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{"id":42318,"date":"2022-03-03T01:29:26","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T06:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=42318"},"modified":"2022-01-28T08:32:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T13:32:04","slug":"apostle-of-persuasion-part-seven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2022\/03\/03\/apostle-of-persuasion-part-seven\/","title":{"rendered":"Apostle of Persuasion– Part Seven"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Q. About the work de elocutione<\/em> 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\u2019t think we have evidence for a handbook on writing various kinds of letters before the time of Paul.\u00a0 In any case this development considerably post-dates the teaching of rhetoric and handbooks on it.\u00a0\u00a0 Does the dating of de elocutione<\/em> later than you suggest (p. 21), make any difference to the case you are presenting or does it not matter?\u00a0 I raise this question because in fact, even a document like 1 Thessalonians is far closer to epideictic funeral oratory of the period before and during the NT era, as recently demonstrated in a PhD thesis here at Asbury, than it is to any sort assumed parenetic letter form.\u00a0 I think your quote from Schellenberg is right on the mark (p. 23). I don\u2019t think Paul is following any letter conventions apart from the beginning and the ending of his documents.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A. I suppose it does not matter about the dating of de elocutione. <\/em>The letter types have some analogies to Paul\u2019s letters, but these have been greatly exaggerated. The examples of parenetic or friendship letters, for example, have only a few phrases that they share with Paul. After all, Philemon is longer than the letters given as evidence that Paul\u2019s letters fit a particular type. The same is true, I think for an overly wooden categorization of Paul\u2019s letters in rhetorical terms. I have seen some of the literature on 1 Thessalonians as a funeral oration, but I am not convinced that his letters fit any specific type. With its emphasis on future conduct, it appears to approximate deliberative rhetoric more, although I think Paul\u2019s letters have only a partial resemblance to the ancient rhetorical types. Schellenberg, by the way, is also very skeptical about fitting Paul\u2019s rhetoric with any Greco-Roman types.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"