Paul's True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning, and Deception in Greece and Rome.
Carefully examining 1 Cor 1-4 and 9; 2 Cor 2:14-4:6; Paul's use of "I" in Rom 7; Rom 9:1-5, 14:1-15:13 and Acts 17, Mark D. Given argues in Paul's True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning, and Deception in Greece and Rome (Trinity Press International, $26.95) that Paul, much like the Sophists Sophists (sŏf`ĭsts), originally, itinerant teachers in Greece (5th cent. B.C.) who provided education through lectures and in return received fees from their audiences. The term was given as a mark of respect. , uses deception, irony, ambiguity, and other rhetorical devices in his argumentation, not surprising because of "Paul's sincere conviction that he knew the Truth and had a divine mandate to promote it in an apocalyptic world filled with deception" (p. 176). By using these devices he combated the deceptive rhetoric of demonic forces that deceive TO DECEIVE. To induce another either by words or actions, to take that for true which is not so. Wolff, Inst. Nat. Sec. 356. non-Christian Jews, Gentiles, and some "weak" believers. He is close to Plato's Socrates, but with a theological dimension that is not in Plato. This is a highly interesting combination of historical criticism with rhetorical criticism Rhetorical criticism is an approach to criticism which is at least as old as Aristotle. Rhetorical criticism studies the use of words and phrases (in the case of visual rhetoric, also visuals) to explicate how arguments have been built to drive home a certain point the author or and a form of deconstruction deconstruction, in linguistics, philosophy, and literary theory, the exposure and undermining of the metaphysical assumptions involved in systematic attempts to ground knowledge, especially in academic disciplines such as structuralism and semiotics. that turns out to be very useful. It is no. 7 of Emory Studies in Early Christianity The term Early Christianity here refers to Christianity of the period after the Death of Jesus in the early 30s and before the First Council of Nicaea in 325. The term is sometimes used in a narrower sense of just the very first followers (disciples) of Jesus of Nazareth and the . I like this work. EK
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