Ten Commands for a Hebrew Bible Method: The DPC Strategy

How can translators and interpreters mine the Biblical text for all there is and make new discoveries?

Based on decades of work on a linguistic database of the Hebrew Bible this paper will offer ten successive step-by-step procedures – our Ten Commandments for an all-encompassing method for accumulating texture in an almost conveyer-assembling fashion. They build on linguistic, discourse-pragmatic and historical-cultural methods developed in structuralist-functional grammar, connectivity theory, discourse analysis, participant reference, and comparative studies and can be applied for translation and interpretation.

For instructional purposes I use “the DPC-strategy” as a mnemotechnic label. The successive tasks start with the three D-steps into cohesion as (1) Demarcation of units followed by (2) analysis of Discourse structure (3) to prepare for Development in inter-clausal connectivity. The three P-steps into coherence are (4) Participant-tracking of actors and concepts followed by (5) Poetics in terms of rhetorical, stylistic and structural features of keywords and phrases leading to (6) Packaging for pragmatic appeal, prominence, and newsworthiness. The C-steps into culture are (7) Contextualization through comparative texts, archeology, and anthropology followed by (8) Criticism to evaluate textual variants and current research which lead into (9) Canon for the reception of the text in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Judaism, and the Church. The last step is (10) Contribution for dogmatic, ethical and missional studies and for the art of Bible translation.