Corpus-Paul

["David C. Hindley" <DHindley AT compuserve.com>]

On 05/21/99, ""David Amador" <TheVoidBoy AT sprynet.com>" wrote:

> Could you clarify a bit on your method?  My first impression is that you > 
> do
> not see the need for argumentative transitions.  Rhetoric is not logic,
> hence redundancy and elaborations are a vital part of persuasion.
> 
> Unless I'm reading you incorrectly.

Let me answer by way of comment. 

I have been reading Hendrikus Boers' _The Justification of the Gentiles_ 
(Hendrickson, 1994), who applied discourse analysis and rhetorical analysis 
to Galatians and Romans.

In Appendix I Boers outlines principals and procedures in discourse 
analysis, making it clear that many levels of meaning can be derived from 
any given text using these methods. On page 240 he includes a discourse 
analytical diagram showing how Gal 1:18-24 can be diagrammed four different 
ways (two each, by syntactic structure or semantic structures).

He complains that "Interpreters of Galatians have been aware of these 
difficulties for a very long time. The task of linguistics, as I understand 
it, is not to do things that are new, but to clarify and to provide an 
account of how meaning is factually communicated in language. Its task is 
to bring to consciousness what the ordinary user of the language, speaker 
as well as hearer, writer as well as reader, "knows" without being aware of 
it."

To be blunt, I come away with the impression that these techniques were 
being forced upon the text as a way to reinterpret the jumble of 
incompatable ideas present in them in a way that preserves the text as it 
stands, by making it the product of Paul's rhetorical genius.

While he does not use the term, I felt as though Paul was being portrayed 
as a sophist who makes his points by means of confusion and demagoguery. I 
think there must be an easier way to explain the discordant mix of ideas 
present in these epistles.

That criticism is not directed at you, David, as I have only recently read 
the article on 2 Cor available on your web page, and I am too unfamiliar 
with the terrain and your work to draw any parallels with Boer's work.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, OH
dhindley AT compuserve.com