Text-Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew.

• Author: Bodine, Walter R.

The purpose of this book is to provide scholars of Biblical Hebrew with ready access to a text-linguistic theory and methodology which they may bring to bear on the Hebrew Bible with creative results, but without the necessity of prolonged training in general linguistics. It is well done.

Two initial chapters evaluate linguistic studies of Biblical Hebrew by Niccacci, Eskhult, Andersen, Khan, and Longacre in terms of treatment of data and communication of results. A third summarizes the tagmemic school of linguistics and sets forth Dawson's own methodology. Tagmemics is the theoretical base from which Robert E. Longacre has elaborated his model of text-linguistics (or discourse analysis), the model Dawson follows, exemplified most extensively for biblical scholars in Longacre's 1989 volume on the Joseph narrative. Dawson's summary of tagmemic theory is concise and accessible, though I fail to see that the text-linguistic analysis he is propounding depends on tagmemic theory. His debt to Longacre, however, is everywhere apparent and is gratefully acknowledged.

The aspect of Longacre's model that Dawson employs is powerful in is potential to explicate the Hebrew verbal system and to bring new insights to the study of Hebrew prose literature. It is Longacre's discovery that different types of Hebrew discourse (such as narrative, predictive, and hortatory) employ different Hebrew constructions as their mainline structures, with a descending order of other constructions being employed for various subsidiary purposes.

In his fourth and fifth chapters Dawson illustrates the use of differing clause types in Judges 2, Leviticus 14:1-32, Leviticus 6:1 (Hebrew)-7:37, Exodus 25-31 and 35-40, Judges 10:612:7, and Ruth. In these two chapters, the heart of his book, the author has added support to Longacre's conclusion that particular types of clauses with their distinctive forms are employed deliberately and consistently, according to the type of discourse being developed. This is a conclusion that, I believe, renders the study of text-linguistics mandatory for understanding the artistry of the Hebrew Bible (as well as other literatures, ancient or modern).

A final chapter summarizes the author's conclusions and calls for further work. Here are a few miscellaneous remarks on the volume. Dawson criticizes Waltke and O'Connor for not addressing text-linguistic concerns (pp. 25-28, 212). While he has license to maintain that Hebrew syntax will never be well...