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Notes on video lecture:
Paul's Letter Writing Within the Tradition of Ancient Rhetoric
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
ancient, rhetoric, progymnasmata, rod, grammaticus, ekklesiai, literary, evolving, audience, unfamiliar, Saul, Galatians, Herodotus, nine, Hispania, Carvaggio, persuade, stylists, epideictic, familiar, paideia, corpus, Jesus, polis, Jerusalem, advising, imaginations, ambassador, unit, pathos
background
you have to remember that Paul's letters did not originate packaged as a         , they were individual letters with individual audiences and purposes
intimate and                 
much as we engage in letter writing today
distant and                     
reading Paul's letters we are engaging in a cross-cultural and cross-historical investigation
we have to exercise our historical                         
e.g. consider how people sent letters in antiquity
rhetoric
in the ancient world, the well-educated were trained in rhetoric
about the communication of ideas
Greco-Roman education
1. elementary education
2.                        training
3. rhetorical training
books still exist on                           , or rhetorical exercises gradually leading the Greco-Roman student to familiarity with the elements of rhetoric, in preparation for their own practice speeches and ultimately their own orations
asked to write as if you were Homer, Thucydides, or                   , i.e. as the great writers in Greek epic, history, and ethnography
Aristotle
teacher of Alexander the Great
wrote his book on                  in 4th century CE
connected rhetoric to ethics and politics
Paul had training in rhetoric and his writing takes part in some of the conventions that Aristotle made famous
               [pigh-DAY-ah]
the rearing and education of the ideal member of the           
Greek education and culture
a goal even in the Roman era, even for someone like Paul perhaps
looking at Aristotle more closely we can understand how Paul's letters were part of a larger                  culture, also how the audiences received them
two concepts that Aristotle made famous
1. rhetoric is made up of ethos, pathos, and logos
ethos: speaker is credible and good
            : rouse to emotion, put the hearer in a certain frame of mind
logos: speech is a means of persuade
2. ancient writing can be divided into three forms
judicial: about an event that is over, and now much be defended or attacked
deliberative/                : about an event in the future, what should be done to shift that event
                     [ep-ih-DIGHK-dik]: about an event that is occurring in the present, and one condemns or praises the audience or others
Quintilian (35-100AD)
Roman rhetorician from                 , widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing
father sent him to Rome to study rhetoric early in the reign of Nero
book: "Institutes of Oratory", rhetoric not as used by philosopher but by the political man
provides the knowledge of how to speak well
Paul's letters are rhetorical in two ways
1. they are occasional documents, political documents sent to particular communities
so they needed to have rhetorical conventions to                 
2. deeply informed by rhetorical conventions
he is not as well trained in rhetoric as, say, Cicero (106BC-43BC), one of Rome's greatest orators and prose                 
but Paul was educated to write in order too persuade, he uses allusions, conventions, and styles indicate some form of Greek education
Paul the letter writer
what kind of ethos, how does he present himself
he presents himself, i.e. portrays his ethos, differently to the                    as he does to the Romans
he doesn't know the Romans
he is angry at the decisions of the                    of Galatia
Paul emphasizes the word "apostle"
Apostolos, in a Greek lexicon, is defined as messenger or                     
he is an apostle not by human authority but by the authority of           
Paul uses language reserved for chosen prophets of the Jewish tradition
he was not an apostle who literally followed Jesus, he was an apostle because God revealed something to Paul
he doesn't even go to                    to meet those who were apostles before him, but goes away into Arabia
Paul writes not about his conversion but about his calling
Despite                   's dramatic painting of Paul falling of his horse after being blinded by light
but Paul himself does not say he was blinded
or that his name was changed from          to Paul
or that he's a Roman citizen
or that he is from Tarsus
these traditions are found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter         
Paul defines himself as brother, slave, apostle, and least of the apostles, as a gentlenurse, a father coming with a       , as jealous of a community trying to protect them
Paul shape-shifts:
"Although I am free from all, I have made myself slave to all, that I might win the more...that I might win those outside the law...I have become all things to all, in order that I might by all means save some."
his way of presenting himself shifts according to his                  and purpose, part of his rhetorical strategy
speaks to different audiences at different times, engaged in                  and complex relationships with these communities
he's not composing a systematic theology, he's not writing a unified             , or group of literature, he wrote his texts as occasional letters and did not mean them to be a unit
but Paul's letters did circulate as a unit in the                world very soon after they were written

Vocabulary:

progymnasmata, n. [pro-jim-NAZ-meh-tah] rhetorical exercises gradually leading the Greco-Roman student to familiarity with the elements of rhetoric, in preparation for their own practice speeches and ultimately their own orations: 1. Fable, 2. Narrative, 3. Chreia (anecdote), 4. Proverb, 5. Refutation, 6. Confirmation, 7. Commonplace, 8. Encomium (short speech that praises a person or thing), 9. Vituperation (short speech that criticizes a person or thing), 10. Comparison, 11. Impersonation, 12. Description, 13. Thesis, 14. Defense or Attack of a law  "In ancient Greek and Roman education, the fable was the first of the progymnasmata training exercises in prose composition and public speaking, wherein students would be asked to learn fables, expand upon them, invent their own, and finally use them as persuasive examples in longer forensic or deliberative speeches."
Paul's Letters: Authorship and Audience
Form and Physicality of Ancient Letter Writing
Paul's Letter Writing Within the Tradition of Ancient Rhetoric
Ancient Responses to the Letters of Paul
How Ancient People Wrote about Their Place in History: Polybius and Daniel
Four Stories of Empire in Judea: Babylonian, Macedonian, Seleucid, and Roman
The Roman Empire's Knowledge of Early Christian Communities
Josephus on the Definition of Jew and Christian in the Ancient World
Understanding the Historical Josephus
The Priene Inscription
Intertwining of Religion and Politics in the Roman Empire
Letters to the Corinthians
Slavery and Freedom in Roman Corinth
Slavery in First Corinthians