40 Michael A. Rudolph Specifically, the coherency of a text is traced, not through cohesive ties or cohesive spans, but through thematic development53. In light of this, it is unfortunate that Guthrie deals neither with thematic development, nor with the related concept of prominence. While he does deal with topic, its role in his methodology is not clear, or well-defined54, nor is topic alone sufficient to clarify the author’s communicative progression. It is here that Guthrie’s methodology would benefit from a “top-down” perspective at an earlier stage in the interpretive process before potentially- flawed, structurally-defining decisions have been made55. Yet, it must be acknowledged, even as the interpreter seeks to trace the thematic development, he or she is confronted by the necessity of dividing the text and, thus, the necessity of discerning the author’s points and levels 53 Ibid, 231. Callow states, “The theme . . . is the framework of message development. The communicator plans beforehand what he will say. . . . He plans to achieve a certain end and to do so in a certain way. It is on this planned line of development that he constructs his message as he presents it. This line of development is what we are calling the theme. . . . But theme is not simply a set of relationships. It has content. The theme of a configuration consists of that prominent referential material in the unit which carries its purposive thrust. Since in any configuration the referential material is organised as relating directly or indirectly to the topic, it is obvious that the theme of a configuration will include the topic as its referential base. To the material provided by the topic we must add whatever other prominent material carries the message forward”. It must be noted that the term “theme” is often not used consistently in biblical studies, or even perhaps in linguistics. For some, it may be equated to “semantic chain” (i.e., the repeated use of a concept throughout a unit, or entire discourse). In Callow’s discussion, it is the equivalent to “topic” and “comment.” Cf., J.T. Reed, “Identifying Theme in the New Testament: Insights from Discourse Analysis,” in S.E. Porter and D.A. Carson (eds.) Discourse Analysis and Other Topics (JSNTSup 113; Sheffield 1995), 75–101. 54 In the fourth part of step three, “Reassessment of Unit Constituent Structures and Unit Topics,” he suggests, “At this point in the process it is helpful to re-evaluate one’s understanding of the main point of each unit”. Unless a preliminary decision of topic was made at the grammatical level of analysis (step two), it is unclear when this evaluation was initially made. Guthrie, “Shifts and Stitches,” 40. 55 Reed seems to bring a good balance to this issue in noting both the difficulty in considering the entire discourse as well as the loss of interpretive perspective inherent when one is immersed merely in the details. Allowing that the interpreter must, of course, be sensitive to both, he nevertheless affirms the preference of starting from this larger, “top- down” perspective. He states, “[T]he analysis of words and clauses is important, [later he adds even pericopes] but only from the perspective of the larger discourse. . . . [M]eaning is not located solely in the word, clause, or even paragraph [but in the text as a whole]”. Reed, “Discourse Analysis as New Testament Hermeneutic,” 232. Cf., Black, Linguistics, 171, and Callow, Man and Message, 150, who also affirm a top-down approach. Note further the confusion on the part of Taylor, Guthrie’s student, who first affirms this top-down approach (38–39) and then chooses and follows Guthrie’s approach which he acknowledges “begin[s] with smaller units of text and work[s] up through increasingly larger sections with consideration of how they relate to each other in the composition as a whole” (40). Taylor, The Discourse Structure of James, 38–40.