Lesson 5 | Bracketing a Passage
Divide and Connect
Bracketing involves two steps.
Step 1: Divide the Passage into Propositions
The first step in Bracketing is to break up the passage into propositions. A proposition is a verbal idea—a simple thought. In the Bracketing Course, we will break out our technical grammatical language and look at this step with precision, but we begin here by relying on our intuition and the punctuation in the text.
For example, take John 1:1.
“In the beginning” is not a complete thought. We are given a time qualifier, but are not told an idea yet. On the other hand, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” is more than a single, simple thought. It contains three simple thoughts. But the second sentence of the verse does contain only a single, simple thought.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
Thus, we can observe that some sentences will contain only a single proposition, while most will contain more than one. And the punctuation marks, while not foolproof, often indicate a proposition breaks, just as they do in the text above.
Step 2: Connect the Propositions with Logical Relationships
The second and more involved step in Bracketing is to connect the propositions back together. The good news is that you have already learned the 18 logical relationships used in Bracketing!
However, as we have already noted, logical reasoning in the Bible is not merely between two individual ideas. Logical arguments and structural flow build. First, propositions relate to one another, and then multi-proposition sentences combine, and so on. If this sounds complicated, that is because it is. Mastering this is a large part of the Bracketing and Arcing courses.
