Linguistics and Exegesis in the Gospel of Mark: Applications of a Case Frame Analysis and Lexicon

Danove attempts to apply constructional grammar to the analysis of the New Testament text. Constructional grammar accounts for linguistic relationships through the concrete, observable constituents of sentences, or as Danove states, “Constructional Grammar describes the grammar of a language in terms of grammatical constructions that identify a particular set of sentence elements and detail the syntactic and semantic constraints on these elements.” In the first two chapters, the author explains his method of analysis and description, focusing on presuppositions, concepts, syntactic and semantic functions and lexical realizations. In chapters three through six he demonstrates the application of his methodology to the Gospel of Mark, addressing such topics as textual criticism, narrative analysis, and the general contributions of the lexicon and parsing guide. For those working in biblical studies, Danove’s insight into contemporary biblical linguistics will surely be welcomed.