Teaching rhetoric as part of NT Exegesis: Some helpful sources.

I have the privilege of teaching the graduate course "Introduction to New Testament Exegesis" every two years. This year, I've decided to shake up my normal way of teaching the class and add in a part on "New Testament Rhetoric," which I've begun dabbling in, for better of for worse!

Now, "rhetoric" itself is difficult to define, and scholars do not always agree amongst themselves. Carl Joachim Classen provides us a good starting point: "The deliberate, calculated use of language for the sake of communicating various kinds of information  ini the manner intended by the speaker (and the theory of such a use)" (Classen 2002, 45). In a nutshell, the study of rhetoric assumes that how an author says something is important in addition to what he or she says. 

In modern scholarly treatments on NT rhetoric, the focus is often on macro-rhetoric, or the overall structure of a letter and its persuasive power. This was popularized with Hans Dieter Betz's commentary on Galatians (1979), where he mapped the structure of the epistle according to formal Greco-Roman conventions. This, however, is highly controversial, as seen in a recent issue of Bulletin for Biblical Research which included a debate between Ben Witherington + Jason Myers vs. Stanley Porter on this topic (see below). Interestingly, out of all the New Testament epistles besides Galatians, 2 Peter is perhaps the most likely to be analyzed in terms of formal Greco-Roman rhetoric (ever since Duane F. Watson published his highly influential monograph in 1988).

I'm a bit more interested in "micro-rhetoric," which deals with the minutiae such as word-order, word-play, alliteration, etc., as well as how such items impact or illuminate the social relationship between the author and his or her audience. To a certain degree rhetorical studies and discourse analysis overlap here, though virtually nobody that I know of discusses how the two intersect (except, intriguingly, Alan Kam-Yau Chan's 2016 monograph on Melchizedek Passages in the Bible, though all too briefly). 

Anyways, here are some resources I've found especially helpful for studying the topic. All of them are reasonably priced (we're not talking inaccessible $100 monographs here). I should also mention that I will require my students to read my Doktorvater, David Alan Black's Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek, which has sections on both rhetoric and discourse analysis.

Helpful resources:

Black, C. Clifton. The Rhetoric of the Gospel: Theological Artistry in the Gospels and Acts, 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2013. C. Black's essay in the 2010 book Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation (2nd ed.) is also helpful.

Bulletin for Biblical Research 26 no. 4 (2016), with an initial article by Stanley E. Porter, a response by Jason A. Myers and Ben Witherington, and a rejoinder by Porter. For more on Porter vs. Witherington, see The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 55 no. 2 (2012) for a critique by Porter of Witherington's work in social-rhetorical criticism, and then JETS 58 no. 1 (2015) for Witherington's defense of analyzing NT texts in light of Greco-Roman rhetoric.

Classen, Carl Joachim. Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testament. Boston: Brill Academic, 2002.

Kennedy, George A., trans. and ed. Invention and Method: Two Rhetorical Treatises from the Hermogenic Corpus. Writings from the Greco-Roman World. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. This is one of the key ancient sources on rhetoric, and we can thank Dr. Kennedy for providing a modern translation (I've tried to translate parts of this on my own from TLG; I didn't fare too well!). The reader should also be aware that Aristotle's The Art of Rhetoric is a much earlier Greek source on the topic.

Kennedy, George A. New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

Martin, Troy W., ed. Genealogies of New Testament Rhetorical Criticism. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. Personally, I found this book very helpful in explaining the various views out there on rhetorical criticism in NT studies.

Muilenburg, James. "Form Criticism and beyond." Journal of Biblical Literature 88 no. 1 (1969): 1-18. Notwithstanding its somewhat misleading title, this article (originally a presidential address) is considered a landmark source that reignited interest in rhetorical criticism in biblical studies.

Watson, Duane Frederick. Invention, Arrangement, and Style: Rhetorical Criticism  of Jude and 2 Peter. SBLDS 104. Atlanta: Scholars, 1988.

Witherington, Ben, III. New Testament Rhetoric: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009.

Wuellner, Wilhelm. "Where Is Rhetorical Criticism Taking Us?" Catholic Biblical Quarterly 49 no. 3 (1987): 448-63. Wuellner helped facilitate a movement to pay more attention to the social dimensions of rhetoric.

Warning! Closing theological digression alert! As a final point, for those of us that  believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we must take the issue of rhetoric a step farther: how the Holy Spirit says something is relevant, in addition to what He said in Scripture. More than just the choice of words, such things as structure,  word-order, word-play, etc., are all part of the inspiration of the original documents. Which is why any claim for perfection of a particular translation actually diminishes the doctrine of inerrancy: The Holy Spirit himself inspired the alliteration in Hebrews 1:1, alliteration which is lacking in the King James (and almost all English translations). This means that no matter how solid a translation might be on Hebrews 1:1 (and the KJV translators did an excellent job here), if it did not alliterate in the target language, it is not perfectly preserving all that the Holy Spirit inspired. End of theological digression!

Why I had my "Intro to NT Exegesis Students" translate from the Septuagint

Introductory note: 
For those who would deny that the Septuagint even exists (as I read once in a KJV-only journal), I would point to the following: 
1. We have LXX manuscripts that predate the Incarnation and the time of the Apostles (e.g., the Rylands 458 papyrus on Deuteronomy, dated to the 2nd century BC) 2. Plenty of passages exist in the Greek NT (whatever text-type you prefer) that actually agrees with LXX manuscripts against the Masoretic (e.g., Romans 15:12; in addition, simply go through the book of Hebrews, which is predominantly LXX, including both where it is similar to the Hebrew MT and where it isn't). This rules out the possibility that the Apostles were simply creating their own translation on the fly (at least in some cases).
End introductory note.

I recently finished teaching an excellent "Intro to New Testament Exegesis" class for the seminary here at Baptist College of Ministry. My focus on the class was twofold: 1. To provide a basic introduction to all the essential elements of exegesis, including lexical semantics, blog diagramming, some discourse analysis, and a little bit of textual criticism; 2. To push them towards expertise in handling Koine Greek.

To the latter end, I threw a "competency" exam at them the last day of class where they had to translate from a chunk of the Didache (approx. 100-130 AD, give or take a few decades). However, throughout the semester, I gave them "translation and parsing" quizzes taken straight from the canonical Septuagint (by "Septuagint," a.k.a. LXX, a.k.a. "Old Greek," I mean the version of the Old Testament translated in Alexandria over a period of many decades before the birth of Jesus. There were other Greek translations that came later).

The Septuagint is, to a significant degree, the "Bible of the early church." The average Gentile Christian (and perhaps many Hellenized Jewish Christians) would not have been able to read Hebrew. Consequently, the LXX was used by the apostles quite often (though not always) when quoting the Old Testament. Consequently, the LXX is a key part of New Testament studies. By default, the LXX usage of a particular word should be considered before (though not in exclusion of) the usage by Josephus, Philo, or secular Greek authors. Case in point: "hilasterion" in Romans 3:25 (the word only occurs twice in the NT) is used in the LXX Torah to refer to the physical Mercy Seat in the tabernacle (quite frequently!) This would obviously be in the back of the mind of the majority of Greek-speaking Christians reading Romans 3:25, at least Christians with even a cursory familiarity with the Old Testament). In other words, the LXX is in one sense the "lexical currency" of NT writers (some more than others).

How the LXX should be viewed regarding inspiration, canonicity, etc. is an open question within certain areas of Christian scholarship (which is why Augustine had his infamous debate with Jerome over the latter's new translation). Yet the most that can be said is that the NT writers viewed a translation as an adequate vehicle for conveying God's word, even if it differed somewhat from the originals.

This is hardly the tip of the iceberg, of course! LXX research is an exciting, ongoing field of study (for what it's worth, I recently had an article accepted for publication that suggests Peter "corrected" the LXX in 1 Peter 2:6 for various reasons). For the reader who's interested in this topic, I would recommend as the essential starting point the book Invitation to the Septuagint by Karen H. Jobes and Moises Silva.

Some positive thoughts on Stanley Porter's new Romans commentary

To give this a bit more weight, I'll confess that I'm not the greatest Stanley Porter fan: whenever he and Daniel Wallace go head to head on Greek grammar, verbal aspect, etc., I generally side with 
Wallace (plus, my one Filologia Neotestamentaria article [2010, vol. 23] pushes against Porter's views a bit). Having said that, I do appreciate much of his work: for example, I have my NT Exegesis students read his article "Why the Laodiceans Received Lukewarm Water" in Tyndale Bulletin vol. 38 (1987).

Having said all that, his new commentary on Romans is fantastic (The Letter to the Romans: A Linguistic and Literary Commentary, New Testament Monographs; Sheffield, England: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015), and here's why. 
1. First of all, it highlights what Porter is best at, namely Discourse Analysis. Consequently, Porter does not go "verse-by-verse" as most commentaries but rather "discourse unit-by-discourse unit." This is a little bit of a down-side for those who wish to use it like other commentaries, but the trade-off is worth it in this case. Porter is able to give you a better picture of the progression of Paul's argument than most traditional commentaries.

2. Secondly, to my surprise, Porter's commentary does a fantastic job grappling with the theology of a passage (following K. Barth's exhortation!), and more often than not he's very quotable. For example:
Page 96, on Rom 3:21-26--"The sense of propitiation--no matter how unsettling to the refined modern mind--is no doubt suggested here. Christ Jesus is seen as the sacrifice, whom God himself offered, asa means of eliminating his righteous wrath, which is to be justifiably meted out upon humanity for its clear rebellion against God's standard. . . . Rather than wondering, however, how it is that God can or would want to offer a sacrifice to himself, the picture Paul paints, when viewed from another angle, is a more profound one. He depicts a God of both love and righteousness. A God of righteousness must hold true to his own character as his righteousness is exemplified and enshrined in his laws, whether written or not. Yet at the same time, he also offers the solution to the violation of his standards by a sinful and rebellious humanity, since he is a God of love. God's love and righteousness are the two faces of the same coin" (emphasis added).

Another example: Porter's discussion of Romans 5 and the theological implications of "reconciliation" (the focus of ch. 5) is excellent. Porter points out how that up to this point, Paul has only dealt with the legal side of the solution, yet the problem confronting humanity extends to the relational/personal side as well. Thus, "More than simply breaking God's legal code got humanity into trouble; it was a personal matter too (see Michel 1957:136). That personal dimension is what makes sinful humanity into God's enemies" (122). The solution, contra what one would expect, is that "it is God who initiates reconciliation with humanity" rather than vice versa (121).

This is a side of Porter I haven't seen much of before, and I feel he does an excellent job. If Porter's next project were a "Theology of the New Testament, I'd pre-order it (I was less pleased with his handling of the "I" passages in Romans 7, since I'm thoroughly convinced by Chang's article [see below], but oh well).

3. Thirdly, Porter's commentary is, for the most part, very up-to-date and well read. He has a few key omissions (Chang's article), but nevertheless may be the best re-searched commentary since Douglas Moo and Joseph Fitmyer.

Despite all those positives, it didn't replace Moo as my textbook for seminary exegesis on Romans (which I'm teaching this semester), since Douglas Moo's NICNT does a much better job presenting various viewpoints side-by-side, and ultimately a traditional "verse-by-verse" commentary is probably more helpful for a pastoral library. Also (no disrespect intended), Porter is still Porter (i.e., tough to read), as this one quote demonstrates: "Paul utilizes the interpersonal semantics of his language to express the tenor of his discourse, in which he engages in hypothetical dialogue with his hearers or readers" (p. 62).  

Nonetheless, his book would make excellent supplementary reading for any seminary class. Furthermore, if I were to teach a doctoral module on Romans (unlikely, since I've contributed nothing to scholarship on Romans), the students would be required to read three commentaries in their entirety: Moo (NICNT), Joseph Fitzmyer (AB), and Porter.

For the interested reader, here's some recent articles on Romans that I've found immensely interesting:
1. Hae-Kyung Chang, "The Christian Life in a Dialectical Tension? Romans 7:7-25 Reconsidered," Novum Testamentum 49 (2007).
Some readers may be aware that I had a mini-debate with philosopher and theologian Steven Cowan in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. In his rejoinder to my original article, Cowan argued that Romans 7 indicates a believe does not possess libertarian free will (click here for my original article; here for Cowan's response; here for my rejoinder). I had no strong opinions on the "I/ego" in Romans 7 at that time, and was forced to study the matter out. It was Chang's article that convinced me of the following: 
"In Rom. 6 and 8, respectively, Paul makes it clear that “being free under sin” and 'being free from the law of sin and death' are conditions that are true for every Christian. If one is a Christian, then these things are true; if one is not, they are not true. This means that the situation of 'I' depicted in Rom. 7:14–25 cannot be that of the 'normal' Christians, nor of an immature Christian. Nor can it describe the condition of any Christian living by the law because the Christian who is mistakenly living according to the law is yet a Christian and is therefore not 'under sin' or a 'prisoner of the law of sin'" (Chang, p. 268).

2. Jackson Wu, "Paul Writes to the Greek First and also to the Jew: The Missiological Significance of Understanding Paul's Purpose in Romans," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56.4 (2013). Though much ink has been spilt on the purpose behind Romans, Wu's article is an excellent new perspective on the significance of Paul's use of the term "Barbarian," etc., in light of his proposed mission to Spain. This is a highly theological article and quite the enjoyable (and spiritually challenging) read, especially the last few pages. Consider this excellent quote as a sample:
"The danger of individualism cannot be understated here. The gospel does not merely concern individuals; it saves all nations (cf. Gal 3:8). When we think about the church’s ministry, whom do we prioritize and why? How do we partition our world, city, and church? These are gospel questions" (Wu, p. 777).

3. Finally, because lately I've become obsessed with Wisdom literature (including Wisdom of Solomon), the following article has fascinated me: Jonathan A. Linebaugh, "Announcing the Human: Rethinking the Relationship Between Wisdom of Solomon 13-15 and Romans 1.18-2.11," New Testament Studies 57 (2011). Linebaugh's basic thesis is that Paul, in Rom 1:18-2:11 specifically reacts against a Jew arguing from Wisdom of Solomon and pushes back against the basic thrust of Wisdom 13-15 (the contrast between non-idolatrous Jew and idolatrous Gentile).

Well, I trust that is some food-for-thought for any of my readers interested in deeper studies of Romans (this post having barely scratched the surface, of course!). In closing, it's worth noting that, finally, the New International Greek Testament Commentary (NIGTC) on Romans has just come out, authored by Richard N. Longenecker, though I have not been able to check it out yet.

What I'm requiring my "Intro to NT Exegesis" students to read

I'm grateful for the privilege of teaching the grad class "Intro to New Testament Exegesis" this year at Baptist College of Ministry and Baptist Theological Seminary (10 students in the class). At the seminary level, I'll be alternating between Biblical Hebrew and NT Greek Exegesis classes every other year. This semester is a bit of an experiment, but here's what I'm having them read:

First off, the following three textbooks: 
1. Richard J. Erickson's A Beginner's Guide to New Testament Exegesis, which I felt was overall the most accessible, user-friendly, and well-rounded (narrowly beating out Gordon Fee's classic work), despite the fact he gives credence to "Q" (sort of).
2. Secondly, to give them a basic intro to textual criticism, they need my own Doktorvater's book New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide.
3. Finally (and this is the more experimental choice), I'm requiring them to read the brand new Discourse Grammar of the New Testament by Steven R. Runge. I like what I see in this book so far, and discourse analysis is extremely important, but this might be a bit too much for them to chew for now. We'll see. I might replace it next time around with the fantastic Advances in the Study of Greek by Constantine R. Campbell (though this book also is a bit heavy).

I'm focusing on a number of topics in this class, including background, lexical semantics, textual criticism, and the debate over the verb tenses.
1. For the verb tenses, I'm making them read Andrew Naselli's "A Brief Introduction to Verbal Aspect in the New Testament Greek" (Detroit Seminary Journal vol. 12), since it's a decent overview of the topic (though I suspect I'm less swayed by Porter's views than Naselli). In addition, I'm making them read both Frank Stagg's classic "The Abused Aorist" (JBL vol. 91) and Charles Smith's "Errant Aorist Interpreters" just to get the point across that they should not be basing a theological point on the Aorist tense! (the other tenses, maybe, but not the Aorist!)
2. For background studies, I have them read Stanley Porter's "Why the Laodiceans Received Lukewarm Water" (Tyndale Bulletin vol. 38). I stress repeatedly, in multiple classes, that a knowledge of the background of Laodicea (the problem with the water supply) helps avoid misunderstanding Jesus' point in Revelation 3. Of course, common sense helps a bit too: imagine you're living in Asia Minor, as a farmer, before the advent of the air conditioner. Why in the world would you think of "cold water" as a bad thing. Jesus' point is that, unlike refreshing cold water or therapeutic hot water, the Laodiceans, like their lukewarm water supply, are worthless and vomit-inducing. A failure to stop and think has caused many a pastor to preach this as if "cold" = "opposed to God" and "hot" = "on fire for God," with the odd theological result that somehow God prefers unbelievers dead-set against him to "lukewarm" believers. (I was delighted, however, to recently hear an excellent sermon by an evangelist that "gets it," referring specifically to the background of the city in his sermon; I believe this was the first sermon on this passage in 10+ years that I've heard that "got it right." Naturally the Holy Spirit can use even a relatively poor/lightweight sermon, provided it's not heretical, but I do believe He's grieved when we don't do our homework in our sermon prep!)
3. For lexical semantics, I have them read an excellent (and in-depth) article by Eckhard Schnabel on "The Meaning of Baptizein in Greek, Jewish, and Patristic Literature" in Filologia Neotestamentaria vol. 24. Schnabel, by giving us an extensive survey of the word in Greek literature, once for all puts to rest the idea that that baptizw is somehow a "technical" term that needs to be transliterated instead of translated.
4. Finally, I bring in some of my own textual biases and introduce them to the textual work of Maurice Robinson, specifically his "The Case for Byzantine Priority" in TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism vol. 6 and his "Rule 9, Isolated Variants, and the 'Test-Tube' Nature of the NA27/UBS4 Text" in Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology, eds. Stanley E. Porter and Mark J. Boda (Eerdmans, 2009).

There are, of course, quite a few more sources I would recommend for exegetical study, not least of which would be some helpful background resources such as the classic work by Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity and Burge, Cohick, and Green's The New Testament in Antiquity. In choosing a textbook for this class, I was actually very disappointed in how few good options there were. I felt I was limited pretty much to Erickson, Fee, Guthrie/Duvall (Biblical Greek Exegesis: A Graded Approach . . .), and Blomberg/Markley (A Handbook of New Testament Exegesis), and none of them felt "right," though I ended up going with Erickson. Hopefully there are some enterprising and budding scholars out there that would rise to the challenge! Specifically, I'm looking for something that focuses on block diagramming and the interplay of various clauses. Guthrie/Duvall deal with that, but in their own way, with what I consider a more "advanced" discourse-centered style of block-diagramming. That's all good and well, but I'm looking for a more "basic" system of block-diagramming.

Ultimately, for this class, the building blocks for New Testament Exegesis are (as I see it) a solid competency in Greek, a humble yet informed perspective on textual criticism, and understanding of words and their meanings (meaning is determined by the interplay of context and semantic range, not etymology), carefulness with the tenses, ability and desire to research the background of a text, a basic understanding of the flow of the discourse, and, most importantly, a love for the Word of God!

Anyways, a great class, with great students, and a great topic: the New Testament in Greek! More the Lord bless the teacher and the students!