A Stylistic-Theological Analysis of Synoptic parallels. A Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach with Specific Reference to Verbal Aspect and Discourse Analysis

This thesis addresses two issues related to the synoptic gospels: the matter of style as expressed in the theological-grammatical profile of each synoptist and how these profiles are reflected in translation. This inquiry is motivated by the fact that New Testament language studies to a great extent has been far behind in drawing on the most recent insights within general and Greek lingvistics.

This thesis addresses two issues related to the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke: the matter of style as expressed in the theological-grammatical profile of each gospel author and how these profiles are reflected in translation.

This inquiry is motivated by the fact that New Testament language studies to a great extent has been far behind in drawing on the most recent insights within general and Greek lingvistics. Much New Testament research has been dependent on Greek grammar resources produced in the late 1800s or early 1900s, i.e. before general linguistics as a discipline even was born. This thesis is a contribution to rectifying this situation by a linguistically informed stylistic-theological analysis of a number of synoptic parallels, where the results of the analysis are applied to translation.

From a systemic-functional perspective the theory of verbal aspect in Greek, where the non-temporal subjective perspective of each synoptist - as opposed to the traditional temporal view – is emphasised, as well as that of discourse theory, where the text is approached from a holistic perspective. Through the systemic-functionally tagged Integrated Greek New Testament (IGNT) database, the results are verified by a comparative cross-checking against the complete corpus of the synoptic gospels.