Art and Meaning: Rhetoric in Biblical Literature (JSOT Supplement) PDF
Preview Art and Meaning: Rhetoric in Biblical Literature (JSOT Supplement)
JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SUPPLEMENT SERIES 19 Editors David J A Clines Philip R Davies David M Gunn Department of Biblical Studies The University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN England This page intentionally left blank ART AND MEANING: RHETORIC IN BIBLICAL LITERATURE Edited by DAVID J.A.CLINES, DAVID M.GUNN and ALAN J.HAUSER Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series,19 Sheffield 1982 Copyright © 1982 JSOT Press ISSN 0309-0787 ISBN 0 905774 38 8 (hardback) ISBN 0 905774 39 6 (paperback) Published by JSOT Press Department of Biblical Studies The University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN England Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Ltd., Trowbridge, Wiltshire. 1982 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Art and meaning: rhetoric in Biblical literature.- (Journal for the study of the Old Testament. Supplement series, ISSN 0309-0787; 19) 1. Bible O.T.-Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Clines, David J.A. II. Gunn, David M. III. Hauser, Alan J. IV. Series 221.6 BS1171.2 ISBN 0-905774-38-8 ISBN 0-905774-39-6 PbK CONTENTS Martin Kessler A Methodological Setting for Rhetorical Criticism 1-19 Alan Jon Hauser Genesis 2-3: The Theme of Intimacy and Alienation 20-36 Charles Isbell The Structure of Exodus 1:1-14 37-61 Ann M. Vater "A Plague on Both our Houses": Form - and Rhet- orical - Critical Observations on Exodus 7- 11 62- 71 David M. Gunn The "Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart": Plot, Character and Theology in Exodus 1-14 72-96 George W. Coats Humility and Honor: A Moses Legend in Numbers 12 97-107 J. Cheryl Exum "Whom will he teach knowledge?": A Literary Approach to Isaiah 28 108-139 J. Kenneth Kuntz The Contribution of Rhetorical Criticism to Understanding Isaiah 51:1-16 140-171 John S. Kselman "Why have you abandoned me?" A Rhetorical Study of Psalm 22 172-198 David J.A. Clines The Arguments of Job's Three Friends 199-214 Charles Thomas Davis, III The Literary Structure of Luke 1-2 215-229 Edwin C. Webster Pattern in the Fourth Gospel 230-257 Index of Biblical References 258-262 Index of Authors 263-266 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE The title of this book expresses the viewpoint common to all the contributors that Biblical authors were artists of language. Through their verbal artistry - their rhetoric - they have created their meaning. So meaning is ultimately inseparable from art, and those who seek to understand the Biblical literature must be sensitive to the writer's craft. Among Biblical scholars in recent decades a critical approach that adopts such a viewpoint has often been termed "rhetorical criticism". We call it an "approach" because it is not the method of a new school with a binding and polemical programme. The present studies, samples of this approach, are the work of scholars who adopt a stance that is essentially neutral towards the past praxis of Biblical scholarship and who probe in diverse ways the many dimensions of the Biblical text as literary work. Another characteristic of the papers presented here is that the primary focus of their interest is the final form of the Biblical text. The received text is not viewed, that is, as a barrier beyond which one must - in order to do Biblical scholarship - necessarily press, nor an end product that should most properly be analysed for evidences of its origins. True though it is that its literary history may at times encompass many centuries, several strata of tradition, and a variety of editorial influences, it is itself - the final text - susceptible of study as a system of meaningful and artistic wholes. We should note finally that a majority of the papers contained in this volume originated in the Rhetorical Criticism Section of the (American) Society of Biblical Literature, and represent the continuing work of that group. David J.A. Clines David M. Gunn Alan 3. Hauser This page intentionally left blank A METHODOLOGICAL SETTING FOR RHETORICAL CRITICISM Martin Kessler Trinity Lutheran Church Danville, Pennsylvania 17821 USA Discussions dealing with biblical methods of interpretation have become a veritable confusion of tongues. Not only is the scholar confronted by a host of different labels (such as literary criticism, form criticism, traditio-historical criticism, structural- ism, redaction criticism, rhetorical criticism, text-criticism, not to speak of the perhaps equally important interdisciplinary approaches) but the precise definition of each of these is a matter of much controversy, partly because some of the above-mentioned methods necessarily overlap in part. In this situation, one cannot help but experience a kind of sympathy with a statement by a grand old literatus of another day, Sir Walter Scott: As to the herd of critics, it is impossible for me to pay much attention to them, for, as they do not understand what I call poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the scope of rhetorical criticism and to propose a setting within the methodological spectrum. I The basic problem with rhetorical criticism is that English literary critics are by no means agreed as to what that well-worn term "rhetoric" signifies or ought to signify. In the light of this it can hardly be deemed surprising if biblical critics wonder. Unfortunately, rhetoric has since classical times been looked upon as an instrument of dubious morality, as bombast, 1
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