Sunday, January 10, 2010

Granville Sharp's Canon and Its Kin

I just added Dan Wallace's latest book Granville Sharp's Canon and Its Kin: Semantics and Significance to my amazon wish list. This book looks like a must read for anyone who is interested in New Testament studies, especially Greek. According to the product description:
Granville Sharps Canon and Its Kin explains that the semantics of the article-substantive-KAI-substantive construction (TSKS) have been largely misunderstood and that this misunderstanding has adversely impacted the exegesis of several theologically significant texts. This issue is addressed from three angles: historical investigation, linguistic-phenomenological analysis of the construction, and exegetical implications. The reasons for the misunderstanding are traced historically; a better comprehension of the semantics of the construction is established by an examination of primary literature in the light of linguistic theory; and the implications of this analysis are applied to a number of passages in the New Testament.

Historically, the treatment begins with a clear grammatical principle articulated by Granville Sharp, and it ends with the present-day confusion. This book includes a detailed examination of the New Testament data and other Ancient Greek literature, which reveals that Sharps rule has a general validity in the language. Lastly, a number of exegetically significant texts that are affected by the linguistic-phenomenological investigation are discussed in detail. This enlightening text is a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students of religion, linguistics, history, and Greek.

Con Campbell, in his latest blog post, says the following about this new book.
It is rare to be invited to review a book that is both a landmark and robust to the point of seeming virtually irrefutable. It is a landmark book because it has in my opinion put to rest the debate about Sharp’s rule, and has shown that it is of enormous importance both to Greek syntax and to theological exegesis of the New Testament. Truly, the humble Greek article reaches the heights of the deity of Christ! The book is robust in that it is difficult to imagine its key conclusions being overturned any time soon, if ever. If such claims appear grandiose, the following is more so: this book will stand the test of time as one of the best contributions to Greek syntax of the twentyfirst century. Dr Wallace is to be congratulated, and all serious students of the Greek New Testament should read his book, and will do so to great profit.

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