Rhetorically Writing

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Early Christianity was a missionary movement, out to persuade the world that Jesus was its savior. The success of the movement must be attributed in large part to the writers associated with it. Despite the popular characterization of the early Christians as a bunch of uneducated fishermen, the gospel writers, Paul and the anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews were all sophisticated and skilled wordsmiths—masters of their profession.^a Among the most powerful tools employed by these skilled writers was rhetoric.

Today, we tend to think of rhetoric as referring to words that are “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The term connotes words without substance (for example, political speeches) or mere eloquence (oratorical flourishes). But in New Testament times, rhetoric did not mean just speaking nicely. It meant speaking effectively. Rhetoric was the art of persuasion.

All the New Testament authors (but especially those in the Greco-Roman world) lived in an environment saturated with rhetoric. Rhetoric was taught by tutors and in schools throughout the empire (including in Jerusalem) and was used on most public occasions—in the Roman Senate to persuade the senators about a particular course of action, in law courts to attack or defend an individual on trial, and in the marketplace to entertain or to eulogize. In a world where only 10 to 20 percent of the population was literate and the primary form of communication was oral, anyone with rhetorical skills as sharp as, say, Paul’s had a decided advantage.

There were three basic types of rhetoric, which we have already hinted at. First, there was forensic rhetoric, by far the most often practiced form in the Roman world. This was the rhetoric of attack and defense offered up in law courts. It was used to describe past actions that were considered inappropriate, injurious or criminal. This sort of rhetoric often involved polemics, hyperbole, dramatics and various and sundry other devices in order to win the case. Some orators, like Cicero, became lawyers just to have a forum for this type of rhetoric.

Second, there was deliberative rhetoric. This was the rhetoric of the assembly (the ekklesia); its focus was on the future. It was the rhetoric of advice and consent, of policy— and deal-making. It was the rhetoric of legislators but also of ambassadors and emissaries. This is in fact the sort of rhetoric we most often find a person like Paul using with his converts—for he was an ambassador for Christ.

The third type of rhetoric, epideictic (literally meaning, “fit for display”), was the rhetoric of praise or blame; it focused on the present. Its aim was to entertain or to eulogize some great contemporary person. Its venue was the forum or the agora. One famous example is Marc Antony’s eulogy of Julius Caesar as re-created by Shakespeare: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Epideictic rhetoric tended to be the most flowery and bombastic, not unlike some funeral oratory today.

New Testament documents like Paul’s letters draw on numerous rhetorical conventions and devices to persuade their audiences. It’s important to remember that Paul’s letters were not typical letters to readers, but surrogates for oral conversations or speeches he would have made in person if he could have. They were meant to be read aloud, as is suggested by the conclusion of Paul’s letter to the Colossians: “And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans (Colossians 4:16). Indeed, I believe that the bearer of Paul’s letters, one of his coworkers, would have performed the letter in good rhetorical fashion for maximum persuasive effect.

Consider one of the most familiar New Testament passages, 1 Corinthians 13:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing…

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…”

This is an excellent example of epideictic rhetoric. In this case, the beautiful and lyrical quality of the text is used to praise not a person, but love, and not just any kind of love, but the love that comes from God through the Holy Spirit to those who will receive it in faith. This lyrical text stands out from its context, not least because it is sandwiched between two examples of deliberative rhetoric (in chapters 12 and 14), in which Paul is 062trying to persuade the Corinthians to be less divisive in the way they exercise their spiritual gifts (including prophecy and speaking in tongues). According to Paul, love is “the more excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31) that the people should use their spiritual gifts. That is, they should speak truth and make prophecies in love. The fine verses on love are thus not simply a lyrical interlude, but part of Paul’s eloquent attempt to convince the audience to use its gifts the best way possible. Paul is trying to unite the divisive factions in Corinth by making it beautifully clear—both through the rhetorical form and the content of his discourse—that love builds up, while knowledge and arrogance divide.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul employs another stock rhetorical trick: When flattery and encouragement fail, shame your audience into shape. That’s just what Paul does in 2 Corinthians 6:4–10 and 2 Corinthians 11:21–32, where Paul is trying to convince his audience to rethink its spiritual arrogance and to stop listening to the bombastic boasts of false apostles. In these passages, Paul inverts the usual list of achievements that Greco-Roman heroes were wont to boast about: Instead of detailing his triumphs, Paul lists his trials and tribulations, his sufferings and sorrows. Particularly humorous is 2 Corinthians 11:32–33, in which Paul twists the usual Roman praise for the brave soldier who was invariably remembered as the first to scale the wall and breach the city; Paul boasts that he was the first down the wall of Damascus—and in a basket at that. In short he portrays himself as a basket case in order to shame his arrogant audience. Paul follows to the letter the rhetorical conventions about “inoffensive self praise,” which included the use of self-effacing humor. Without knowledge of these rhetorical conventions, however, we could never fully grasp the irony, humor and shaming devices Paul uses so persuasively.

The study of New Testament rhetoric is still in its fledgling stages, but already it has provided yet another reminder of how different the world of its writers was from ours. Unless we study the words of the Scripture in their original literary as well as historical, social, religious and archaeological contexts, we are bound to misconstrue the force of much of what they say so powerfully.

Early Christianity was a missionary movement, out to persuade the world that Jesus was its savior. The success of the movement must be attributed in large part to the writers associated with it. Despite the popular characterization of the early Christians as a bunch of uneducated fishermen, the gospel writers, Paul and the anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews were all sophisticated and skilled wordsmiths—masters of their profession.a Among the most powerful tools employed by these skilled writers was rhetoric. Today, we tend to think of rhetoric as referring to words that are “full of sound and […]