rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_2c146630-21e7-5273-97a7-fe4bec8bc992">182 This refinement of the inner texture should produce studies that better balance insights from rhetorical criticism with insights from new literary criticism. Culpepper also notes that under intertexture, Robbins fails to include any analysis of the text’s genre.183 Certainly genre analysis will greatly assist in the understanding of a text and should be considered.
Under the category of “social and cultural” texture, one is to make use of social scientific methods. Stephen Barton enumerates some potential weaknesses of social scientific approaches: 1) they may anachronistically apply modern Western models and theories to an ancient settings without taking into account the differences in cultures; 2) they run the risk of explaining away true religious experience by describing actions and behaviors exclusively in sociological terms; 3) they have their roots in the atheistic philosophy of the Enlightenment.184 Certainly the use of these sociological models should be sensitive to the culture and context of the time.
In Robbins’ section on ideological texture we are to examine our own social and cultural location as well as the writer’s. Certainly this particular texture is important for the purposes of this dissertation, yet it also poses the greatest challenge. There is the very obvious issue of subjectivity in exploring this texture. Are all ideological readings of equal merit, or are some readings unacceptable? Some controls or boundaries in determining acceptable ideological readings are needed. The approach in this dissertation will be to use the insights from the other textures as a general guide in exploring the ideological texture. Ideological readings should be grounded upon solid inner texture and intertextural research. Finally, Robbins’ section on sacred texture is vague and without sufficient example and illustration. Nevertheless, this approach will be extremely helpful in adding new insights to the questions posed by this dissertation.
1 These passages represent the most radical statements against Judaism in the epistle to the Hebrews. Though there are other passages that might also indicate anti-Semitic, anti-Judaic, or supersessionist statements (cf. 3:3; 9:8-10; 13:10), they are not as radical or clearly identified as speaking against Judaism.
2 Vernon K. Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts: A Guide to Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity, 1996) 1.
3 Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969).
4 Burton L. Mack, Rhetoric and the New Testament, GBS (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) 12.
5 Mack, Rhetoric and the New Testament, 12.
6 Amos N. Wilder, Early Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964) 25–26.
7 George Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984) 3. Kennedy draws many of his rhetorical categories from Aristotle’s Rhetoric. He also notes Cicero’s works On Invention and Partitions of Oratory, and Quintilian’s work, On the Education of the Orator. See Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 12–13.
8 Some identify Hans Dieter Betz’s work, “The Literary Composition and Function of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” NTS 21 (1975) 353–79 as the beginning of a new era in New Testament scholarship. Cf. Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979). See Carl Joachim Classen, Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testament, WUNT 128 (Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2000) 1–2.
9 Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 5. Kennedy has come under recent criticism for his assertion that the New Testament writings primarily follow Greco-Roman rhetorical forms. Roland Meynet argues that the New Testament writings more appropriately follow Jewish rhetorical forms; Meynet, Rhetorical Analysis: An Introduction to Biblical Rhetoric, JSOTSS 256 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 21–22. Meynet distinguishes Hebrew rhetoric from Greco-Roman rhetoric in three ways: 1) Jewish rhetoric is more concrete than abstract; 2) it uses parataxis more than hypotaxis; and 3) it is more involutive than linear (173–75). Kennedy defends the idea that we can look at the New Testament using Greek rhetorical categories, even though it was written in-between two cultures. He bases his premise on the widespread Hellenization of the Near East and points to the works of Josephus and Philo as examples. Kennedy also makes a lengthy argument that Jesus and Paul were at least acquainted with Greek rhetoric if not formally trained. Thus he argues that it is historically and philosophically legitimate to use classical Greek rhetoric in analyzing the New Testament. He does note, however, that one must be aware of other influences, such as the Jewish chiasmus, in the unique rhetoric of the New Testament (Kennedy, 8–12). Whether one defines the New Testament as uniquely Hebraic with some parallel to Greco-Roman forms or primarily Greco-Roman with some Jewish influence seems to depend on the specific New Testament writing. Instead of thinking in binary terms of either Hellenistic or Jewish, it may be better to view each writing on a continuous spectrum between these two extremes.
10 Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 34.
11 Ibid., 35.
12 Ibid., 36.
13 Ibid., 37.
14 Ibid., 38.
15 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric.
16 Mack, Rhetoric and the New Testament, 14.
17 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 513.
18 Mack, Rhetoric and the New Testament, 15–16. See also C. Clifton Black, “Rhetorical Criticism,” in Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation, ed. Joel Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 263–64.
19 Mack, Rhetoric and the New Testament, 23–24. Mack notes the highly polemical nature of Christian rhetoric, which makes ample use of comparison and contrast with the surrounding culture in defining itself. He argues that this type of rhetoric often presents a straw man in the polemic and creates “inauthentic discourse.” Thus much of the New Testament shows the Christian perspective as superior, or paints the opponents unfairly or inadequately (96).
20 George H. Guthrie, The Structure of Hebrews: A Text-Linguistic Analysis, NovTSup 73 (Leiden: Brill, 1994; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998) 11–12.
