Q.  You make an excellent point when you stress that Paul’s arguments only work for a sub section of society, a Christian community that already largely shares his presuppositions about Christ, theology, the OT. This is certainly true. But it is equally true of all other ancient rhetoric. The judicial discourses of Cicero before the Senate and elsewhere only work in the context of the acceptance of Roman law, and Roman customs. One then wonders how exactly Paul’s preaching made... Read more

Q. I wonder if you have read Bruce Winter’s monograph. Is Paul among the Sophists?  What Winter demonstrates, at least to my satisfaction is that Paul is not claiming he is not a rhetorician, he is claiming he is not like the orators of the 2nd Sophistic, who focused on mere verbal eloquence and flattery, overcome by the exuberance for their own verbosity.  Larry Welborn and others have rightly warned that the hints in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians have... Read more

The service begins about 5 minutes into the video.   This is my home church in Charlotte, N.C. Read more

Q. About the work de elocutione which as you say is falsely attributed to Demetrius, the recent scholarly work on that indicates that the work comes from the first century A.D. if not a bit later (see the monograph by Rhys Roberts). I mention this because I don’t think we have evidence for a handbook on writing various kinds of letters before the time of Paul.  In any case this development considerably post-dates the teaching of rhetoric and handbooks on... Read more

Q. You say that Paul offers a new sort of prophetic rhetoric. New in both form and content, or simply new in that it is a rhetoric with Christian content?  Can you explain what you mean a bit as we get going on this dialogue?   A. Although Paul’s facility with Greek and his upbringing in the diaspora acquaint him with good orators, many of his proofs would not have been persuasive outside the group because he speaks for God... Read more

Q. You say in the Introduction that theology and rhetoric are inseparable parts of Paul’s effort to convince or persuade his audience in regard to their behavior (and I would add in regard to various of their beliefs as well— e.g. about resurrection in 1 Cor. 15). I entirely agree with you about this— the goal is the moral transformation of the audience.  This also means that theology and ethics are also not neat discreet categories for Paul.  His ethics... Read more

Q. I was pleased to see your comment on the fact that a thanksgiving period was not a stock item in ancient Hellenistic letter writing. Nor for that matter is ‘the body middle’ an ancient category as described in the epistolary handbooks of the 2nd-3rd century A.D. One of the things that has constantly frustrated me about the way Paul’s letters have been analyzed is that rhetoric was a regular and major part of ancient education beginning with the progymnasmata,... Read more

Cyrano de Bergerac is a story by Edmund Rostand, written in 1897, and it was a play written in French. And quelle surprise, there really was a person of this name which Rostand based his play on.  The entire play is in fact poetry, written in rhyming couplets with 12 syllables per line.  Interestingly, the play, translated into many languages, first introduced the word panache into English.  If you read it in English, the best version is Anthony Burgess’ translation. ... Read more

Q. Early on you rightly point out the difficulties systematicians have with Paul not least because his letters are ad hoc, i.e. responses to queries and the needs of the moment and situation. I have emphasized elsewhere that part of the problem is anachronism—the attempt to impose later theology categories and a desire for consistency and completion in a way of dealing with ideas abstracted from their letter contexts that leads to inherent frustration and head-scratching. If Paul is a... Read more

First of all thank you very much for writing this insightful and helpful book. My students will be happy with its clarity of expression and the fact that the chapters are each of a manageable length so they can be read in one setting. Q. You say in the introduction that you are focusing on the interface between Paul’s theology and his rhetoric. Was there an overarching reason you chose this approach as opposed to, say, focusing on the interface... Read more