> Apologies if I'm jumping in on this thread too early.
There is really no thread here to speak of so go ahead and jump in.
> So what are we to do in our semantic analyses? Perhaps we are justified in
> our conclusions if we have a great deal of material from a particular author
> and have read it to the point of unintentional memorization. But I am not at
> all sure how much material is necessary. I am hoping that work being done
> with statistics and computers can answer the question . . .
>
My exposure to statistics is very limited but I keep a few consultants (Phd's)
on tap for emergencies. Also I worked with members of the AI (Artificial
Intelligence) community for twelve years and spent hundreds of hours
discussing questions about semantic webs, nuro-nets, expert systems , etc.
I don't think this kind of technology is going to work any magic to solve our
questions of semantics in the NT. I have also been a user of Accordance since
version 0.9 (1993) and I find that using morphological databases to answer
questions about semantic structure is like riding a bicycle across Puget
Sound. You never get there.
I guess my general response to your concerns is that nothing short of time
consuming and painstaking analysis of an authors literary legacy will be of
much use in addressing these questions. I would assume that reading the same
author for several years should in most cases increase ones sensitivity to
issues of semantic structure. All such judgments should however be tentative
and open to review.
Anyone who wants to find out what the original issues in this mini thread were
about will need to go back to the first three posts.
-- Clayton Stirling Bartholomew Three Tree Point P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062PostScript
Did Harry Emerson Fosdick write an intro to NT Greek? Was it any good?