Jesus, Rhetoric and Law

Jesus, Rhetoric and Law PDF Author: Henderson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004497862
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
This study locates pre-gospel orality and gospel literacy within Greco-Roman rhetorical norms for education and performance. Heavy use of a few basic rhetorical conventions marks the gospel tradition as a marginal yet rhetorically competent attempt to create a Christian public. The book identifies gnomic sayings as the thickest available sample of gospel rhetorics, an alternative to samples based on chreia and parable. Gnome-use is central throughout ancient rhetorical theory and practice. Gnome is therefore an especially good focus for comparative study, particularly of characterisation and legal topicality. This work establishes a credible model of interaction among the speech-habits of Jesus, those of early Christian oral tradition, and the innovative rhetorics of gospel and epistolary texts. The plurality of rhetorical-criticisms current in New Testament studies is also addressed.

Jesus, Rhetoric and Law

Jesus, Rhetoric and Law PDF Author: Henderson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004497862
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study locates pre-gospel orality and gospel literacy within Greco-Roman rhetorical norms for education and performance. Heavy use of a few basic rhetorical conventions marks the gospel tradition as a marginal yet rhetorically competent attempt to create a Christian public. The book identifies gnomic sayings as the thickest available sample of gospel rhetorics, an alternative to samples based on chreia and parable. Gnome-use is central throughout ancient rhetorical theory and practice. Gnome is therefore an especially good focus for comparative study, particularly of characterisation and legal topicality. This work establishes a credible model of interaction among the speech-habits of Jesus, those of early Christian oral tradition, and the innovative rhetorics of gospel and epistolary texts. The plurality of rhetorical-criticisms current in New Testament studies is also addressed.

Rhetoric, Law, and the Mystery of Salvation in Romans 7:1-6

Rhetoric, Law, and the Mystery of Salvation in Romans 7:1-6 PDF Author: Keith Augustus Burton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Many have come to conclusion that Romans 7: 1-6 indicated a deficiency in Paul's ability to construct a coherent argument. This study suggests that interpretive problems should be eliminated if the pericope is approached with the right methods. Romans 7: 1-6, examined as a rhetorical treatise, is a paradigmatic argument which is both structurally and logically coherent. A full understanding also demands a re-evaluation of the meaning and reference of law in Romans. Utilizing semantic analyses, the author suggests that law often refers to the Decalogue. In this pericope, Paul demonstrates how a sinful individual who is condemned by law is transformed into a spiritual individual who is commended by law.

The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James

The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James PDF Author: Wesley Hiram Wachob
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139431587
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This programmatic socio-rhetorical investigation approaches the Epistle of James as an instance of written deliberative rhetoric, and it seeks to ascertain the social texture of James 2.5, a rhetorical performance of language that in other contexts is explicitly attributed to Jesus. Utilizing the conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric, Dr Wachob successively probes the inner texture, the intertexture, the social and cultural texture, and the ideological implications of the rhetoric in James 2.1-13. He analyses James' activation of antecedent texts in the LXX, common conceptions and topics in the broader culture, and also sayings in the Jesus tradition. He concludes that James emanates from the same milieu as the pre-Matthean Sermon on the Mount and shows James 2.5 to be an artful performance of the principal beatitude in that early epitome of Jesus' teachings.

The Bible in American Law and Politics

The Bible in American Law and Politics PDF Author: John R. Vile
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538141671
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 679

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Book Description
While scholars increasingly recognize the importance of religion throughout American history, The Bible in American Law and Politics is the first reference book to focus on the key role that the Bible has played in American public life. In considering revolting from Great Britain, Americans contemplated whether this was consistent with scripture. Americans subsequently sought to apply Biblical passages to such issues as slavery, women’s rights, national alcoholic prohibition, issues of war and peace, and the like. American presidents continue to take their oath on the Bible. Some of America’s greatest speeches, for example, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, have been grounded on Biblical texts or analogies. Today, Americans continue to cite the Bible for positions as diverse as LGBTQ rights, abortion, immigration, welfare, health care, and other contemporary issues. By providing essays on key speeches, books, documents, legal decisions, and other writings throughout American history that have sought to buttress arguments through citations to Scriptures or to Biblical figures, John Vile provides an indispensable guide for scholars and students in religion, American history, law, and political science to understand how Americans throughout its history have interpreted and applied the Bible to legal and political issues.

The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Political Rhetoric

The Bible in American Law, Politics, and Political Rhetoric PDF Author: James Turner Johnson
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description


Possession and Persuasion

Possession and Persuasion PDF Author: Robert Hach
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462812546
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Possession and Persuasion: The Rhetoric of Christian Faith is a rhetorical analysis of Christian history and theology initially prompted by my experience in a fundamentalist Christian sect. The story of this experience is briefly told in the prologue, "The Rhetoric of Surrender," which describes the "surrender" of my life to God through a commitment to an authoritarian Christian sect in Gainesville, Florida, in 1972, when I was a freshman at the University of Florida. I spent the following fifteen years, first, as a student recruit, trainee, and then leader in the founding church in Gainesville, and then, as a recruiter and trainer in other parts of the U.S. until I finally left the movement (now called the International Churches of Christ) in 1987. I subsequently combined graduate study in rhetoric with a continuing interest in biblical and historical scholarship in an effort to understand how my religious experience fit into the broader context of Christian history and theology. I concluded that the New Testament language of faith, originally formulated to persuade hearers of the Christian message by means of understanding, had been radically redefined and its effects rhetorically reengineered by the ecclesiastical Christianity which had gradually emerged after the first century; this process of rhetorical reinvention produced a language of faith that possessed its hearers by means of a mystical form of indoctrination, in the interest of building a religious empire. The degree to which ecclesiastical Christianity, throughout its history, has taken its faith-language seriously--my experience having been produced by a movement that took this language to its logical conclusion --is the degree to which its adherents experience a religious bondage that amounts to the antithesis of the spiritual freedom and social equality of the original experience of Christian faith. Part I, "Faith as Possession," addresses critical changes made by post-apostolic theologians in the apostolic discourse of the New Testament about the message of Jesus, specifically with reference to the rhetorics of "authority" (Chapter One), "knowledge" (Chapter Two), and "justice" (Chapter Three). This rhetorical reengineering of apostolic language facilitated the rise of the institutional Church, which rapidly replaced the apostolic message as the authorized mediator between God and humanity in general and between God and the community of faith in particular. That is, the dynamic of persuasion by an eschatological message was rapidly replaced by the dynamic of possession by an ecclesiastical system. The redefinition and reconceptualization of these apostolic terms amounted to the rhetorical invention of Christianity, a form of Greco-Roman mythology which has little in common with the faith of Jesus as it is revealed in the New Testament. The faith of Christianity became, and continues to be to varying degrees, a form of possession insofar as it consists of, in both a mystical and an institutional sense, belonging to "the Church," which relieves its members of their responsibility for their own identity and destiny. Part II, "Faith as Persuasion," explores the rhetoric of three apostolic ideals, which have generally received little more than lip service by post-apostolic Christianity: "understanding" (Chapter Four), "anticipation" (Chapter Five), and "freedom" (Chapter Six). These concepts are integral to persuasion as the modus operandi of the apostolic Christian faith. Understanding is a prerequisite to authentic persuasion in that persuasion, or belief, without understanding is the essence of possession. In that the meaning and power of the Christian message are a matter of the hope of resurrection to life in the coming kingdom of God, anticipation is the logical response to being understandingly persuaded of the truth of the message. And insofar as internal bondage characterizes life without hope

The Rhetoric of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

The Rhetoric of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark PDF Author: Michael Strickland
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506438474
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Young and Strickland analyze the four largest discourses of Jesus in Mark in the context of Greco-Roman rhetoric in an attempt to hear them as a first-century audience would have heard them. The authors demonstrate that, contrary to what some historical critics have suggested, first-century audiences of Mark would have found the discourses of Jesus unified, well-integrated, and persuasive. They also show how these speeches of the Markan Jesus contribute to Mark‘s overall narrative accomplishments.

The Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Mark PDF Author: Ben Witherington
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467429597
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
This book offers the first sustained attempt to read the Gospel of Mark both as an ancient biography and as a form of ancient rhetoric. Ben Witherington applies to Mark the socio-rhetorical approach for which he is well known, opening a fresh new perspective on the earliest Gospel. Written when the fledging Christian faith was experiencing a major crisis during the Jewish war, Mark provides us with the first window on how the life and teachings of Jesus were presented to a largely non-Jewish audience. According to Witherington, the structure of Mark demonstrates that this Gospel is biographically focused on the identity of Jesus and the importance of knowing who he is--the Christ, the Son of God. This finding reveals that Christology stood at the heart of the earliest Christians' faith. It also shows how important it was to these earliest Christians to persuade others about the nature of Jesus, both as a historical figure and as the Savior of the world.

Jesus and the Law in the Synoptic Tradition

Jesus and the Law in the Synoptic Tradition PDF Author: Robert Banks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521020534
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
A fresh approach to the attitude of Jesus to the Mosaic Law, Dr Banks' book is concerned centrally with a detailed exegesis of the texts in the first three Gospels relevant to the ethical teaching and practice of Jesus as it related to Jewish Law.

New Testament Rhetoric

New Testament Rhetoric PDF Author: Ben Witherington
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1556359292
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Witherington provides a much-needed introduction to the ancient art of persuasion and its use within the various New Testament documents. More than just an exploration of the use of the ancient rhetorical tools and devices, this guide introduces the reader to all that went into convincing an audience about some subject. Witherington makes the case that rhetorical criticism is a more fruitful approach to the NT epistles than the oft-employed approaches of literary and discourse criticism. Familiarity with the art of rhetoric also helps the reader explore non-epistolary genres. In addition to the general introduction to rhetorical criticism, the book guides readers through the many and varied uses of rhetoric in most NT documents-not only telling readers about rhetoric in the NT, but showing them the way it was employed. This brief guide book is intended to provide the reader with an entrance into understanding the rhetorical analysis of various parts of the NT, the value such studies bring for understanding what is being proclaimed and defended in the NT, and how Christ is presented in ways that would be considered persuasive in antiquity. - from the introduction