writings of such figures as Ignatius of Antioch and Justin to apocryphal texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Truth.
Hurtado considers such themes as early beliefs about Jesus’ divine status and significance, but he also explores telling devotional practices of the time, including prayer and worship, the use of Jesus’ name in exorcism, baptism and healing, ritual invocation of Jesus as “Lord,” martyrdom, and lesser-known phenomena such as prayer postures and the curious scribal practice known today as the nomina sacra.
The revealing portrait that emerges from Hurtado’s comprehensive study yields definitive answers to questions like these: How important was this formative period to later Christian tradition? When did the divinization of Jesus first occur? Was early Christianity influenced by neighboring religions? How did the idea of Jesus’ divinity change old views of God? And why did the powerful dynamics of early beliefs and practices encourage people to make the costly move of becoming a Christian?
Boasting an unprecedented breadth and depth of coverage — the book speaks authoritatively on everything from early Christian history to themes in biblical studies to New Testament Christology — Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ is at once significant enough that a wide range of scholars will want to read it and accessible enough that general readers interested at all in Christian origins will also profit greatly from it.
The Letter of James is one of the most significant, yet generally overlooked, New Testament books. Because Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, disliked this letter for its emphasis on good deeds, the book has come to be viewed as being in opposition to Paul’s letters, which emphasize faith in God. To correct these and other misperceptions about James, Luke Timothy Johnson embarks on an unprecedented history of the interpretation of this pivotal letter, highlighting the vast appreciation for James over the centuries. Johnson boldly identifies the first-century author as none other than James, the brother of Jesus Christ. While modern skepticism casts doubt on this conclusion, early textual witnesses, as well as saints and scholars throughout the centuries, corroborate Johnson’s position.
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.