The Core Assumption
Meaning lives in the text's persuasive design, in how it moves a particular audience to judgment and action.
The Four Assumptions
- Where meaning lives
- Meaning lives in the text's persuasive design: what it seeks to make its hearers believe, feel, and do.
- What the text is
- The text is a speech or letter crafted for an audience, whose arrangement and argument are as meaningful as its propositions.
- Who may interpret
- The interpreter is the reader trained in ancient rhetoric who can identify the text's genre of persuasion and its argumentative moves.
- What counts as a good reading
- A reading is adequate when it identifies the text's rhetorical situation, its arrangement, and its appeals, and shows how each serves the persuasive aim.
Genealogy
This method arose in the 20th c period (1960s onward, named by Amos Wilder and James Muilenburg).
Key proponents: James Muilenburg, George A. Kennedy, Ben Witherington III, Phyllis Trible.
Key texts: New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism by George A. Kennedy; Form Criticism and Beyond, address by James Muilenburg; Paul's Narrative Thought World discussions and Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation by Ben Witherington III.
The Procedure
These are the same steps The Workshop will walk you through.
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Fix the rhetorical situation
State the speaker or writer, the audience, the occasion, and the issue at stake.
Why this step matters: Persuasion is always situational; an argument means what it does to these hearers at this moment.
How to do it: Distinguish the historical audience from later readers, and name the decision or belief the text seeks.
What goes wrong here: Analyzing an argument without knowing what it was trying to win.
You record: Rhetorical situation. Done well when: The situation names speaker, audience, occasion, and stake.
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Determine the rhetorical genre
Classify the discourse as judicial, deliberative, or epideictic, and note mixed forms.
Why this step matters: Ancient rhetoric's three species carry different aims: judgment of the past, decision about the future, or praise and blame in the present.
How to do it: Follow the text's dominant aim rather than its surface form; a letter may be deliberative throughout.
What goes wrong here: Forcing a text into one species where it deliberately blends them.
You record: Genre classification. Done well when: The classification is justified by the text's aim and structure.
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Map the arrangement
Divide the text by the classical parts of a speech, such as exordium, narration, proof, and peroration, or by its own evident design.
Why this step matters: Arrangement shows how the author leads the audience step by step.
How to do it: Mark where the text departs from the classical pattern, since departures are often the most telling moves.
What goes wrong here: Imposing the full classical scheme on a text that follows Semitic or epistolary patterns instead.
You record: Arrangement map. Done well when: Each division is marked by a real transition in the text.
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Analyze the appeals and arguments
Identify the text's use of ethos, pathos, and logos, and its chief argumentative devices, such as example, enthymeme, and amplification.
Why this step matters: The appeals are where persuasion actually happens and where its ethics can be judged.
How to do it: Quote the operative lines for each appeal rather than labeling them from a distance.
What goes wrong here: Labeling appeals mechanically without showing their effect on the argument.
You record: Appeals analysis. Done well when: Each appeal is documented in the text and tied to the persuasive aim.
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Judge the rhetorical achievement
State what the discourse accomplishes as persuasion and where its argument is strong or strained.
Why this step matters: Rhetorical criticism evaluates as well as describes, by the text's own aims and by standards of honest argument.
How to do it: Separate effectiveness for the first audience from validity for later readers.
What goes wrong here: Assuming rhetorical power proves the truth of the claims made.
You record: Rhetorical judgment. Done well when: The judgment addresses both design and argumentative quality.
Inputs Required
- A biblical speech, letter, or prophetic oracle
- Knowledge of classical rhetorical categories
- The text's historical audience and occasion
Outputs Produced
- A rhetorical situation and genre analysis
- An arrangement map of the discourse
- An evaluation of its persuasive design
Quality Criteria
Under this method, a good reading is one that meets these tests:
- Fit between the rhetorical scheme and the text's own design
- Documented appeals and arguments
- Attention to the original audience
- Honest evaluation of argumentative strength
Common Errors
- Forcing Greco-Roman schemes onto Hebrew texts without remainder
- Treating rhetorical analysis as a substitute for exegesis of content
- Confusing a text's persuasiveness with its truth
Strengths
- It recovered the Bible's texts as acts of persuasion aimed at real audiences.
- It gave Paul's letters a disciplined reading through the rhetoric Paul actually learned and used.
- It attends to arrangement and effect, which propositional analysis misses.
Weaknesses and Critics
- The classical scheme fits some biblical books, especially Hebrew poetry and narrative, poorly.
- Its reconstructions of audience and occasion can be speculative.
- It risks reducing theology to technique.
John Barton: Barton cautioned that rhetorical categories imported from Greco-Roman handbooks can be imposed on texts that follow other conventions, so the method must prove its scheme fits each text rather than assume it. (Reading the Old Testament by John Barton)
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: Schüssler Fiorenza argued that rhetorical criticism, as classically practiced, treats rhetoric as neutral technique and neglects the power relations and exclusions that biblical rhetoric itself enacts, requiring a critical rhetorical analysis of domination. (Rhetorics of Empire and related feminist rhetorical writings, by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza)
Internal Schools
Classical rhetorical school: Kennedy's school reads New Testament texts directly by Greco-Roman rhetorical theory, its species, arrangement, and style.
Socio-rhetorical school: Witherington and Vernon Robbins expand rhetoric into socio-rhetorical interpretation, weaving texture, ideology, and social context into the analysis.
Exemplar Readings
Kennedy on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Kennedy analyzed the Sermon as deliberative rhetoric in epideictic dress, showing how its arrangement moves hearers toward a decision about the kingdom's way of life, with the Lord's Prayer at its structural center.
Kennedy and others on Galatians (Galatians 1-6): Rhetorical critics read Galatians as a judicial and deliberative blend: Paul's autobiographical narration defends his apostleship, the scriptural proofs argue the case, and the closing paraenesis presses the verdict into conduct.
What This Method Cannot Do
Rhetorical criticism cannot verify the truth of what a text persuades its audience to believe, since persuasion and truth are different questions. It cannot recover an audience's actual response, and it cannot force texts that follow other conventions into the classical scheme without remainder.
Site Stance
The site has not yet assigned its stance on this method. The stance assignments wait on the named reviewers, the same naming the Christian Assessment verdicts wait on. The method stands here in full in the meantime: a stance discloses the site's judgment, and it never filters what a reader may read or run. The stance values and their criteria stand on the criteria page.
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Across the Site
This method belongs to the Literary, Rhetorical, and Social-Scientific Approaches family. Its sources stand in the References register; its family stands among the site's tools; the positions it produces can be compared in the Diptych.
Primary Sources
- New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism by George A. Kennedy
- Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation works by Ben Witherington III
- Rhetoric and the New Testament essays by Stanley Porter and others
Secondary Sources
- Reading the Old Testament by John Barton
- Rhetorics of Empire by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
- Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, as reference