I am concerned that I gave the wrong impression of the book: Explorations in
Exegetical Method: Galatians as a Test Case, Moises Silva, Baker, 1996.
I just received this book but have sampled it widely reading sections on
Discourse Analysis, Lexical Semantics, Verb Aspect, etc. I was currently
reading (for the fourth time) Silva's excellent introduction to lexical
semantics (Biblical Words and their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical
Semantics, Zondervan 1983, revised ed. 1994) when I discovered that he had
published this other book.
"Explorations in Exegetical Method" is a good book for 3rd year and beyond NT
Greek students who want to see how all the different disciplines are put
together when exegesis is actually performed on a text (in this case
Galatians). Silva combines discussions of textual criticism, lexical
semantics, syntax, discourse analysis, history and several others while
focusing on problems in Galatians. Please note this is *not* a commentary on
Galatians, the problems in Galatians are just used for demonstrating
principles of exegesis.
Silva is a "real linguist" as well as a NT scholar. His thinking is informed
by reading a very wide range of material across several disciplines. He is one
of a small hand full of NT scholars who actually have a clear grasp of what is
going on in the bizarre field of linguistics. For this reason he is eminently
worth reading.
This new book "Explorations in Exegetical Method" will be a challenge for new
students but it is written for NT people not linguists. Most of us will find
things in Silva's book we don't agree with, but such is life.
Enough said.
-- Clayton Stirling Bartholomew Three Tree Point P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062