uberdwayne wrote:I've seen this book written by Steven Runge, and it looks very interesting! Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament. Has anyone here read it or heard of it? What are your initial thoughts?
what do you(υμεις) think?
uberdwayne wrote:I've always wondered at the difference between και and δε and Stephen has put it well withing my scope of understanding. δε (I know, it looks funny as the first word of a sentence!), according to Stephen Runge, signifies another development in a narrative or epistle, and και signifies another "point" equal in discourse to the clause before it. so... if δε marks a new development within a discourse then και signals an equal idea within the clause and not signifying a new development.
Markos wrote:4b. Very often, a variant reading, or a Gospel parallel, or an intra-lingual version, will use δέ in one version and καί in another version of the same passage. If Runge is correct that there is a meaningful difference between new and equal information, different Ancient authors disagreed on which was which.
Markos wrote: In fact, it is always the context, never the particles themselves, which determine the ultimate meaning of a text. Particles don't have meanings. Meanings have particles.
uberdwayne wrote: I've always wondered at the difference between και and δε and Stephen has put it well withing my scope of understanding. δε (I know, it looks funny as the first word of a sentence!), according to Stephen Runge, signifies another development in a narrative or epistle, and και signifies another "point" equal in discourse to the clause before it. so... if δε marks a new development within a discourse then και signals an equal idea within the clause and not signifying a new development.
Sounds complicated, but really it isn't, and I've got the understanding of when you would use δε and και.
It isn't that simple. Not even close.
uberdwayne wrote:It isn't that simple. Not even close.
That, I do recognize. I should have said something along the lines of this idea being a good "general guidline". As we all know, the common maxim, "Rules are meant to be broken" apply to a great extent with language in general. At the same time too, there are other factors which may deviate from this "rule." For example:
1) Some of the conjunctions are very similar in nuance, so it could be possible that the scribe who copied it had a subtle shift in his mind.
2) "δε", at least in my opinion, seems to be the workhorse of conjunctions which can fill a number of roles, a scribe could have used a more explicit conjunction that suited the implicit nuance of "δε" in the manuscript he copied
3) There could be stylistic or euphonic reasons for using one conjunction over the other.
So there is a lot of interference between the "theoretical usage" and its actual usage! At least as i've come to learn it.
There are 100s of exceptions in NT narrative.
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