The Relevance of Greek Discourse Studies to Exegesis

At least three discourse-related areas of exegesis tend not to be handled satisfactorily in many commentaries: 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. This paper first shows how insights from the work of Simon Dik, Jan Firbas and Knud Lambrecht have contributed to our understanding of the significance of variations in constituent order. Other insights that bear on constituent order are the Principle of Natural Information Flow and the distinction between default versus marked ordering. The paper then outlines how recent insights about the presence versus absence of the article may help us to choose between alternative exegeses of the same passage. The final section shows how insights from the work of Diane Blakemore and Reboul and Moeschler have revolutionized our understanding of the most common conjunctions used in the New Testament.