This doctoral thesis deals with the transmission and reception of the works of Cyprian of Carthage in the early Middle Ages. The process of research combined the study of the manuscript transmission of Cyprian’s works with the study of texts that were (in an immediate way or not) influenced by these writings. The connections between the transmission of Cyprian’s writings and the publishing activities of various groups, from the Donatists in fourth-century North Africa to Carolingian priests, is a central part of the thesis. The appropriation of the Church Father by different groups, including Arian writers in the aftermath the Council of Aquileia, proves not only the sense of authority Cyprian’s works invoked but also the, often liberal, way in which ancient works were used or interpreted. In addition, Cyprian was the first Latin Church Father to connect the concept of the unity of the Church with the office of the bishop. He was therefore influential in medieval ecclesiological thought and in the shaping of episcopal identities throughout the early Middle Ages. The thesis examined how Cyprian’s works functioned as tools of legitimisation for the causes of ninth-century bishops, such as Hincmar of Reims; invocations of priestly and episcopal identity, which were often based on Cyprian’s contribution to Catholic theology, enabled influential bishops to affirm their place in a Christian society as major players in ecclesiastical and secular politics.

This thesis examines the concepts of textual order and chaos, and how Relevance Theory can be used to translate texts that do not adhere to conventional textual practices. Relevance Theory operates on the basis of presumed order in communication. Applying it to disordered communicative acts provides an opportunity and vocabulary to describe how communication can break down, and the consequences this can have for translation. This breakdown of order, which I am terming a ‘chaos principle’, will be examined through the lens of a Russian-language short story called “Lunokhod”, a story in which textual order, as described by Relevance Theory, breaks down. In this thesis, I first lay out several translation challenges presented by my corpus, discuss each with reference to Relevance Theory, and examine the implications for translation through sample translation segments. This deconstruction section argues that conventional translation methods fail to properly address the challenges of my corpus. Next comes a reconstruction section, in which I develop a theoretical framework for my translation that has roots in Relevance Theory but that frees the translation from the constraints imposed by an ordered view of communication. Finally, I present the translation itself.

This thesis investigates how various text-talks, i.e. text-focused classroom discussions, may scaffold students’ reading of specialised texts in upper secondary school. The study consists of qualitative case studies based on classroom observations of two teachers’ History instruction, focusing on parts defined as text-talks. An intervention study was conducted where one teacher worked with two text-talk approaches. The research questions regard how students move in relation to the text in the text-talks and how text content is incorporated, what scaffolding structures emerge, and whether and how the text-talks differ. A secondary aim is to generate theories concerning the potentials and limitations of text-talk as a reading scaffold. Analyses were done in terms of text movability to show reading positions, intertextual cohesion to show relations between source text and text-talk, and scaffolding which includes peer scaffolding, teacher scaffolding and the text-talks as a scaffold per se. A methodological contribution is the development of a model for content-based analyses of authentic text-talks. The results show that in text-talks that work as a scaffold, students take the expected positions toward the text, and the talks are clearly related to the source text, by means of lexical and conjunctive cohesion that is often varied and built-out. For more demanding texts, the students show dynamic text movability and move between exploring contents, subject field and context. Other characteristics are either peer scaffolding showing dialogicity and negotiation of meaning, or teacher scaffolding enabling students to progress and develop tools for text reception. The intervention approaches seem to scaffold reading to a greater extent than text-talks within ordinary instruction where the framing is weak. In conclusion, the results suggest that both student- and teacher-led text-talks may scaffold reading, but they need to be well planned and prepared with a structured framing.

This thesis investigates how various text-talks, i.e. text-focused classroom discussions, may scaffold students’ reading of specialised texts in upper secondary school. The study consists of qualitative case studies based on classroom observations of two teachers’ History instruction, focusing on parts defined as text-talks. An intervention study was conducted where one teacher worked with two text-talk approaches. The research questions regard how students move in relation to the text in the text-talks and how text content is incorporated, what scaffolding structures emerge, and whether and how the text-talks differ. A secondary aim is to generate theories concerning the potentials and limitations of text-talk as a reading scaffold. Analyses were done in terms of text movability to show reading positions, intertextual cohesion to show relations between source text and text-talk, and scaffolding which includes peer scaffolding, teacher scaffolding and the text-talks as a scaffold per se. A methodological contribution is the development of a model for content-based analyses of authentic text-talks. The results show that in text-talks that work as a scaffold, students take the expected positions toward the text, and the talks are clearly related to the source text, by means of lexical and conjunctive cohesion that is often varied and built-out. For more demanding texts, the students show dynamic text movability and move between exploring contents, subject field and context. Other characteristics are either peer scaffolding showing dialogicity and negotiation of meaning, or teacher scaffolding enabling students to progress and develop tools for text reception. The intervention approaches seem to scaffold reading to a greater extent than text-talks within ordinary instruction where the framing is weak. In conclusion, the results suggest that both student- and teacher-led text-talks may scaffold reading, but they need to be well planned and prepared with a structured framing.

This thesis is basically an exegetical work investigating the Abraham narrative (Gen 11:27-25:11) in Genesis in a sense of a text-centered approach, which aims to the Sitz im Text not to reconstruct the early Sitz im Leben of the narrative. In other words, this study seeks primarily to interpret the final form of the narrative as the locus of revelation. Taking the adages ‘no text is an island,’ ‘let the text speak for itself’ as its point of departure, this study focuses on the question how the individual episodes in the Abraham narrative are played by texts in Genesis and in the larger literary units in the Pentateuch. In this vein, the work examines the narrative through careful attention to literary and rhetorical features such as narrative structure, recurring themes and motifs, allusion (or foreshadowing), wordplays, points of view, plot, and characterization by attempting to analyze and describe its structure and the semantics of the arrangement of source material in the pericope of the narrative. For it is believed that the literary tools used by the author (or the final composer) to establish continuity and link various constituent parts together in a unified literary composition. Seen within such a context, two methodological approaches in this study will be offered promise for discovering possible the narrative function of the Abraham cycle: intertextuality and the composition criticism. The former provides the compositional tactics mapped out by the author (or the final composer) for the recognition of narrative literary context of the Abraham narrative within the macro-structure and the micro-structure of the Pentateuch. While, the latter asks the right questions to discover textual correlations between the narrative and the rest of texts in Genesis and in the Pentateuch. As a result, this approach to the narrative reveals a distinct compositional strategy, which is to convey the author’s (or the final composer’s) theological considerations clearly and persuasively. Methodological peculiarities for reading the Abraham narrative are considered in chapter 1. Chapter 2 is to examine in detail of the inner literary arrangement of the Abraham narrative in the narrative frame of Genesis and the Pentateuch. It is followed by a discussion of the inner textual integrity of logic, and syntax of the narrative in chapter 3. The intertextual relationships between the pericope and the remaining texts in the Pentateuch will be explored by syntactically examining of the texts at semantic and thematic level. The theological considerations of the narrative proceed by these scrutinized intra/inter-textual examination of the texts. The final chapter, chapter 5, summarizes some of the advantages of applying the method to the narrative and some exegetical suggestions in terms of pre-critical angle. Please cite as follows: Hong, KS 2007, An exegetical reading of the Abraham narrative in Genesis : semantic, textuality and theology, PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd- etd-05262008-155326> / Thesis (PHD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Old Testament Studies / unrestricted