Rob J Bewley

This is a short worked example of linguistic "speech-act theory", using Jesus' interactions in the Gospel of Mark. But thankfully Rob Bewley pretty much keeps the specialist technical jargon, and the meat of the booklet shows just how masterfully Jesus sensed the intent and assumptions of other people's questions, often replying with his own.

It's interesting as far as it goes, but it could have gone further and be more useful. The final section suggests we should follow Jesus' example in how we deal with others, but warns against using this knowledge in a manipulative way ourselves. Which is something of a contradiction, not helping show how we should follow Jesus' example here in pastorally helpful ways that aren't wrongly manipulative.

Hopefully there will be more written to follow this, following the Grove maxim of being "Not the last word ... but often the first".… (meer)