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    New Testament Rhetoric, Second Edition: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament
    New Testament Rhetoric, Second Edition: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament
    New Testament Rhetoric, Second Edition: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament
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    New Testament Rhetoric, Second Edition: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament

    By Ben Witherington III and Jason A. Myers

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    Witherington and Myers provide a much-needed introduction to the ancient art of persuasion and its use within the various New Testament documents. More than just an exploration of the use of the ancient rhetorical tools and devices, this guide introduces the reader to all that went into convincing an audience about some subject. Witherington and Myers make the case that rhetorical criticism is a more fruitful approach to the NT epistles than the oft-employed approaches of literary and discourse criticism. Familiarity with the art of rhetoric also helps the reader explore non-epistolary genres. In addition to the general introduction to rhetorical criticism, the book guides readers through the many and varied uses of rhetoric in most NT documents--not only telling readers about rhetoric in the NT, but showing them the way it was employed.

    "This brief guide book is intended to provide the reader with an entrance into understanding the rhetorical analysis of various parts of the NT, the value such studies bring for understanding what is being proclaimed and defended in the NT, and how Christ is presented in ways that would be considered persuasive in antiquity." - from the introduction
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCascade Books
    Release dateSep 28, 2022
    ISBN9781532689703
    New Testament Rhetoric, Second Edition: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament
    Author

    Ben Witherington III

    Ben Witherington III is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world and has written over forty books, including The Brother of Jesus (co-author), The Jesus Quest, and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. Witherington has been interviewed on NBC Dateline, CBS 48 Hours, FOX News, top NPR programs, and major print media including the Associated Press and the New York Times. He was featured with N.T. Wright on the recent BBC Easter special entitled, The Story of Jesus. Ben lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

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      New Testament Rhetoric, Second Edition - Ben Witherington III

      New Testament Rhetoric

      An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament
      2nd Expanded Edition

      Ben Witherington III

      & Jason A. Myers

      NEW TESTAMENT RHETORIC

      An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament,

      2

      nd expanded edition

      Copyright ©

      2022

      Ben Witherington III and Jason A. Myers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

      199

      W.

      8

      th Ave., Suite

      3

      , Eugene, OR

      97401

      .

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199

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      8

      th Ave., Suite

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      Eugene, OR

      97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-8968-0

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-8969-7

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-8970-3

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Witherington, Ben,

      1951

      –, author. | Myers, Jason A., author.

      Title: New Testament rhetoric : an introductory guide to the art of persuasion in and of the New Testament,

      2

      nd expanded edition / by Ben Witherington III and Jason A. Myers.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

      2022

      | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers:

      isbn 978-1-5326-8968-0 (

      paperback

      ) | isbn 978-1-5326-8969-7 (

      hardcover

      ) | isbn 978-1-5326-8970-3 (

      ebook

      )

      Subjects: LCSH: Rhetoric in the Bible | Rhetorical criticism | Bible. N.T.—Language, style | Persuasion (rhetoric)

      Classification:

      BS2370 N49 2022 (

      print

      ) | BS2370 (

      ebook

      )

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Preface to the First Edition

      Preface to the Second Edition

      Chapter 1: The Oral Cultures of the Biblical World

      Chapter 2: Defining and Refining the Craft of Persuasion

      Chapter 3: Gospels of Persuasion—Mark and Luke

      Chapter 4: Early Christian Homilies

      Chapter 5: Paul, the Rhetor and Writer

      Chapter 6: The Rhetoric of 1 Corinthians and Romans

      Chapter 7: Captivating Rhetoric

      Chapter 8: The Elementary Rhetoric of the Pastorals

      Chapter 9: The Rhetoric of the Catholic Epistles—Part 1

      Chapter 10: The Rhetoric of the Catholic Epistles—Part 2

      Chapter 11: The Rhetoric of Revelation

      Chapter 12: The Difference Rhetoric Makes to NT Interpretation

      Postscript

      Appendix 1: The Elementary Exercises

      Appendix 2: An Unapologetic Apologetic about the Importance of Greco-Roman Rhetoric for Understanding the Text and Context of the NT

      Annotated Bibliography (1st Edition)

      Annotated Bibliography of Works since the First Edition of New Testament Rhetoric

      Works Cited

      Over four decades the study of early Christian rhetoric has gathered momentum and become increasingly more labyrinthine. Witherington and Myers offer an accessible introduction that carefully attends to the intricacies of both classical analyses of persuasion and most of the New Testament documents. Scrupulously researched, with expanded consideration of the Pauline letters, the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation, the second edition of this guidebook is warmly welcomed.

      —

      C. Clifton Black

      , Princeton Theological Seminary

      Ben Witherington provides us with a substantial revision and expansion of his first edition. New chapters on the rhetoric of 1 Corinthians and Romans, Prison Epistles, James and Jude, and Revelation make this second edition much more comprehensive. The two new appendices on elementary exercises in rhetorical education and an apology for using rhetoric to study the New Testament are alone worth the price of the book. I highly recommend this volume.

      —

      Duane F. Watson

      , Malone University

      Whether the authors of the New Testament or the speakers they report went to rhetoric school or not, they were using rhetorical strategies they had learned listening to public speeches, sermons in synagogues or in churches, or in books they had read or heard. What many pastors, students, and professors need is an introduction to how ancient rhetoric worked. This book is it!

      —

      Scot McKnight

      , Northern Seminary

      Ben Witherington has been the leading light in plotting the rhetorical contours of the New Testament. In this welcomed update, Witherington continues to demonstrate how various rhetorical devices and structures are weaved into the New Testament and how they were deployed by authors to persuade, exhort, rebuke, and encourage their respective audiences. Witherington helpfully shows how grasping the basic features of ancient rhetoric aids biblical interpretation and Christian preaching. A terrific volume by a seasoned scholar.

      —

      Michael F. Bird

      , Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia

      Ben Witherington has provided the definitive resource for understanding a historically situated rhetoric of the New Testament. Not only does he explain Greco-Roman rhetorical techniques, but he also proves how they aid every New Testament writer in the art of persuasion. Even more, he performs his own act of persuasion to effectively argues why rhetoric is a necessary implement in our exegetical toolbox. No student or teacher should be without this book!

      —

      Elizabeth E. Shively

      , University of St Andrews

      Ben Witherington III and Jason A. Myers are to be congratulated and thanked—as are Cascade Books—for preparing and publishing a second, expanded edition of New Testament Rhetoric. This substantive, accessible guidebook, which may also serve as a textbook, enables contemporary readers and interpreters of the New Testament to recognize more fully that the initial recipients of these documents were first and foremost auditors.

      —

      Todd Still

      , George W. Truett Theological Seminary

      DEDICATED

      To Joyce West Witherington (in memoriam)

      and to

      Lisa, Augustine, and Phoebe Myers

      At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense: You are out of your mind, Paul! he shouted. Your great learning is driving you mad.…

      Then King Agrippa said: "Do you think in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?"

      Paul replied: Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.

      —Acts 26:24–29

      He has been more successful in this art than all people – the art, I mean, of persuasion.

      —John Chrysostom, Virg. 49.3

      As the Ruin Falls

      All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.I never had a selfless thought since I was born.I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.I see the chasm. And everything you are was making My heart into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains. C S Lewis

      Preface to the First Edition

      What is Rhetoric?

      Mention the word rhetoric, and twenty-first century persons are apt to think of politics or mere verbal eloquence that is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing as the Bard said in Macbeth. Or perhaps they think of rhetoric in the sense it is used in C. S. Lewis’s poem, As the Ruin Falls (see the frontispiece). This is unfortunate because rhetoric, specifically in its historical form of Greco-Roman rhetoric, provides us with an abundance of clues as to how the documents of the New Testament (NT) work, how they seek to persuade people about Jesus the Christ.

      In this study, when I (Ben) use the term rhetoric I am referring to the ancient art of persuasion used from the time of Aristotle onwards through and beyond the NT era in the Greek-speaking world to convince one audience or another about something. I am not merely talking about the use of rhetorical devices, though that is included, I am talking about all that went into convincing an audience about some subject. Historical rhetorical criticism, as I would define it, involves the study of the various sorts of uses of ancient Greco-Roman rhetoric in the NT by its various authors for various purposes. This sort of approach bears especial fruit in examining documents in the NT previously simply called letters, which on further examination are much more like rhetorical discourses or sermons than they are like letters. It also bears fruit in the examination of the Gospels and Acts especially in their speech material, and even in a document like Revelation where rhetorical techniques are used to structure the material and shape the polemic and apologetic going on there.

      This guide book is intended to provide the reader with an entrance into understanding the rhetorical analysis of various parts of the NT, the value such studies bring for understanding what is being proclaimed and defended in the NT, and how Christ is presented in ways that would be considered persuasive in antiquity. In a sense, the art of rhetoric is the ancient art of preaching, and as St. Paul said, how shall any one hear the Gospel unless there is a preacher to convey it effectively? Consider this your invitation to investigate the ancient art of persuasion and how it is used in the NT and to see what insights and revelations it provides as we seek to understand the meaning of all the NT texts.

      Pentecost, 2008

      Preface to the Second Edition

      Much rhetorical water has passed under the bridge since the first edition of New Testament Rhetoric appeared in 2009, as becomes immediately apparent when you examine the new supplemental bibliography at the end of this volume which covers the discussion from 2008 to 2020 (provided by Asbury doctoral student, Eric Laudenslager). This second edition is a value-added edition in various ways: 1) some of the original chapters have been revised and augmented in various ways; 2) entirely new material on ancient education and the progymnasmata and its recent discussion, and also on the rhetoric of Revelation have been added. 3) a new fulsome chapter on the rhetoric of 1 Corinthians and Romans expands at some length the Pauline discussion, as does a further chapter on the Captivity Epistles. In short, this second edition provides more complete coverage of the rhetoric in the New Testament. Dr. Jason Myers deserves the credit for most of the new material in the further chapters on education, on 1 Corinthians and Romans, and on the Captivity Epistles, and I (Ben) have added the new chapter on the rhetoric of Revelation as well as editing the whole work so it reads smoothly throughout.

      This work is a thank offering to all those who have made Asbury Seminary what it is today, including those who have birthed the fine doctoral program in Biblical Studies, in which Ben is a teacher and Jason one of its early graduates. The Amos family in Columbus, Georgia, good Methodists and founders of AFLAC deserve highest praise for endowing the doctoral program. It is only fitting as the seminary prepares to celebrate its centennial that we make this small contribution to Asbury’s mission which has as its motto—the whole Bible for the whole world.

      Jason and I would also like to thank Michael Thomson, Chris Spinks, and the other editors at Cascade Books for encouraging us to undertake this second edition, since the first edition continues to do so well as a textbook. We hope that students will continue to heed the advice that Augustine heard when he became a Christian namely tolle et lege—"pick it up and read. Hopefully the readers will be persuaded" that a rhetorical study of the New Testament produces much light on its meaning and purposes.

      Ben Witherington III

      Jason A. Myers

      Christmas 2021

      1

      The Oral Cultures of the Biblical World

      The Rationale for Rhetorical Criticism

      Ours is a text-based culture, a culture of written documents. You need look no further than your computer screens to verify this assertion. There could only be an Internet age if there was widespread literacy, which in turn leads to widespread production and reading of texts. It is thus difficult for us in a text-based culture to conceive of and understand the character of an oral culture, much less understand how sacred texts function in such an oral culture. Yet, however difficult, it is important that we try to understand such a thing, since all of the cultures of the Bible were essentially oral cultures, not text-based cultures, and their texts were in fact oral texts, which some might think is an oxymoron, but in fact it is not so.

      The literacy rate in those biblical cultures seems to have ranged from about 5 percent to 20 percent depending on the culture and which sub-group within the culture we are discussing. Not surprisingly then, all ancient peoples, whether literate or not, preferred the living word, which is to say the spoken word. Texts were enormously expensive to produce—papyrus was expensive, ink was expensive, and scribes were ultra-expensive. Being a secretary in Jesus’s and Paul’s age could be a lucrative job indeed. No wonder Jesus said to his audiences, let those who have ears, listen. You notice he did not ever say, let those who have eyes, read. Most eyes could not read in the biblical period.

      So far as we can tell, no documents in antiquity were intended for silent reading, and only a few were intended for private individuals to read. They were always meant to be read out loud and usually read out loud to a group of people. For the most part they were simply necessary surrogates for oral communication. This was particularly true of ancient letters.

      In fact, most ancient documents including letters were not really texts in the modern sense at all. They were composed with their aural and oral potential in mind, and they were meant to be orally delivered when they arrive at their destination. Thus for example, when one reads the opening verses of Ephesians, loaded as it is with aural devices (assonance, alliteration, rhythm, rhyme, various rhetorical devices) it becomes perfectly clear that no one was ever meant to hear this in any language but Greek and furthermore, no one was ever meant to read this silently. It needed to be heard.

      And indeed there was a further reason it needed to be orally delivered—because of the cost of making documents, a standard letter in Greek would have no separation of words, sentences, paragraphs or the like, little or no punctuation, and all capital letters. Thus for example imagine having to sort out a document that began as follows:

      PAULASERVANTOFCHRISTJESUSCALLEDTOBEANAPOSTLEANDSETAPARTFORTHEGOSPELOFGOD.

      The only way to decipher such a collection of letters was to sound them out—out loud. There is of course the famous anecdote about St. Augustine and St. Ambrose. Augustine said that Ambrose was the most remarkable man he had ever met, because he could read without moving his lips or making a sound. Clearly, an oral culture is a different world than a largely literate text-based culture, and texts function differently in such a world. All sorts of texts were simply surrogates for oral speech. This statement applies to many of the biblical texts themselves.

      It is hard for us to wrap our minds around it, but texts were scarce in the biblical world, and often were treated with great respect. Since literacy was largely a skill only the educated had, and the educated tended to be almost exclusively from the social elite, texts in such a world served the purpose of the elite—conveying their authority, passing down their judgments, establishing their property claims, indicating their heredity, and the like. But since all ancient people were profoundly religious, the most important documents even among the elite were religious texts.

      What do texts in an oral culture tell us about their authors? It is too seldom taken into account that the twenty-seven books of the NT reflect a remarkable level of literacy, and indeed of rhetorical skill amongst the inner circle of leaders of the early Christian movement.

      ¹

      Early Christianity was not, by and large, a movement led by illiterate peasants or the socially deprived. The leaders of the movement mostly produced the texts of the movement, and the texts of the NT reflect a considerable knowledge of Greek, of rhetoric, and indeed of general Greco-Roman culture. This skill and erudition can only seldom be attributed to scribes, except in cases where scribes such as Tertius or Sosthenes (cf. Rom 16 and 1 Cor 1) had been converted and donated their skills to the movement. Even then, it appears they were largely just taking dictation from Paul.

      The letters we find in the NT are mostly far longer than secular letters of their era. Actually they are not in the main letters, though they have epistolary openings and closings sometimes. They are in fact discourses, homilies, and rhetorical speeches of various sorts that the creators could not be present to deliver to a particular audience, and so instead they sent a surrogate to proclaim them. These documents would not be handed to just anyone. From what we can tell, Paul expected one of his co-workers such as Timothy, Titus, or Phoebe to go and orally deliver the contents of the document in a rhetorically effective manner. This would have been almost a necessity since the document would come without division of words or punctuation and so only someone skilled in reading such seamless prose; indeed, one who already knew the contents of the document could place the emphases in the right places so as to effectively communicate the message.

      How then did a sacred text function in an oral culture? For one thing it was believed that words, especially religious words, were not mere ciphers or symbols. They were believed to have power and effect on people if they were properly communicated and pronounced. It was not just the sacred names of God, the so-called nomena sacra, which were considered to have inherent power, but sacred words in general. Consider for example what Isa 55:11 says: so shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing I sent it to do. The Word or words of a living and powerful God, were viewed as living and powerful in themselves.

      ²

      One can then imagine how a precious and expensive document, which contained God’s own words, would be viewed. It would be something that needed to be kept in a sacred place, like a temple or a synagogue, and only certain persons, with clean hands and a pure heart would be allowed to unroll the sacred scroll and read it, much less interpret it.

      From what we can tell, the texts of the NT books were treasured during the first century, and were lovingly and carefully copied for centuries thereafter. There is even evidence beginning in the second century of the use of female Christian scribes who had a fairer hand to copy and even begin to decorate these sacred texts. But make no mistake—even such texts were seen to serve the largely oral culture. Before the rise of modern education and widespread literacy, it had always been true that In the beginning was the (spoken) Word.

      ³

      All of this has implications for how we should approach the NT, especially the more ad hoc documents in the Pauline corpus and the other documents traditionally called letters in the NT, which often in fact are not letters. 1 John is a sermon with neither epistolary opening nor closing. Hebrews is an even longer sermon, with only an epistolary closing, but of course no listener would ever have considered it a letter on first hearing, because there were no signals at the outset of the document to suggest such a thing. The concluding epistolary elements in Hebrews make clear it is a sermon sent from a distant proclaimer. In an oral culture, opening signals are everything if the issue is what sort of discourse or document am I listening to. This is why Luke 1:1–4 is so crucial to judging the genre of that Gospel.

      Given that the division between a speech and an orally performed text was more like a thin veil than a thick wall between literary categories it will not come as a surprise when I say that actually oral conventions more shape the so-called epistolary literature of the NT than epistolary ones, and with good reason. This was not only because of the dominant oral character of the culture, but also more importantly because the Greco-Roman world of the NT period was a rhetorically saturated environment, whereas the influence of literacy and letters was far less widespread so far as we can tell.

      Here we need to come to grips with and understand an important fact: the rise to prominence of the personal letter used as something of a vehicle for instruction or as a treatise of sorts was a phenomena which only really took root in the Greco-Roman milieu with the letters of Cicero shortly before the NT era. Contrast this with the long history of the use of rhetoric going back to Aristotle, and use of it in numerous different venues. Rhetoric was a tool useable with the educated and uneducated, with the elite and the ordinary, and most public speakers of any ilk or skill in antiquity knew they had to use the art of persuasion to accomplish their aims. There were not only schools of rhetoric throughout the Mediterranean crescent, rhetoric itself was part of both elementary, secondary, and tertiary basic education as well. There were no comparable schools of letter essay writing not least because it was a rather recent art just coming to prominence in the first century CE. Here we come to a crucial point.

      Analyzing the majority of the NT on the basis of epistolary conventions—many of which did not become de rigeur nor put into a handbook until after NT times—while a helpful exercise to some degree, has no business being the dominant literary paradigm by which we examine the Pauline, Petrine, Johannine, and other discourses in the NT. The dominant paradigm when it came to words and the conveying of ideas, meaning, and persuasion in the NT era was rhetoric, not epistolary conventions. This is why I will say now that most of the NT owes far more to rhetoric and its very long-standing and widespread conventions than it ever owed to the nascent practice of writing letter essays, or letter treatises. Most of the letters of the NT, with the exception of the very shortest ones (2–3 John, perhaps Philemon) look very little like the very mundane pragmatic epistolary literature of that era. In terms of both structure and content, most NT documents look far more like rhetorical speeches. Some are in fact straightforward sermons, words of exhortation as the author of Hebrews calls his homily; some are more rhetorical speeches suitable for assemblies where discussion would then ensue (e.g., after dinner discussions at a symposium), but all are profitably analyzed in detail by means of rhetorical examination.

      Not only so, but micro-rhetoric clearly enough shapes at least three things: 1) the chreiai (aphorisms) in the Gospels; 2) the speech summaries in Acts; 3) the way portions of a book like Revelation are linked together by catchword and A/B/A structure. In other words, rhetoric is not just something that illuminates Paul and other portions of the so-called epistolary corpus in the NT. It is a necessary tool for analyzing almost all of it.

      Defining Rhetorical Criticism

      At this juncture it will be well and wise to define more specifically what the phrase rhetorical criticism means in my view, and how it applies to the NT. Rhetorical criticism is by definition the study of rhetoric, whether ancient or modern, with a broad definition of rhetoric being the art of persuasion, though sometimes it has degenerated into the art of speaking well, or mere verbal eloquence. As applied to the field of NT studies, rhetorical criticism has been approached in two rather different ways by scholars. The first way, pioneered and championed by George Kennedy and Hans Dieter Betz and their students is more of an historical enterprise, seeking to analyze the NT documents on the basis ancient Greco-Roman rhetoric, asking and answering the question of how the NT authors may or may not have used this art. Here we may speak of how the NT authors adopted and adapted ancient rhetoric for their Christian purposes of communication.

      The second approach, growing out of modern language theory and modern epistemology, when it comes to the issue of texts and meaning, has been pioneered and championed by Vernon Robbins and his students, as well as William Wullener and others. This approach, rather than primarily looking for rhetorical structures embedded in the NT texts by NT authors, seeks to apply certain modern rhetorical categories to the text (e.g., categories such as inner texture or intra texture). Both the terminology and the method, as well as the theory of meaning of this latter approach has more in common with the new rhetoric of Henrich Lausberg and others than with the rhetorical guidelines established by Aristotle, Quintilian, Menander, and other practitioners of ancient rhetoric. In other words, it is more an exercise in modern hermeneutics than in the analysis of the use of Greco-Roman rhetoric by the NT authors themselves. The methodological issue here is whether the NT should only be analyzed on the basis of categories the NT authors themselves could have known and used, or not.

      In my view, both approaches can yield good insights into the biblical text, but the attempt to fuse the methods of old and new rhetoric confuses more people than it enlightens. In particular, I would insist that the primary and first task is to ask the appropriate historical questions about the NT text and what its ancient authors had in mind. When that is the prime mandate then only analysis on the basis of Greco-Roman or ancient Jewish rhetoric is appropriate, since ancient authors were completely innocent and ignorant of modern rhetorical theory and epistemology. Due to limitations of space, the remainder of this companion will explain more particularly rhetorical criticism in the Kennedy and Betz vein since the historical approach gives us a window into how and to what degree the NT writers actually used the ancient art of persuasion.

      Most NT scholars at this juncture are quite convinced that micro-rhetoric can be found in NT documents, particularly in Paul’s letters, but also elsewhere. By micro-rhetoric I mean the use of rhetorical devices within the NT documents—for instance the use of rhetorical questions, dramatic hyperbole, personification, amplification, irony, enthymemes (i.e., incomplete syllogisms), and the like.

      More controversial is whether macro-rhetoric is also used in the NT. By macro-rhetoric I mean whether the overall structure of some NT documents reflects the use of rhetorical categories and divisions used in ancient speeches. Those divisions are as follows: 1) exordium; 2) narratio; 3) propositio; 4) probatio; 5) refutatio; and 6) peroratio. All six of these normal divisions of an ancient speech could be found in the three different species of ancient rhetoric: forensic, deliberative, and epideictic. But these different species of rhetoric served very different functions. Forensic rhetoric was the rhetoric of the law court, the rhetoric of attack and defense, and it focused on the past. Deliberative rhetoric was the rhetoric of the assembly, the rhetoric of advice and consent, and it focused on changing belief and/or behavior in the future. Epideictic rhetoric was the rhetoric of the forum and the funeral, the rhetoric of praise and blame, and it focused on the present. In any given ancient speech attention was paid as well to the issues of ethos, logos, and pathos, which is to say the establishing of rapport with the audience at the outset (in the exordium), the use of emotion charged arguments (logos in the probatio and refutatio), and finally the appeal to the deeper emotions (pathos) in the final summation or peroratio.

      It is fair to say that those NT scholars who have done the detailed rhetorical analysis of all the NT documents have concluded that while micro-rhetoric can be found most anywhere in the NT, including in genres as varied as the Gospels or Revelation, that macro-rhetoric shows up only in the letters, homilies, and speech summaries (in Acts). In particular, Paul’s letters, 1 Peter, and the homilies called Hebrews and 1 John reflect these larger macro-structures of rhetoric, often in great detail. The macro-structures however are used with some flexibility and they are enfolded within epistolary frameworks in some cases. Thus, for example, the beginning and end of Paul’s letters do almost always reflect epistolary conventions and can certainly be categorized as a form of ancient letters. These epistolary categories, however, help us very little in analyzing the structure of the material if one is not dealing with the epistolary opening and closing elements (prescript, travel plans, opening or closing greetings).

      Furthermore, there was no ancient convention to have a thanksgiving prayer at the outset of an ancient letter, nor are we helped by lumping the vast majority of a discourse under the heading of body middle, which tells us nothing really about the document and was not an ancient epistolary category anyway. In other words, epistolary conventions and devices help us very little with the bulk of the material in the documents traditionally called NT letters. Here is where rhetoric has proved much more helpful in unlocking the structural and substantive intricacies of the majority of NT documents. Even Paul’s letters were not meant to be privately studied. In the first instance they were surrogates for the speeches Paul would have made could he have been present with his audience. As such they partake of all the ad hoc characteristics of such purpose driven ancient speeches. They were intended as timely remarks, on target to affect belief and behavior of the various audiences. They were not intended merely as theological or ethical treatises. Rhetorical criticism helps us realize the dynamic and interactive nature of these documents.

      ⁴

      Having introduced the discussion of micro- and macro-rhetoric in the NT in this chapter we need to explain more fully what is meant by such terms, and other related ones. But first we must turn to giving a brief history of education and rhetorical training in the NT world. As we will discover, the teaching of rhetoric had a long and distinguished pedigree; indeed, there were whole schools in antiquity devoted to the subject in places like Alexandria, Ephesus, Athens, and Rome. Letter writing, however, was an art only beginning to be systematized, especially when it came to something like the letter essays of a Cicero or his later disciples. The oral and rhetorical culture dominated, and texts had to fit into its paradigms, not the other way around. So let us consider ancient education at this juncture.

      Questions for Reflection

      1.How do oral and text-based cultures differ?

      2.Would rhetoric play a more crucial role in an oral or a text-based culture?

      3.What does the use of normal means of persuasion in the NT say about the NT writers?

      1

      . In an attempt to correct this see the new work Still and Myers, Rhetoric, History, and Theology.

      2

      . See Witherington, Living Word of God.

      3

      . It is interesting that an important literate figure like Papias of Hierapolis, who lived at the end of the NT era, repeatedly said that he preferred the living voice of the apostle or one who had heard the eyewitnesses to a written document. In this he simply reflected the normal attitude of ancient peoples, literate or not.

      4

      . Here we offer only a cursory discussion of the matters introduced in this chapter. We will go into much more detail on these matters in the chapter below, Paul as a Rhetor and Writer.

      2

      Defining and Refining the Craft of Persuasion

      The History and Practice of Ancient Rhetoric

      Rhetoric Redux—Its History

      Rhetoric, from the Greek word, rhētorikē, had a long and interesting history before any of the authors of the NT were ever born. Plato and Aristotle both discussed the matter and took part in the debate about how to define what it was. Rhetoric was to play a crucial role in the birth of democracy in the Golden Age of Greece. This was so, of course, because in a democracy people had choices and had to be persuaded to pursue a particular course of action or adopt a particular policy in the Greek assembly (the ekklesia). Aristotle for example insisted that rhetoric was so important that it was not fully separable from philosophy, and both Plato and Aristotle agreed that there were ethical issues involved in using rhetoric. The purpose of the various types of rhetoric should be furthering the good, the expedient, the noble, or the just (see for example Aristotle, Rhet. 2.19.26). Rhetoric was considered an art that required the honing of skills and the careful practice of the craft.

      Aristotle, who wrote the first great treatise on rhetoric that is still extant, traces the beginnings of rhetoric to two Sicilians, Corax and Tisias, who are credited with developing the earliest rhetorical theory (see Cicero, Brut., 46). Aristotle weighed in on the discussion of definitions by insisting that rhetoric was the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatsoever (Rhet. 1.2.1). By the time we get to Quintilian, the great summarizer and epitomizer of all things rhetorical both in the Greek and Roman traditions, rhetoric, while it has many definitions, is at bottom the art of speaking well (ars bene dicendi [Inst. 2.17.37]). But Quintilian was well aware that various definitions were in play (see Inst. 2.15 where he reviews them), and his own definition simply worked well in the empire since democracies no longer existed. What is clear from studying the history of the terminological debate is that rhetoric was not just about informing people; it was about persuading and motivating them in various ways. The author of Rhetorica ad Herrennium stressed that the task of the rhetor was to address an audience in such a manner that as far as possible he secures the audiences agreement about something (1.2).

      Though it is not completely clear at what point the division happened, there came to be two different approaches to rhetoric, one called Sophistic rhetoric and the other a more serious and substantive approach. Sophistic rhetoric was to rise in popularity during the period of the Roman Empire, not least because more and more orators were afraid of expressing contrary or controversial opinions and instead focused on being eloquent. The focus turned more to the form rather than the substance of the discourse. This is why Quintilian somewhat tamely defines rhetoric as the art of speaking well. This was closer to the Sophistic point of view than to the Aristotlean one that insisted that rhetoric had to do with philosophy and even the search for truth about something. Just how strongly many felt about Sophistic rhetoric can be shown by the strong, even vehement and sarcastic comments made about it. Philo for example called it mere shadow-boxing (Det., 4), not a real contending for the truth or some substantive matter.

      But this matter was not just of concern to the well-educated elite, like Philo. Rhetoric was a popular spectator sport in the first century CE. Most persons were either producers or consumers of some kind of rhetoric, and rhetoric had long been a staple of education, at all levels beginning with elementary education. In a world of limited literacy, speaking was the salient feature of ancient life. From entertainment, to politics, and moral discourse, rhetoric was ready to attack, defend, persuade, and motivate ancient persons. Our New Testament authors grew up in a world of words and wordsmithing. Whether they were walking through ancient agoras, looking in on theaters, or seeing debates at the Bema seat, they would be attuned to the pervasive elements of rhetoric throughout their day. However, rhetoricians were made, not born. The making of this ancient equivalent to a rock star is the central aspect we will focus on in this chapter: ancient education.

      Education was of course by and large the privilege of the more elite members of society. It tells us something about the leaders of early Christianity that they could read and write, and had varying rhetorical skills as well. Generally speaking, rhetoric was part of the training of wealthy males seeking to enter the cursus honorum, climbing up the ladder of public office and pursuing a career in public life in one way or another, whether as a lawyer, a senator, an ambassador, a government employee, or the like. While there were a few examples of rhetorically trained and skilled women in antiquity, such as Hortensia, the daughter of the famous rhetorician Q. Hortensius Hortalus, who delivered a public oration to the triumvirs in 42 BCE, arguing her own legal case, she was surely an exception to the rule and probably gained her training in the home. Women were not in general either encouraged or in some cases allowed to pursue higher education, which means that even wealthy women tended to lack rhetorical training beyond the intermediate or even progymnasmata level (see Quintilian, Inst. 1.1.6).

      ⁵

      This is unlike our modern Western world, where education is assumed to be a public good—although exceptions remain today. Education was not a public good in the ancient world. There were no public school systems nor from what we can tell any systematizing of the educational programs throughout the Roman Empire. However, what is rather remarkable is what Teresa Morgan, who has written the most recent and best work on this topics has noted, what they taught, at any given level, recurs again and again in the surviving evidence in remarkably similar forms across vast geographical distances, a wide social spectrum, and a timespan of nearly a thousand years.

      ⁶

      Given the limitations of historical sources, this uniformity helps in comparative study for places we would like to know much more about, such as Tarsus or Jerusalem.

      The levels of education offered changed from place to place. Rural towns or smaller cities would certainly not have the advantages of a Rome, Athens, or Alexandria. But teachers could be found in nearly every town or village throughout the empire. If one wanted advanced education, an ancient person would need to navigate to one of the major cities of the ancient world, such as Alexandria, Rome, Carthage, or Pergamum. Like today, the number and quality of teachers was often connected to the size of a metropolitan center, although exceptions do occur. Rhetoricians were found in all the great cities of the Roman Empire, many of which also had schools of rhetoric or at least schools which made rhetoric one of the dominant subjects studied. The rhetor came to be the person who dictated what was taught in higher education during the period of the empire.

      ⁷

      Enter Paul: a native of Tarsus. Paul grew up in a bustling city of the Greco-Roman world. Sitting at the crossroads of East and West, he knew what it was like to grow up in a Roman world. He would have been familiar with the theaters, agoras, and public spaces where rhetoric was on display. Further, Paul probably had more opportunity than most of his peers. As Strabo, the first-century travel blogger (he was paid by Rome to travel and write about people, places, culture, and eats) remarked, Tarsus was a leading educational center of the ancient world (Geog. 5.13–14). Paul had one of the most important items in the ancient world: access to education.

      We often don’t think of Paul as an educated person, but when we grasp the rarity of education, writing, speaking, and letters, then the apostle with thirteen letters attached to his name jumps out as a rather highly educated person. We actually glance at this indirectly every time we read a letter of Paul. To put it more bluntly, there are not too many people in the ancient world who could do what Paul had accomplished. His knowledge of sacred texts (the Hebrew Bible), the rhetorical flourishes, the writing of letters, these were not common to most people in the ancient world and reflects, albeit indirectly, on the education Paul must have received.

      So what do we know about how education worked in the ancient world? Although it was common in recent generations to refer to three levels of education in the Roman world, more recent research now argues there were only two stages to one’s education.

      ⁸

      Critical assessment in the past decades has argued that this three-tier idea produced too singular an image of education in the ancient world.

      ⁹

      Essentially there were two stages: study with a grammarian and study with a philosopher or rhetorician.

      ¹⁰

      Another caution, from recent research, to consider is that Romans were not concerned with what we would label age-appropriate grade levels.

      ¹¹

      That is, they were not concerned to have children of the same age and stage in the same room. A one-room school house is probably closer in actuality to what first century education was like. Full consideration of this reality is often missing from discussions of rhetorical education. An educational setting might include a young child beginning their studies next to a more advanced older student. In his excellent study, Children in the Roman Empire, Christian Laes draws our attention to two children: a 6-year-old trained in Latin and Greek, a 13-year-old poet laureate, and a 14- and 15-year-old who are trained in oratory already.

      ¹²

      The ages were not differentiated so that when a student hit a certain age they moved on to the next level, rather ability and progress determined advancement.

      So what did the first tier of education include? First level education was oriented around the enkyklios paideia or the ordinary/common education. A variety of authors from different times and places attest to this common core of educational staples. This would include subjects like the arts, liberal studies, educational studies, and principles. Everyone from Cicero to Philo and Quintilian discuss the common educational practices within the Roman Empire from the early first century BCE to the late first/early second century. Quintilian is our most complete and thorough treatment of the enkyklios paideia or in Latin, the orbis doctrinae. Various authors have orbiting elements within their core system of disciplines.

      ¹³

      Here is a short summary:

      Philo: grammar, geometry, astronomy, literature, theoretical music, rhetoric, and dialectic.

      Quintilian: learning to read and write, grammar, literature, geometry, astronomy, basic music and logic, and elementary rhetoric (progynmasmata).

      Cicero: reading literature, grammar, geometry, astronomy, music, and rhetoric.

      Seneca: grammar, literature, geometry, music, astrology, and music.

      But was rhetoric included? As we can see from our short summary, sometimes yes, sometimes no. The role of rhetoric in the enkyklios paideia is complicated in the various sources.Teresa Morgan, from her expansive study of literate education in the first century, concludes that it’s more common for rhetoric to be included in the topics—although not advanced rhetoric, and that it is more common for philosophy to be left out.

      ¹⁴

      One aspect we ought to consider is that authors may include topics on a supply and demand basis. The less educational variety in a given area may lead a teacher to include more than a teacher in a larger city with more opportunities. Similar to educational systems today, the relative lack of teachers usually requires more from the actual teachers in those places.

      Although we generally speak of the relative lack of literacy in the first century and this is true to an extent, within this environment however, the Roman period was one of the higher water marks of literacy in the ancient world. Again, Teresa Morgan is helpful. Her expansive study of educational systems in the Roman world shows that when compared to other periods of time, like the Ptolemaic period, we see a growth in literacy and rhetorical studies. By examining the best-preserved collection of educational papyri from Egypt, she concludes that rhetorical exercises peaked in the Roman period so that, a fairly large percentage of literates went on to study rhetoric.

      ¹⁵

      She goes on to suggest that not only did levels of basic literacy fluctuate: so did the proportion of people who progressed as far as learning grammar, with the greatest number doing so in the Roman period. Since the proportion of people who went on to learn rhetoric remained fairly stable, we may be able to see here the effects of a general growth of literacy on a competitive social environment.

      ¹⁶

      What are we to make of some of our New Testament authors? It is often remarked that someone like Paul could not have pursued advance rhetoric given the elite status of this activity. Part of this may be a misunderstanding surrounding the availability of rhetorical education in the first century. It is within the time frame of this rising rhetorical enterprise that someone like Paul appears, or Luke, or other New Testament authors. Paul was born in a time when literacy rates were increasing, more people went on to learn grammar and a larger portion of those went on to study rhetoric, Paul ought to be considered in this category, especially as Morgan argues that in the first century, education spread increasingly to non-Greeks, to people of limited wealth and undistinguished birth.

      ¹⁷

      Paul and other NT authors should no longer be considered out of bounds for educational opportunities.

      We might also tackle this from another angle with a prompting question: is Paul literate? Although many would deny Paul had rhetorical education, they would not deny that Paul is literate. Paul’s literacy is usually evidenced by his extensive knowledge of the Old Testament. Nothing reveals educational amnesia and anachronism quicker than the fact that most New Testament scholars regard literacy as the baseline of education, leaving advanced study as an elitist activity. Morgan challenges such sacred scholarly categories in her discussion of ancient education. She argues that we have misunderstood the privilege of any education in the ancient world. So much so, that even learning grammar is not elementary in any sense of the word. She points out that in classical studies, and one might add New Testament studies, that grammar is often wrongly described as the lowest of literary studies.

      ¹⁸

      Such statements are more a product of our over-literary world than the world of the first century. We think it’s the lowest level because of what our educational opportunities afford us. She argues that a more accurate picture, given the low literacy rates of the first century world, is to not view grammar as the lowest level, but from the standpoint of the first century, boys, and girls, learning to read and write Latin and Greek have always belonged to a tiny elite.

      ¹⁹

      We are also helped by the excellent work of Lisa Maurice and her work on The Teacher in Ancient Rome. She notes that education at the second stage with a grammaticus included the study of both Latin and Greek. She differentiates upper and lower class education with the emphasis on Greek being neglected in the latter. She maintained that Greek was necessarily taught in the lower classes, but that it emphasized documents of sale and business receipts rather than the interpretation of Homer and Euripides.

      ²⁰

      One might compare Paul, who although not from Rome, is considerably adept at interpreting ancient Greek translations of biblical authors like Isaiah and the Psalms. Paul shows a robust understanding of Greek that goes far beyond the meager business documents and might speak to Paul’s educational pedigree. One might make a parallel analogy in the Jewish educational world, whereby Latin was of course not studied, but probably replaced by Hebrew. Paul being a diaspora Jew, would of course have learned Greek.

      Where does that leave us in terms of the study of the New Testament? If our authors have a grammatical education, they are already part of the educational elite. To make the point clearer, the apostle Paul is already from a socio-cultural standpoint part of the literary elite. As grammar was the preserve of a very small minority indeed, and those concentrated in highly hellenized cities . . . From a broad social viewpoint, therefore, grammar was an elitist activity.

      ²¹

      Thus the assumption for Paul, namely that he didn’t have access to the elite status is a clear misidentification of the categories themselves! More properly addressed, the real question is what type of elite education did Paul possess?

      Another topic to consider is that ancient controversy over just what topics the grammar teacher and the rhetor ought to teach.²² There was considerable disagreement over the domain of territory from each side. By 100 CE, Quintilian thought that the grammaticus had overreached largely due to the fact that the rhetors didn’t want to teach less advanced pupils (Inst. 2.1.1–3). The interesting point is that if this reflects earlier first century practice then Paul being trained by a grammaticus opens up the possibility that he received advanced training that usually a rhetor would provide.

      Even if one would not grant a formal training, we might take into consideration Quintilian’s comment that rhetorical handbooks were often shortened down into smaller books of rules and that these were for sale almost everywhere (Inst. 2.13.15). One might envision a precocious Paul as a young student saving up his drachmas and purchasing his own copy of a rhetorical handbook. Even if Paul was self-trained, he still shows considerable skill. Might we say more though? Did Paul make it beyond the elementary level of rhetoric? There is good reason to think so.

      If the "task of the rhetor was to take the pupil at the level of early composition exercises, and to transform him into an orator knowledgable in the three different branches of rhetoric"

      ²³

      then Paul’s use of all three main forms of rhetoric speaks volumes. The process included a more advanced set of progymnasmata and Quintilian provides a description of the lessons: refutation, confirmation, common topics, panegyric, comparison, characterization, description, thesis, and the citation of a law. One of the more advanced topics was prosopoeia and Paul utilizes this in Rom 7:7–25.

      ²⁴

      Quintilian regards this as a difficult exercise, impersonations seem to me by far the most difficult (Inst. 3.8.4.9).

      One common objection is that Paul did not have the social status or economic status to afford such an education. But where do such assumptions come from? If it’s from Paul being from the lower classes this is questionable on a few grounds. Further, even if it’s granted that Paul does come from the lower classes, Maurice draws our attention to the teaching of slaves. She notes that "the ludi magister was a school catering to the lower segments of the population and that it was possible for a freedman or his son, or a slave, to attend the schools run by the grammaticus and, more rarely, the rhetor."

      ²⁵

      Furthermore, the paidagogos (cf. Gal. 3:24–25) who was a slave and the child minder for elite children would have attended the child’s educational lessons and then helped him with the learning at home. Some of these slaves were in fact already educated Greeks who had had the misfortune of being captured and sold into slavery.

      Cicero adds an interesting example from his own experience. In discussing the orator, he notes in passing that, I need to apologize for my attempts to teach eloquence to younger men. A student of law need only to listen to an advocate advise his clients to learn civil law, but with eloquence it is necessary to train and to teach.

      ²⁶

      What Cicero reveals is that the lines of education were blurred by his own practice, where he taught those below the highest standard of rhetoric and even that by listening one could learn much about a discipline. In this example civil law, but one might also add rhetoric.

      Further it is known that, both in Rome and abroad, it was acceptable and possible for adults to pass time in a rhetorical school listening to a rhetor practice.

      ²⁷

      A person in the Roman world would have taken notice of rhetors through entertainment as well. Consider Philostratus’s description of the rhetorician Hadrian of Tyre, or later Herodes Atticus who drew huge crowds at the theater beneath the Parthenon in Athens. These men had rock star like status and fans since eloquent oratory was seen as a form of public entertainment.

      In an oral culture, orators might well make a considerable living, and some, like Herodes Atticus, who helped build the theater in the shadow of the Parthenon in Athens, became very wealthy indeed, because of their gift of eloquence. Consider for example a papyrus fragment dating to about 110 CE, which reads in part, Pay to Licinius . . . the rhetor the amount due to him for the speeches [in] which Aur[elius . . . ] was honored . . . in the gymnasium in the Great Serapeion, four hundred drachmas of silver.

      ²⁸

      This was more than a Roman soldier’s annual wages, according to the Roman historian Tacitus (Ann. 1.17). The broad acceptance and indeed great popularity of rhetorical oratory is attested by important literary works that lionize orators, such as Athenaeus’s Deiphnosophistae or Philostratus’s Vitae sophistarum. Not only did the popular orators have many fans, they were widely imitated.

      It was the Sophists who were famous for their verbal pyrotechnics. They were the orators who made news. This proved to be problematic for those who wanted to persuade audiences on some serious subject and who were unwilling to entertain or thrill the crowd with their verbal artistry. The alternative however was not to eschew rhetoric altogether, but rather to use it in a more substantive and sober manner, all the while castigating those Sophists, who were not philosophically (or theologically) serious about what they were doing. So important is the issue of rhetorical education and its various levels for understanding how to evaluate the rhetoric of and in the New Testament, that we will devote the entire following chapter to further exploring this issue, and dealing with some of the mis-readings of the situation in recent scholarly treatments of the matter.

      The Roman world was a rhetorical world and Paul navigated it with considerable awareness and aptitude. Maurice concludes that such examples reflect an extremely vibrant rhetorical atmosphere, in which teachers of rhetoric were consequential figures.

      ²⁹

      Paul is fully part of this ancient world and whatever status is afforded him, one cannot discount the availability and potentiality of rhetorical education.

      Another clue may come from a surprising location. From Acts, we learn that Paul was a Roman citizen (Acts 25:11–12). Although this is a commonplace fact about Paul, Luke Timothy Johnson remarks that it would have been unusual for various Jewish groups in Tarsus to have possessed it two generations prior. He concludes that, if Acts is accurate then, Paul’s family had some social prominence.

      ³⁰

      Combining this with the thirteen letter corpus tends in the direction that Paul received some advanced level of education.

      But what do we know about Jewish education? The history of this debate is fraught with challenges and competing conceptions of schools in the first century period. The primary works go back to Morris (1937) and Drazin (1940) and are picked up in subsequent works and developed most notably by Martin Hengel (1974).

      ³¹

      These works developed the picture of educational models that were a composite of several disparate sources ranging from Josephus and Philo to Rabbinic and Mishnaic sources. Given the slim historical evidence, such a compilation was necessary, although this has lent critics the ability to offer criticisms on the appropriateness of such reconstructions given the complexity of sources. To begin, Morris saw the development of widespread primary education as a development post the destruction of the temple. During the first century, education would be a family matter and dependent on the household. In contrast, Drazin offers the alternative view that Jewish schools were a widespread first-century reality.

      ³²

      Coming later, but building on the previous works, Hengel argues that Jewish education has its roots much farther back in the pre-exilic time period of the

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