Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 51:2 (Fall 1989)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

WTJ 51:2 (Fall 1989) p. 389

Book Reviews

Peter Cotterell and Max Turner: Linguistics & Biblical Interpretation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1989. 348. $19.95.

This work is easily the best available introduction to modern linguistics for students of the Bible. It represents a successful cooperative venture by a missiologist-linguist (Cotterell, who lectures at London Bible College) and a NT specialist (Turner, University of Aberdeen).

After an initial chapter that surveys the whole landscape, chaps. 2 and 3 focus specifically on the nature of meaning. Though the topic is a highly controverted one, the authors manage to handle it with clarity, balance, and even a touch of originality. In particular, it is refreshing to read a defense of the primacy of authorial meaning that is truly informed by the insights of opposing viewpoints. (Anyone can denounce proponents of the autonomy of the text: intelligent and self-critical rebuttals are few and far between.)

Chaps. 4 and 5 are devoted to lexical study. The former has an introductory character to it: “The Use and Abuse of Word Studies in Theology.” The latter (with the potentially confusing title, “The Grammar of Words: Lexical Semantics”) contains a remarkably thorough discussion that deserves wide reading. Though some of the material, as one would expect in a book of this nature, simply summarizes standard concepts, several sections in this chapter have independent value. Indeed, its elucidation of what the authors call concept-orientated and field-orientated approaches to the analysis of lexical sense marks a theoretical—but certainly not impractical!—advance over my own attempts at formulating a satisfactory description (in Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983]). Since my book has something of a technical character, students will find Cotterell and Turner’s approach more helpful and encouraging.

Chaps. 6–8 move into the province of the fairly recent discipline of discourse analysis (though the authors use this term only in connection with the latter two chapters). Chap. 6 focuses on sentence relationships and features an extensive analysis of Heb 2:1–4 (with plenty of diagrams). Chap. 7 discusses longer stretches of discourse, with illustrations drawn primarily from the stories of Laban (Genesis 29–31) and the rape of Tamar (2 Samuel 13). Chap. 8 looks more specifically at the discourse analysis of conversation and applies this approach to the Nicodemus pericope (John 3). In some important respects, discourse analysis is at the cutting edge of li...