We are witnessing these days a remarkable rapprochement between the study of rhetoric and the study of narrative. Indeed, these two approaches to New Testament texts are apparently so different that in 2008, Vernon Robbins could lament the “widespread consensus” among scholars that it is “not possible to formulate a systematic rhetorical approach to narrative portions of the Gospels and Acts.” And yet, this bifurcation has been shortsighted. It is not only possible but also necessary and beneficial to bring the resources and insights of narratology into conversation with the resources and insights of rhetorical criticism. This article participates in the move to build bridges across the theoretical crevasses that have divided “New Testament rhetoric” and “New Testament narrative.” First, I take a panoramic view, broadly outlining several reasons that the dividing lines continue to hold currency in New Testament scholarship, and why these views are misguided. I then propose that we reimagine the boundaries of the “New Testament and rhetoric” to include narrative as a mode of persuasion in and of itself, using resources from the literary subfield of rhetorical narratology. Finally, I offer a brief analysis of the uses of speech and silence in Acts 15:1–35 in order to demonstrate how the tools of rhetorical narratology can help us to think in fresh ways about the rhetorical force of New Testament narratives.
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Among many, see Hans Dieter Betz, “Literary Composition and Function of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” NTS 21 (1975), pp. 353–79; idem, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979); Stanley Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Chico: Scholars, 1981); Margaret Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991); Stowers, ARereading of Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); R.D. Anderson, Jr., Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Paul (Louvain: Kok Pharos, 1996); Thomas H. Olbricht and Jerry L. Sumney (eds.), Paul and Pathos (Atlanta: SBL, 2001); Duane Watson, The Rhetoric of the New Testament: A Bibliographic Survey (Blandford: Deo, 2006).
Kathleen Welch, The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appropriations of Ancient Discourse (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990), p. 3. Alternatively, TheSAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies identifies three “rhetorics” in New Testament studies: the “antiquarian (i.e., Aristotelian) style that applies the classical rhetorical models of Greco-Roman rhetoric to the New Testament”; the “interactionist style that incorporates sociopolitical motives (in the Burkean sense)”; and the “ideological style that completes the [rhetorical] turn by submitting the analysis itself to a hermeneutic of suspicion” (Andrea Lunsford, Kirt Wilson, and Rosa Eberly [eds.], TheSAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies [Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2009], pp. 130–31.
John Frow, Genre (The New Critical Idiom) (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 14.
See Abraham Malherbe, Moral Exhortation: A Greco-Roman Sourcebook (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986); William Kurz, “Narrative Models for Imitation in Luke-Acts,” in D. Balch, E. Ferguson, Wayne Meeks (eds.), Greeks, Romans and Christians: Essays in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), pp. 171–89.
Martinus de Boer, “Narrative Criticism, Historical Criticism, and the Gospel of John,” JSNT 47 (1992), pp. 35–48 (37).
See Stamps, “Rhetorical and Narratological Criticism,” pp. 219–39.
James Phelan, Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996), p. 8.
Kearns, Rhetorical Narratology, p. 2. According to Kearns, “[T]he study of narrative continues to be bifurcated: there are strong, ongoing interests in the text-based features present in narratives … and in the narrative use of language, but these two approaches have not been scrutinized for their common ground” (p. 30).
Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 115.
Darr, Character Building, p. 147. See also my contribution on Lukan characterization in the forthcoming Festschrift for François Bovon, to be published by Mohr Siebeck.
Aristotle, Rh. 1.3.4–6, and his discussion of structure in 3.13–19; Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism, pp. 125–26; Soards, The Speeches in Acts, pp. 90–91; Bruce, The Speeches in the Acts, p. 19; Ben Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 453.
Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 450; Margaret Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, pp. 60–64 and the citations therein.
Alex T. M. Cheung, “A Narrative Analysis of Acts 14:27–15:35: Literary Shaping in Luke’s Account of the Jerusalem Council,” WTJ 55 (1993), pp. 137–54.
See, for example, William Kurz, Reading Luke-Acts: Dynamics of Biblical Narrative (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), pp. 93–94. Of course, discussion of these themes is not unique to narrative critics; even the earliest Christian interpreters read the account as an ecclesiological model for theological decision-making. John Chrysostom referred to this passage as evidence that ecumenical councils should be orderly, with all participants submitting to the bishop (Hom. Acts 33). A recent example of the “conflict resolution” approach is J. Lyle Story, “Luke’s Instructive Dynamics for Resolving Conflicts: The Jerusalem Council,” Journal of Biblical and Pneumatological Research 3 (2011), pp. 99–118. Contemporary debates also concern the relative “Jewishness” of the apostolic decree. See, for example, Joseph Tyson, Luke, Judaism, and the Scholars: Critical Approaches to Luke-Acts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), esp. pp. 117–19.
On this, see Kathy Maxwell, Hearing Between the Lines: The Audience as Fellow-Worker in Luke-Acts and its Literary Milieu (New York: T & T Clark, 2010).
On this, see Michal Beth Dinkler, Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 67–82 and 193–201.
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We are witnessing these days a remarkable rapprochement between the study of rhetoric and the study of narrative. Indeed, these two approaches to New Testament texts are apparently so different that in 2008, Vernon Robbins could lament the “widespread consensus” among scholars that it is “not possible to formulate a systematic rhetorical approach to narrative portions of the Gospels and Acts.” And yet, this bifurcation has been shortsighted. It is not only possible but also necessary and beneficial to bring the resources and insights of narratology into conversation with the resources and insights of rhetorical criticism. This article participates in the move to build bridges across the theoretical crevasses that have divided “New Testament rhetoric” and “New Testament narrative.” First, I take a panoramic view, broadly outlining several reasons that the dividing lines continue to hold currency in New Testament scholarship, and why these views are misguided. I then propose that we reimagine the boundaries of the “New Testament and rhetoric” to include narrative as a mode of persuasion in and of itself, using resources from the literary subfield of rhetorical narratology. Finally, I offer a brief analysis of the uses of speech and silence in Acts 15:1–35 in order to demonstrate how the tools of rhetorical narratology can help us to think in fresh ways about the rhetorical force of New Testament narratives.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 905 | 111 | 9 |
Full Text Views | 445 | 19 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 477 | 35 | 3 |