Apologies for the extended radio silence, but I'm back. ETS and AAR/SBL were great, as usual. Plenty of good papers and, more importantly, there was much meeting with old friends and making of new friends. Since there has already been a decent amount of SBL chatter, I won't add to it. But I will say that I've posted PDF versions of all three of the papers I presented (along with handouts) on my personal web site.

Also — on the weird side, if you see Tyler Williams (of Codex) you should ask him about the dream I had that he played a prominent role in ...

Short abstracts and links to download papers are below.

2006 National Conference of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS)

• Paper: Subjects and Predicates and Complements, Oh My! Searching the New Testament with Sensitivity to Syntax
• Conference Handout
• Abstract: Logos Bible Software have implemented an edition of the OpenText.org Syntactically Annotated Greek New Testament. One facet of OpenText.org's work isolates clause boundaries. Within each clause, subjects, predicators, complements and adjuncts are identified. This enables searching of the Greek New Testament with sensitivity to clause-level criteria. This advance raises certain questions: How should syntactic annotation be used? What sorts of things can be searched for?
  This paper examines different sorts of searches that can be pursued from the starting point of a word. Questions like "When is [word] used as a subject?" or "What verbs are used when [word] is a subject?" will be examined and discussed.

2006 National Conference of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)

• Paper: Modifiers in the Pastoral Epistles: Insight for Questions of Style?
• Conference Handout
• Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
• Abstract: OpenText.org have completed a preliminary syntactic analysis of the Greek New Testament. One level of their analysis is the Word Group level. A word group is a group of words that consists of, at minimum, a head term. It also contains any terms that modify the head term and additionally specifies the type of modification as that of definer, qualifier, relator or specifier.
  Stylistic analysis has been largely bound to examining criteria such as word usage and morphology along with perhaps sentence length or co-occurring words. The OpenText.org Word Group Analysis allows for stylistic analysis of the corpus at a different level. Does modifier usage offer any insight for comparative studies of the Pastoral Epistles and the generally accepted Paulines?
  This paper examines modifier usage inside of epistolary prescripts in epistles traditionally attributed to Paul. The goal is to show that components of epistolary prescripts use modification for different purposes. This conclusion is well known, but by reaching the conclusion using only the OpenText.org Word Group Analysis, the subsequent value of the OpenText.org annotation for the analysis of style becomes evident.

• Paper: Syntax Searching and Epistolary Form Criticism
• Conference Handout
• Program Unit: Syntactically-Tagged Databases of the Greek NT: Overview & Training Seminar
• Abstract: This paper works through examples of proposed epistolary forms, searching for suggested form structure using the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament as primary corpus. The following forms will be examined:
  • Disclosure Form
  • Greeting Form
  • Request/Petition Form
  • Joy Expression
  • Charge Form
  Will a syntactically analyzed Greek New Testament such as the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament provide assistance in defining and isolating potential instances of forms in the New Testament?