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background

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you have to remember that Paul's letters did not originate packaged as a unit, they were individual letters with individual audiences and purposes

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intimate and familiar

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much as we engage in letter writing today

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distant and unfamiliar

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reading Paul's letters we are engaging in a cross-cultural and cross-historical investigation

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we have to exercise our historical imaginations

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e.g. consider how people sent letters in antiquity

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rhetoric

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in the ancient world, the well-educated were trained in rhetoric

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about the communication of ideas

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Greco-Roman education

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1. elementary education

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2. grammaticus training

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3. rhetorical training

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books still exist on progymnasmata, 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

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asked to write as if you were Homer, Thucydides, or Herodotus, i.e. as the great writers in Greek epic, history, and ethnography

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Aristotle

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teacher of Alexander the Great

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wrote his book on rhetoric in 4th century CE

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connected rhetoric to ethics and politics

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Paul had training in rhetoric and his writing takes part in some of the conventions that Aristotle made famous

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paideia [pigh-DAY-ah]

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the rearing and education of the ideal member of the polis

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Greek education and culture

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a goal even in the Roman era, even for someone like Paul perhaps

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looking at Aristotle more closely we can understand how Paul's letters were part of a larger literary culture, also how the audiences received them

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two concepts that Aristotle made famous

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1. rhetoric is made up of ethos, pathos, and logos

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ethos: speaker is credible and good

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pathos: rouse to emotion, put the hearer in a certain frame of mind

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logos: speech is a means of persuade

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2. ancient writing can be divided into three forms

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judicial: about an event that is over, and now much be defended or attacked

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deliberative/advising: about an event in the future, what should be done to shift that event

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epideictic [ep-ih-DIGHK-dik]: about an event that is occurring in the present, and one condemns or praises the audience or others

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Quintilian (35-100AD)

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Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing

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father sent him to Rome to study rhetoric early in the reign of Nero

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book: "Institutes of Oratory", rhetoric not as used by philosopher but by the political man

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provides the knowledge of how to speak well

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Paul's letters are rhetorical in two ways

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1. they are occasional documents, political documents sent to particular communities

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so they needed to have rhetorical conventions to persuade

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2. deeply informed by rhetorical conventions

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he is not as well trained in rhetoric as, say, Cicero (106BC-43BC), one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists

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but Paul was educated to write in order too persuade, he uses allusions, conventions, and styles indicate some form of Greek education

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Paul the letter writer

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what kind of ethos, how does he present himself

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he presents himself, i.e. portrays his ethos, differently to the Galatians as he does to the Romans

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he doesn't know the Romans

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he is angry at the decisions of the ekklesiai of Galatia

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Paul emphasizes the word "apostle"

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Apostolos, in a Greek lexicon, is defined as messenger or ambassador

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he is an apostle not by human authority but by the authority of Jesus

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Paul uses language reserved for chosen prophets of the Jewish tradition

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he was not an apostle who literally followed Jesus, he was an apostle because God revealed something to Paul

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he doesn't even go to Jerusalem to meet those who were apostles before him, but goes away into Arabia

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Paul writes not about his conversion but about his calling

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Despite Carvaggio's dramatic painting of Paul falling of his horse after being blinded by light

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but Paul himself does not say he was blinded

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or that his name was changed from Saul to Paul

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or that he's a Roman citizen

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or that he is from Tarsus

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these traditions are found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter nine

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Paul defines himself as brother, slave, apostle, and least of the apostles, as a gentlenurse, a father coming with a rod, as jealous of a community trying to protect them

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Paul shape-shifts:

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"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."

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his way of presenting himself shifts according to his audience and purpose, part of his rhetorical strategy

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speaks to different audiences at different times, engaged in evolving and complex relationships with these communities

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he's not composing a systematic theology, he's not writing a unified corpus, or group of literature, he wrote his texts as occasional letters and did not mean them to be a unit

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but Paul's letters did circulate as a unit in the ancient world very soon after they were written