Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah / Edition 1

by Phyllis Trible

Overview

Phyllis Trible examines rhetorical criticism as a discipline within biblical studies. In Part One she surveys the historical antecedents of the method from ancient times to the postmodern era: classical rhetoric, literary critical theory, literary study of the Bible, and form criticism. Trible then presents samples of rhetorical analysis as the art of composition and as the art of persuasion.

In Part Two, formulated guidelines are applied to a detailed study of the book of Jonah. A close reading with respect to structure, syntax, style, and substance elicits a host of meanings embedded in text, enabling the relationship between artistry and theology to emerge with clarity.

Rhetorical Criticism has many distinctive features. It is

the first comprehensive treatment of biblical rhetorical criticism as it has emerged within the latter half of the twentieth century.

a didactic treatise that combines theoretical discussion, practical guidelines, and detailed exegesis

interdisciplinary in approach, engaging the rhetorical study of the Bible with expanding developments in secular literary criticism (structuralism, poetics, reader-response criticism, and deconstruction, for example) and in the similarly burgeoning field of contemporary rhetoric

itself a model of the rhetorical analysis that it describes

accessible both to the novice and to the scholar

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780800627980
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	01/03/1995
Series:	Guides to Biblical Scholarship Old Testament
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Phyllis Trible is a renowned scholar in the field of feminist biblical scholarship. She has served as the Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature, Union Theological Seminary, New York, as well as associate dean, professor of biblical studies, and university professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her groundbreaking books include God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality and Rhetorical Criticism.

Table of Contents

Editor's Foreword

Preface

Abbreviations

Prologue

Part One

Context

1. Sketching the Background

2. Introducing the Foregrund

3. Expanding the Background

Part Two

Method and the Book of Jonah

4. Guidelines for Beginning

5. External Design of Jonah

6. Internal Structure of Scene One (1:1-16)

7. Internal Structure of Scene One (2:1-11)

8. Internal Structure of Scene Two (3:1-10)

9. Internal Structure of Scene Two (4:1-11)

10. Guidelines for Continuing

Appendices

a. The Book of Jonah: A Study in Structure

B. Quiz

Indexes

Authors and Editors

Hebrew Words

Scripture

Subjects