Peitho vs. God: Paul’s Critical View of Rhetoric (original) (raw)
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Reassessing a Rhetorical Approach to Paul's Letters
2008
Rhetorical criticism of Paul’s letters has become common place, especially in commentaries on Paul’s writings. However, using the rhetorical handbooks for studying the Pauline writings has come under severe criticism as to whether or not it is methodologically sound to import and apply rhetorical categories to the Pauline letters and to the New Testament in general. This study assesses the value and limits of applying rhetorical criticism to Paul’s letters and argues that the letters should be understood principally through epistolography and only secondarily in terms of a functional rhetoric.
Rethinking Paul's Rhetorical Education: Comparative Rhetoric and 2 Corinthians 10–13
2013
Winner of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies 2015 F. W. Beare Award Did Paul have formal training in Greco-Roman rhetoric, or did he learn what he knew of persuasion informally, as social practice? Pauline scholars recognize the importance of this question both for determining Paul’s social status and for conceptualizing the nature of his letters, but they have been unable to reach a consensus. Using 2 Corinthians 10–13 as a test case, Ryan Schellenberg undertakes a set of comparisons with non-Western speakers—most compellingly, the Seneca orator Red Jacket—to demonstrate that the rhetorical strategies Paul employs in this text are also attested in speakers known to have had no formal training in Greco-Roman rhetoric. Since there are no specific indicators of formal training in the way Paul uses these strategies, their appearance in his letters does not constitute evidence that Paul received formal rhetorical education.
Rhetoric, Scholarship and Galatians: Assessing an Approach to Paul’s Epistle
Tyndale Bulletin, 1995
This thesis argues that Galatians was not written in conformity with Graeco-Roman rhetoric. Chapter 1 defines the terms relevant to the discussion, proposing that various meanings of 'rhetoric' itself are sometimes blurred and then misapplied. The argument that all discourse is rhetorical, and that Greeks and Romans best described rhetoric, so therefore their handbooks ought to be employed to describe all discourse, is fraught with difficulties which can only be eliminated by a precise understanding of the particular view of rhetoric controlling a given analysis. Importantly, classical rhetoric must be seen as a subset of universal rhetoric, not as synonymous. These definitions, which range from rhetoric as the universal phenomenon of persuasive communication to rhetoric as classical oratory, are treated in chapter 2 with respect to the various scholars who have discussed Galatians. Presuppositions are set forth in order to determine whether the analysts propose to read Galatians as a piece of classical oratory or to view it as a discourse to be apprehended by applying broader indices. It is thus seen that so-called precursors to a rhetorical analysis of Galatians-scholars such as James Muilenburg and Amos Wilder-often had little interest in classical matters, instead concentrating on how the text achieves its purpose. Asking how communication works may even be thought of as the true hallmark of rhetorical investigations, not conformity to classical descriptions.
Novum Testamentum, 2012
The interpretation of patristic testimony has become an important part of the ongoing debate regarding Paul’s formal knowledge of ancient rhetorical theory. As early as 1898, E. Norden observed that Paul‘s earliest readers frequently commented on his innocence of Greco-Roman paideia. And yet, as Margaret Mitchell more recently has shown, these very readers often praised the power of Pauline persuasion, and, what is more, identified numerous rhetorical figures and tropes in Paul’s letters. This article provides a reevaluation of the patristic testimony as well as its apologetic context. In so doing, it calls into question Mitchell’s own explanation of the apparently contradictory evidence.
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 2012
The last thirty years o f biblical scholarship have seen an emphasis on how rhetoric impacts the interrelation o f NT texts. Rhetorical criticism has been generally applied as س exantination o f the persuasive elements within the NT, but also, more specifically, as a direct application o f tfie categories o f ancient rhetoric to these texts. Added to this is the rise o f the "New Rhetoric," which applies modem understanding o f rhetoric and persuasion as a means o f interpreting the early Christian writings.! Thus, the designation "rhetorical criticism" often needs to be properly introduced with its methodoloty clearly defined by each scholar in order to clarify which "rhetorical" method they are using. While a critique o f this confirsion may indeed be warranted, the purpose o f this article is to challen^ the popular application o f categories found in the Greco-Roman hmdbooks to the NT w r i t^-particularly Paul's letters.
Paul and the Poetics of the Pneuma: Paul's Rhetorical Framework in 1 Corinthians 12-14
2012
The aim of this study is to identify the components of Paul's rhetorical framework in 1 Corinthians 12-14 and establish the dynamics of each. It is shown that through Paul's rhetoric, he constructs the Corinthian Christian assembly as a collective pneumatic body. It is a body permeated and driven by the pneuma. The rhetorical framework of this corporeal poetics of pneuma consists of the following components: Paul's apostolic authority, the andronormative and androcentric ideology of Paul, the pneumatic taxonomy from 1 Corinthians 12, the one-body metaphor, the ethic of love from 1 Corinthians 13, and Paul's periodization of history. The subtle interplay and interconnectedness, even interdependence of these components serve to authorize the rhetorical construct of the pneumatic body, which is then in turn used as a strategy to control and regulate Christian bodies in the metropolitan city of Corinth.
Concordia Journal, 2004
In this article, I will refer to "ancient rhetoric" rather than "rhetoric" in order to refer to studies that solely use the ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical handbooks as their basis, in distinction from other systems of rhetorical analysis such as "new rhetoric." The new rhetoric associated with Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca (The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969]) has strong ties to ancient rhetoric, but incorporates new theoretical elements. For an example of its application to the Pauline epistles, see: