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.

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Product Description: The pages of the Hebrew Bible are filled with stories - short and long, funny and sad, histories, fables, and morality tales. The ancient narrators used a variety of stylistic devices to structure, to connect, and to separate their tales - and thus to establish contexts within which meaning comes to light...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)