Q. After the helpful chapter on Paul’s ethos, I expected a following chapter on his ‘logos’ and then one on his ‘pathos’ to cover the major rhetorical progressions in a discourse. Had you considered doing it that way instead of working through letters one by one?
A. Actually, the primary issue in each chapter is logos. Paul gives reasoned arguments, sometimes using arguments that are consistent with both Greek and Jewish argumentation (i.e., qal wachomer in several instances, which in Greek rhetoric is similar to synkrisis). I try to include pathos in each chapter. Second Corinthians abounds in pathos as well as logos, and Galatians also. I wrote an article several years ago, “The Argument from Pathos in 2 Corinthians” (in Thomas Olbricht and Jerry Sumney,” Paul and Pathos, ed. Thomas Olbricht and Jerry Sumney, 2001.) One could do a significant book on the argument from pathos in the entire Pauline correspondence.
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