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The Information Structure of the Book of Esther in the Septuagint by Ken

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The Information Structure of the Book of Esther in the Septuagint by Ken The information structure of the book of Esther in the Septuagint by Ken Chan A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY at the SOUTH AFRICAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY in October 2010 PROMOTERS: Dr Kevin Smith and Dr Frank Jabini The opinions expressed in this dissertation do not necessarily reflect the views of the South African Theological Seminary. DECLARATION I hereby acknowledge that the work contained in this dissertation is my own original work and has not previously in its entirety or in part been submitted to any academic institution for degree purposes. _________________________________ Ken Chan October 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank my wife who encouraged me throughout the writing of this dissertation. Thanks to Dr Kevin Smith, who trusted me and invited me to go further. He is a good writer, and he taught me what it means to write. Thanks to Dr Frank Jabini for giving me valuable input as my second supervisor. Thanks to my external examiners for contributing their valuable time to review my work. Thanks to all the authors whom I cited (whether it was for or against) because scholarship is a collective effort. Thanks to the financial support of all my supporters during this study period. Thanks to my mission board, which allowed me to take this time to deepen my understanding of God’s word. Thanks to the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library for letting me use their excellent facilities. To God alone be the glory. Ken Chan October 2010 ABSTRACT A comparison of studies on the book of Esther shows that there are diverse opinions of what constitutes (a) the purpose, and (b) the discourse boundaries of the book. This is discussed in chapter one. This study seeks to answer these two questions for the book of Esther in the Septuagint by analyzing its information structure through the perspective of functional linguistics. In particular, this is achieved by employing the concepts of language typology, rules of information flow, topic, focus, thetic clauses, point of departure, topicality, points of view, mainline, offline, background, prominence, coherence, discourse boundaries, and information markedness. The methodology is justified in chapter two. Chapter three presents the results of this analysis clause-by-clause, along with a literal translation and the labels of the information structure of the text. This is a non-traditional commentary that only addresses the discourse aspects of the text. Similarities and differences with the understanding of the literature are compared and contrasted. The conclusions of this study are given in chapter four. It is found that the purpose of the book of Esther in the Septuagint concerns the dates of the festival of Purim. The text itself is divided into 32 major discourse sections (summarized in Table 3 of this study). The structure of the text is based on a plot with (a) an instigating incident, (b) a narrative reversal, and (c) a didactic conclusion. The coding of the study corpus does not justify the existence of chiasms. The unity of the text is justified by the study results. One implication of this study is that a text-centered reading of the study corpus is preferred over a reader-centered approach. An accidental finding is that the data overwhelmingly emphasizes the authority of the king. Translations of three selected portions of the text (taken from the three major genres in the text, namely narrative, hortatory, and didactic) is compared with the translation of this study. This comparison shows that the clarity and the relative emphases of the translation is improved by this research. Finally, the applicability of this method for bible translation and biblical studies is outlined. Table of Contents Chapter 1......................................................................................................................................1 Introduction................................................................................................................................1 1.1 Objectives.........................................................................................................................1 1.2 Background......................................................................................................................1 1.2.1 Studying the Septuagint.......................................................................................1 1.2.2 The purpose of the book of Esther......................................................................2 1.2.3 The discourse sections of the book of Esther....................................................3 1.2.3.1 Studies based on the Masoretic text..........................................................3 1.2.3.2 Studies based on the Septuagint.................................................................9 1.3 Value of this study........................................................................................................11 1.4 Research design and methodology...........................................................................14 1.4.1 Research design....................................................................................................14 1.4.2 The text..................................................................................................................14 1.4.3 Delimitations.........................................................................................................15 1.4.4 Assumptions..........................................................................................................15 1.4.4.1 The unity of the book..................................................................................15 1.4.4.2 Accents..........................................................................................................16 1.4.4.3 Text centered ...............................................................................................16 1.4.5 Methodology.........................................................................................................18 1.5 Research thesis .............................................................................................................20 1.6 Overview of research...................................................................................................20 Chapter 2....................................................................................................................................22 Information structure.............................................................................................................22 2.1 Introduction..................................................................................................................22 2.2 Unmarked clausal structure.......................................................................................23 2.2.1 Topic.......................................................................................................................26 2.2.2 Focus.......................................................................................................................28 2.2.3 Peripheral elements.............................................................................................31 2.3 Markedness at the clausal level.................................................................................35 2.3.1 Fronting .................................................................................................................35 2.3.1.1 Marked focus.................................................................................................41 2.3.1.2 Other types of fronting...............................................................................44 2.3.1.3 Marked topic.................................................................................................45 2.3.2 Present and other aspects..................................................................................47 2.3.3 Markers of clausal prominence.........................................................................49 2.4 Coherence......................................................................................................................52 2.4.1 Episodic structure................................................................................................52 2.4.2 Cohesion devices..................................................................................................55 2.4.2.1 Topicality.......................................................................................................55 2.4.2.1.1 Topicality in the narrative genre.....................................................56 2.4.2.1.2 Topicality and character types.........................................................59 2.4.2.1.3 Topicality in reported speech...........................................................61 2.4.2.2 Referential system.......................................................................................62 2.4.2.3 Markers of semantic relations...................................................................63 2.5 Mainline and non-mainline........................................................................................64 2.5.1 Background............................................................................................................64 2.5.2 Offline.....................................................................................................................67 2.5.3 Foreground ...........................................................................................................68
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