Sound Mapping The New Testament

In the ancient world, writings were read aloud, heard, and remembered. But modern exegesis assumes a silent text. According to Margaret Lee & Brandon Scott, the disjuncture between ancient and modern approaches to literature obscures the beauty and meaning in writings such as the New Testament. Further, the structure of an ancient Greek composition derives first from its sounds and not from the meaning of its words. They argue that sound analysis, analysis of the signifier and its audible dimension, is crucial to interpretation. Sound Mapping the New Testament explores writing technology in the Greco-Roman world, then turns to ancient Greek literary criticism for descriptions of grammar as a science of sound and literary composition as a woven fabric of speech. Based on these perspectives and a close analysis of writings from the four gospels, Paul, and Q, Sound Mapping the New Testament advances a theory of sound analysis that will enable modern readers to hear the New Testament afresh. The second edition reprints the first edition with a new introduction that reviews a decade of sound mapping scholarship and argues for the continued necessity of sound mapping for New Testament interpretation.

In the ancient world, writings were read aloud, heard, and remembered. In contrast, modern exegesis assumes a silent text. For Margaret Lee and Brandon Scott, the disjuncture between ancient and modern approaches to literature obscures the beauty and meaning in writings such as the New Testament. As the structure of an ancient Greek composition derives first from its sounds, and not from the meaning of its words, sound analysis, analysis of the signifier and its audible dimension, are crucial to interpretation. Sound Mapping the New Testament explores writing technology in the Greco-Roman world, and uses ancient Greek literary criticism for descriptions of grammar as a science of sound and literary composition as a woven fabric of speech. Based on these perspectives and a close analysis of writings from the four Gospels, Paul, and Q, Lee and Scott advance a theory of sound analysis that enables modern readers to hear the New Testament afresh. This second edition includes a new introduction which reviews a decade of sound mapping scholarship.

Sound matters. The New Testament's first audiences were listeners, not readers. They heard its compositions read aloud and understood their messages as linear streams of sound. To understand the New Testament's meaning in the way its earliest audiences did, we must hear its audible features and understand its words as spoken sounds. Sound Matters presents essays by ten scholars from five countries and three continents, who explore the New Testament through sound mapping, a technique invented by Margaret Lee and Bernard Scott for analyzing Greek texts as speech. Sound Matters demonstrates the value and uses of this technique as a prelude and aid to interpretation. The essays that make up this volume illustrate the wide range of interpretive possibilities that emerge when sound mapping restores the spoken sounds of the New Testament and revives its living voice.

In the Hellenistic world, writings were read aloud, heard and remembered. But modern exegesis assumes a silent text. The disjuncture between ancient and modern approaches to literature, argue Margaret Lee and Brandon Scott, obscures the beauty and meaning in writings such as the New Testament. Through a close analysis of writings from the four gospels, Paul, and Q, they advance a theory of sound analysis that will enable modern readers to hear the New Testament afresh.

This book began when the author realised that, when people said they were fascinated by particular biblical passages, they were usually ones that presented dramatic encounters between people and between God and people. Such are the passages interpreted in this book. They usually set a vivid scene that heightens the dramatic nature of the encounter, and animated dialogue often directly ad- dresses the reader. There is also animated action that is vividly striking and often sudden and unexpected. These features involve the readers themselves and may question them about what they expect. Indeed the dramatic encounters provocatively lead to unex- pected new life in the future.

This book focuses on seven of the most important formal methods used to interpret the New Testament today. Several of the chapters also touch on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible interpretation. In line with the multiplicity of methods for interpretation of texts in the humanities in general, New Testament study has never before seen so many different methods. This situation poses both opportunities and challenges for scholars and students alike. The articles in this book introduce the latest methods and give examples of these methods at work. The seven methods are as follows: post-colonial, narrative, historical, performance, mathematical analysis of style; womanist; and ecological.

The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media is a convenient and authoritative reference tool, introducing specific terms and concepts helpful to the study of the Bible and related literature in ancient communications culture. Since the early 1980s, biblical scholars have begun to explore the potentials of interdisciplinary theories of oral tradition, oral performance, personal and collective memory, ancient literacy and scribality, visual culture and ritual. Over time these theories have been combined with considerations of critical and exegetical problems in the study of the Bible, the history of Israel, Christian origins, and rabbinics. The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media responds to the rapid growth of the field by providing a source of reference that offers clear definitions, and in-depth discussions of relevant terms and concepts, and the relationships between them. The volume begins with an overview of 'ancient media studies' and a brief history of research to orient the reader to the field and the broader research context of the book, with individual entries on terms and topics commonly encountered in studies of the Bible in ancient media culture. Each entry defines the term/ concept under consideration, then offers more sustained discussion of the topic, paying particular attention to its relevance for the study of the Bible and related literature

"The field of Synoptic studies traditionally has had two basic foci. The question of how Matthew, Mark, and Luke are related to each other, what their sources are, and how the Gospels use their sources constitutes the first focus. Collectively, scholarship on the Synoptic Problem has tried to address these issues, and recent years have seen renewed interest and rigorous debate about some of the traditional approaches to the Synoptic Problem and how these approaches might inform the understanding of the origins of the early Jesus movement. The second focus involves thematic studies across the three Gospels. These are usually, but not exclusively, performed for theological purposes to tease out the early Jesus movement's thinking about the nature of Jesus, the motivations for his actions, the meaning of his death and resurrection, and his relationship to God. These studies pay less attention to the particular voices of the three individual Synoptic Gospels because they are trying to get to the overall theological character of Jesus"--

In Public Reading in Early Christianity: Lectors, Manuscripts, and Sound in the Oral Delivery of John 1-4 Dan Nässelqvist investigates the oral delivery of New Testament writings in early Christian communities of the first two centuries C.E. He examines the role of lectors and public reading in the Greek and Roman world as well as in early Christianity. Nässelqvist introduces a method of sound analysis, which utilizes the correspondence between composition and delivery in ancient literary writings to retrieve information about oral delivery from the sound structures of the text being read aloud. Finally he applies the method of sound analysis to John 1–4 and presents the implications for our understanding of public reading and the Gospel of John.