| Reclaiming Gammaalpharho is a curious title for readers oblivious to the fact that the meaning of gammaalpharho has been lost. Indeed, gammaalpharho is but one of several linguistic signals of Koine Greek that allude the grasp of the modern scholar. This has created an environment within NT studies described here as conjunctive irrelevance---i.e., the state in which the semantic distinctives of these markers have been lost so that their communicative signal is ignored or misconstrued. Due to the increased emphasis among NT scholars regarding the importance of structural analysis for exegesis and the potential role of intersentential markers in these debates, a re-examination of the meaning and structural significance of gammaalpharho is warranted. The thesis of this study is simply this: gammaalpharho serves as a discourse marker alerting the recipient of the author's (or speaker's) response to a perceived (but inescapable) question or objection---i.e., a response to factors perceived to be inhibiting (or that have inhibited) receptivity to the intended message.;While various disciplines are considered in the discussion of this thesis, the argument (and thus the evidence) presented here is ultimately historical. Five centuries of lexicography are surveyed in order to understand the root, growth, and extent of this problem (chapter one). This survey uncovers the testimony of the most credible witness to the meaning of gammaalpharho (i.e., Apollonius Dyscolus) and exposes a scholarly error in the representation of this evidence. The discussion of Apollonius highlights the difficult task of defining such markers, suggests a solution to the perceived ambiguity surrounding gammaalpharho (a semantic distinction that is still evident in modern Greek), and presents strong evidence in support of the stated thesis. Further evidence is drawn first, from the field of linguistics (chapter two), demonstrating why scholars have neither recognized nor resolved this issue, and second, from the field of pragmatics, specifically, Relevance Theory (chapter three), suggesting a more productive approach. Finally, the current coherence-based methodology is contrasted with the relevance-theoretic perspective in an examination of both extra-biblical (chapter three) and biblical texts, including a limited consideration of text critical issues (chapter four). |
