The Greeks, especially in the literary style, felt the propriety of indicating the inner relation of the various independent sentences that composed a paragraph. This was not merely an artistic device, but a logical expression of coherence of thought. Particles like καί, δἐ, ἀλλά, γάρ, οὖν, δή etc., were very common in this connection. Demonstrative pronouns, adverbs, and even relative pronouns were also used for this purpose.
What Robertson is saying is that good Greek is overt about how sentences join up; they use connectives to tell the reader or hearer how to put it together. In English, we do not use explicit connectors, but educated Greeks did. These many connectors supplied the reader or hearer with info about the writer/speaker's intentions.
When a Greek sentence does NOT have an explicit connector, that is called asyndeton. Asyndeton is an unmarked connection.
There is a hermeneutical principle that says, "Choice implies meaning." And therefore, when an author employs asyndeton, when an author does not include connectors and the information they represent, it means something. As Steven Runge says in his Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: "The use of asyndeton indicates that the writer chose not to make a relation explicit. The relation must be gleaned from the context" (22).
Think of it like seeing a young man and a young woman walking together in a bridal store. A quick glance says that there are no rings on fingers. So, there is some asyndeton going on here; connectors aren't there to give you info about their relationship. Nevertheless, in communication anyway, the assumption is that consecutive sentences relate. So, you could make the assumption that even though there is no explicit relationship between these two people (rings), the context still implies a relationship.
So, asyndeton doesn't mean there is not a connection. It just means that the connection is implicit, not explicit. And, going back to literary information, an author may have reasons to prefer subtlety. "Good argumentation is not always clear. Asyndeton may allow the movement of the argument to be realized only after more of the story is heard, and then with the benefit of gaining a better hearing." An author might even intentionally throw down asyndeton to disrupt the flow and call attention to the next thing coming in his argument.
Going back to our young couple--there could be no connection at all. These two people may be in the same place for different reasons altogether. There is always that possibility. Now, let's talk about that lovely early Christian sermon, probably given in the Jerusalem church, James.
James displays a significant use of asyndeton. As the speaker moves from idea to idea, the resulting text is thick with it. Scholars often made the mistake of assuming that such rampant asyndeton meant rampant discontinuity. But not so fast! Asyndeton can mean discontinuity--as with our couple who isn't a couple, but it can also mean implied cohesion or even such tight cohesion that there is no need for explicit connection. Interpreting asyndeton means interpreting along a continuum from tight connection to no connection. The exegete has to rely on contextual clues.
Indeed, authors, such as those of the NT, may employ asyndeton differently according to their own style. Here is Stephen Levinson from Discourse Features of New Testament Greek:
The ways in which καὶ and δὲ are used in John’s Gospel do not correspond exactly with how they are employed in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts. This is because two other forms of linkage are employed in John’s Gospel in contexts in which καὶ and δὲ would have occurred had the material been written in the style of the Synoptics. One of them is asyndeton (the absence of a conjunction), which is John’s default means of conjoining sentences (Poythress 1984:331), instead of καὶ. John’s other common marker of linkage is ὅτι; he uses it as a low-level development marker in certain contexts in which the Synoptics and Acts use δὲ. (81-82)
Therefore, as choice implies meaning, close reading and attention is always required of the exegete.
Note the rhetorical form anacoluthon \anacoLUthon\ "syntactical inconsistency or incoherence within a sentence". These frequently occur in speech or writing esp when the author is excited or distraught and the emotions are making clear speech difficult.
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