Rhetorical Criticism in Biblical Commentaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-40
2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Olbricht

Biblical commentators through history have employed various methods to facilitate interpretation, including rhetorical criticism, with emphasis on classical rhetoric. Despite a resurgence of interest in rhetoric in the past two decades, only a few commentators in the New Interpreter's Bible and the Hermeneia series have undertaken in-depth rhetorical analysis. Most observations of these commentators are derived from the rhetorics of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian and the Rhetorica ad Herennium. This essay sets forth and evaluates the various methods of rhetorical analysis and their employment in the two above-mentioned commentary series.


Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Sumi Shimahara

Perceptions of tyranny are also the subject of this chapter, which discusses the ways in which terms deriving from the root ‘tyran-’ were employed in biblical commentaries and other sources of the Carolingian era. The chapter shows that eighth- and ninth-century authors developed a distinct discourse on tyranny by blending pagan and patristic views with their own ethical-political principles. Carolingian conceptions of tyranny were grounded in considerations pertaining both to legality and to morality, with vice, eschatological concerns, and the association with the devil playing as important a role as issues of illegitimacy, usurpation, or malfeasance. These conceptions were moreover fairly elastic, as related terms not only had a wide connotative range but were also used to describe a variety of abusive behaviors of a royal, secular, or ecclesiastical origin.


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Romagnuolo

Political discourse has been the subject of increasing interest in recent decades with the development of ideological and rhetorical criticism focusing on US presidential speeches, especially after the events of 9/11. Indeed, extensive research literature already exists in the field of American presidential rhetoric. The same cannot be said for studies of political texts available in translation. Currently, translation studies seems to be more concerned with the politics and the politicization of translation than with the translation of political texts, which have been examined more from a synchronic perspective than a diachronic one. Using a diachronic parallel corpora of Italian translations (published in books and newspapers) of a specific genre of US presidential speech, the inaugural address, this study highlights recurring translation strategies as well as problems, related to culture-bound and value-laden political terms, style, and phraseology. This research also seeks to contribute to the definition of political language as a language for specific purposes.


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