Corpus-Paul

["Jim Hester" <hester AT jasper.uor.edu>]

In Matson's extensive response to Amador's paper, he says:

[snip
>  But later in the article, Amador notes that in chapters 10-13, Paul
> is defending his ethos as a result of a threat by "outsiders."
>  And here is one of the rubs that I see.  How can one see a unity of
> argumentation when a central basis for the argument -- the ethos of
> the speaker -- is displayed in such radically different ways?
[snip]

There is an explanation to this phenomenon provided by Perelmannian
rhetorical theory.  Perelmann speaks of the "argumentative situation",  as
distinct from what Bitzer calls the "rhetorical situation." This is the
situation created by the argument itself, or at least the situation that the
speaker hopes to create, given the fact that as a neo-Aristotlean Perelmann
believes the argument is completed in and by the audience.  This situation
is not only contextual but fluid.  In the circumstance Paul usually faced,
he would have had to try to imagine the impact of his argument on his
audience and calculate their level of persuasion.  It would seem that we
might be able to identify points where he believed that the audience might
hold a new understanding of the rhetorical situation and thereby be ready to
be moved to a new argumentative situation.  This change on Paul's part might
be a kind of "bolt from the blue"!  In my essay for the Kennedy festschrift,
"Placing the Blame:  The Presence of Epideictic in Gal 1 and 2," I try to
show that there is a shift in the argumentative situation from the end of
the chreia elaboration in 2:14-21 to the opening of Chapter 3:  "I do not
nullify the grace of God...You stupid Galatians..."  The blame has been
shifted from Paul to the Galatians by the argument in Chapters 1 and 2!

In a argument like the one in 2 Cor it is probably better to assume that the
audience may have had one perspective of the speaker's ethos, a perspective
that the speaker had to change, or upon which the speaker had to elaborate.
The judgment that there appears to be a radical change in ethos is,
therefore, the audience's judgment, the point that the speaker was trying to
make in order to make his argument and bring them (us?) to the point of
conviction!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Hester                   "Never be afraid to try something new.
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