The Cambridge English Dictionary defines "foray" as:
"a short period of time being involved in an activity that is different from and outside the range of a usual set of activities."
When I was in seminary, little to nothing was said about the role that the "secular" science of linguistics could play in interpreting the Bible. There was, however, one exception. I will never forget him. His name was Colin McDougall. I remember taking a Greek elective with him and he kept talking about things like morphemes and phonemes and syntagmemes and Grassmann's Law and deaspiration and a dozen other words I had never heard before. Like most of my fellow students, I was intimidated by such an approach to Greek. Most expressed frustration with the whole thing. I was an exception to the rule. I loved everything Dr. McDougall said. I was becoming more and more passionate about linguistics by the day. I began to see that language has logical and even architectural PRECISION and that even "exceptions" to the rules of grammar still followed their own set of rules. I became so convinced that linguistics, as a science, could help people like me better understand Greek that the second book I ever wrote was one that attempted to integrate linguistics with Greek grammar. I remember how professors began using that book as a textbook in their classes, even though I did get a bit of pushback from professional linguistics. The upspoken message was, "What right does Dave Black have to write on the subject of linguistics?" And the answer, if they had asked me, would have been "Nothing whatsoever." I've never taken a single course in linguistics. But it was through my reading of books like Silva's Biblical Words and Their Meaning that I became convinced that linguistics was a very appropriate method for New Testament students to adopt.
Since that time, we have become almost inundated with books that integrate linguistics with Hebrew and Greek. Not only the guild but the average student has become remarkably open to this area of inquiry. I can't tell you how happy that makes me. God's word is God's word. But human authors wrote it, and they used human language to do so. It only makes sense that the better we understand how language works, the more faithful we can be when reading and interpreting the Bible.
Will I continue to write on linguistics? Probably not. Others are far more qualified than I to do that. And I have no doubt that they will. There is almost an inexhaustible supply of things to deal with. Let the research go on!