Friday, April 18, 2008

Paul and Rhetoric - where to start?

My good friend Dr. Bruce Lowe of RTS-Atlanta, wrote me and gave some excellent advice about where to start studying rhetoric in terms of its relevance to Paul's rhetorical discourse. Bruce states: "Cicero's De Inventione and pseudo-Cicero's Rhetorical Ad Herennium are considered to be by far the best sources if you are thinking about NT rhetoric. Over and again I find people in the literature affirming these as the best sources, mainly because they seem to have had the same Greek teacher (thus the belief for a while that they were both from Cicero). They were both first century BC and yet also had an influence on Latin rhetoric. So if someone argued that Paul was only influenced by the Greek tradition... these are your best sources... yet they were also foundational to 1st cent. AD Latin rhetoric too." Thanks Bruce!

1 comment:

Brandon Wason said...

As long as we're talking about primary sources, I would also read George Kennedy's translation/notes of Aristotle On Rhetoric (0195305094), as well as his translation/notes of the Progymnasmata (158983061x). Also, you can't go wrong with reading Kennedy's book, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (080784120X), although I'm not entirely convinced by his methodology.