The field of linguistics for NT Biblical Study could not be more fruitful! I am in the reading, Approaches to discourse by Deborah Schiffrin and this is revealing to me so many incredible ways to study the Scriptures, I can hardly contain myself: conversation analysis, variation analysis, pragmatics, there is just so many ways to view the Word of God.

The beautiful part about a linguistic study, per se, of the Greek NT is that these approaches apply to any discourse. So, I gain not only an understanding of the Scriptures, but in the process become a lot more familiar with any other piece of literature as well! Not to mention the social scene that goes with those studies, since it is well known that the language of any discourse is simply the manifestation of the social situation out of which it was created, as both reflecting it and accomplishing changes within it (see Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic). I am finding that the field of linguistics tremendously reveals the authorial intent with the greatest level of accuracy. That was the reason it appealed to me so much. Theology is the common means of studying the Scriptures, but I am finding that linguistics renders them with more corroboration, and language-based criteria for conclusiveness. Hence, the theology out of such study becomes more air-tight.

For this reason, theological "studies" of the Scriptures I have simply lost the stomach for. I cannot stand to use theology as the means by which Scripture derives its meaningfulness. This type of study always confirms ignorant, traditional stances, and never renders the language of Scripture with any level of depth. In turn, these older, so called "historical critical" studies have completely fallen from whatever popularity they gained after the second world war. From my experience of them, they are little more than a concordance-level understanding of the words of Scripture driven by the presuppositions of methodology rather than the actual proper rendering of the language as it would have impacted the audience. This is becoming more apparent as linguistically principled studies continue to multiply in Biblical Academia.