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Glen Thompson
in
Association of Biblical Language Educators (ABLE)
6 years ago

The latest SBL book reviews included: Dan Nasselqvist, Public Reading in Early Christianity: Lectors, Manuscripts, and Sound in the Oral Delivery of John 1-4; Novum Testamentum, Supplements 163 (ISBN: 9789004306295) Brill, 2015. This Lund (Sweden) Ph.D. dissertation tries to show that it is not useful to see a dichotomy between studying texts as literary units to be studied or texts to be performed. But that the usages in the ancient world were varied and complex. The review by Peter Perry is excellent. He summarizes the authors proposed methodology for analyzing texts as follows: "The method involves five steps that are helpfully outlined in appendix 9: delimiting cola, identifying periods, identifying sound patterns, describing the sound quality, and analyzing aural intensity. A colon is a statement that can be uttered in a single breath. A period is an artistic arrangement of cola that connects the end of the period to its beginning by sound or syntax. Sound patterns may include repetition or variation of sounds, words, or themes. Sound qualities are sounds that are pleasing or dissonant to an audience; Greek and Roman authors often found clashes of vowels (hiatus), hissing sounds, and clashes of consonants disagreeable. The final step aggregates the above features to classify a passage as either high, medium, or low aural intensity. Nässelqvist suggests that passages with high aural intensity are ones that an ancient lector would likely have emphasized in reading aloud and that an audience may have found to be most significant." Food for thought! I recommend the entire review, and will start saving to purchase the book (another Brill disaster -- $143 !!!).
  1. Lee M. Fields
    6 years ago

    Nice! I may try to get the book ILL. It would be interesting to try to develop this degree of listening skills in students (and in teachers!).
  2. Kenneth.Cherney@wisluthsem.org
    6 years ago

    Thanks for the heads-up, Glen. Among much else, it sounds like Nasselqvist might help us expose and question the "print bias" with which we tend to approach texts from antiquity.