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  • From: "Jim Hester" <hester AT jasper.uor.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Roman churches
  • Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 15:53:21 -0800


Jim West wrote:

> What was the precipitating event which caused a variety of greetings to be
> included in one place?

Well, that is an historical critical question to which I shall attempt a
rhetorical critical response.

In his work on Symbolic Convergence Theory -- see the bibliography on the
JSRCNT web site listed in my signature -- Ernest Bormann talks about the
"persona" of the speaker. By that he means in part the view of him/her held
by the hearer, a view that may be largely a construction based on roles the
speaker has played in the community. You get an idea of persona and the
problems it raised for Paul in the Thessalonian letter. There he has to
discriminate between his "apostolic" persona and his "personal" persona,
which he describes as that of a caring, nurturing nurse. Some of the same
distinction shows up in the Corinthian correspondence.

The problem he faces in writing to the Romans is that they have, at best,
second hand knowledge of his persona, provided by persons who might know of
him but were not his emissaries. He had little or nothing to do with the
their construction of his persona, and he hadn't played a meaningful role in
their communities. Therefore, he has to establish it by means of
correspondence, a prodigious argumentative task. His persona is that of
apostle to the Gentiles. Who can help him attest to that calling?
Presumably some folks in the Roman congregations who might have some
first-hand knowledge of him. These folks could bolster the work of Phoebe
by vouching for the accuracy for her representation of him, but they would
have to be identified by a kind of sleight-of-hand form of recommendation, a
request to "greet" them.

Therefore, "the precipitating event" was the inventional task he had when
writing the letter.

That leads me to one other proposal I am formulating. Given the probability
that Paul had very little current understanding of the historical situation
in the Roman congregations -- there is no analogy to "Chloe's people" in the
text -- it seems to me that the rhetorical situation might well have been
provided by the controversy he had recently gone through in Corinth. The
fitting response to that, given Paul's desire to go to Spain, was to
establish his apostolic persona and to describe the core of his Christian
paideia, "faith which produces obedience" to paraphrase Daniel B. Wallace
(Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics), for the Romans in an attempt to head off
controversy when he got to Rome.

Anyway, that is where I think I am heading in my ruminations over Romans
1:1-12.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Hester "Never be afraid to try something new.
736 Buckingham Drive Remember, amateurs built the ark.
Redlands, CA 92374 Professionals built the Titanic."
(909) 792-0533
hester AT uor.edu http://rhetjournal.uor.edu




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