Decrees for the “Volunteers” of the People

The Damascus Document’s Pesher of the Well (CD 6:2–11) has generally been treated as an isolated unit, either as an example of Qumran exegesis or as evidence for the history of the sect. The present study offers a fresh reading of this section that gives special attention to its rhetorical function within the document and its relationship to the document’s legal material in particular. It is argued that the pesher was intended to authorize the body of legal rulings found within the document by interpreting the two lines of Numbers 21:18 as an outline of two stages of the sect’s history. The pesher is built around two anchor-words in the lemma: ‮שרים‬‎ (“officials”), a reference to the sect’s founders who established an authoritative body of torah rulings, and ‮נדיבי העם‬‎, a reference to the sect’s later “volunteer initiates” who were to remain faithful to these rules throughout the Epoch of Wickedness.

Romanian de fapt - from an adjectival adjunct to an attention marker

This research traces back the development of the Romanian phrase de fapt (‘in fact, actually, indeed’), based on written and oral corpora. De fapt has been attested in Romanian since late 19th century; chronologically, it is the last of the three Romanian adverbial expressions (alongside în faptă and în fapt) that went through all the stages of the grammaticalization cline proposed by Elizabeth Traugott for this type of adverbs. However, we consider that this phrase actually goes even further by becoming, in press headlines, an attention marker (Fraser 2009: 297), thus joining the category of să vezi ce s-a întâmplat (‘you won’t believe what has happened’). Thus, in press titles such as Cu ce femeie a petrecut aseară Pepe, de fapt (‘Who is the woman Pepe actually spent the evening with’), de fapt loses its contrastive discourse marker rhetorical function of contrasting with a previous element and acquires a new function, i.e. of inviting the reader to read a story that (s)he would have otherwise overlooked. In this type of occurrences, de fapt acquires, for the first time, an intersubjective value.

A Man of Our Times: Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣbahānī’s Pioneering Vision of Male Love

The ghazal chapters of Muḥammad b. Dāwūd al-Iṣbahānī’s poetry anthology Kitāb al-Zahrah include 109 brief poems attributed to baʿḍ ahl hādhā al-ʿaṣr (a Man of Our Times). Ibn Dāwūd has conventionally been assumed to be the author of these poems. The “Man of Our Times” poems stand out among ‘Abbāsid ghazal because of their focus on justice, their appeals to reason, and their depiction of brotherly friendship (ikhā’) imbued with passionate love (hawā). Moreover, their repurposing of motifs from the poetic canon, such as the lover’s desert wanderings and nature’s lamentation in sympathy with him, adds to their tone of erudition. This gives the impression that the relationship they describe is an intense friendship between educated men of similar age. As with other early ʿAbbāsid bodies of ghazal, the poems can be categorized according to rhetorical function. For the “Man of Our Times” poems, these subcategories are 1) personal messages, 2) aphorisms, 3) petitions for justice, 4) alienation narratives, and 5) urban narratives.

reality effect': the figure seen from behind in Carracci's art

This article focuses on Carracci's frequent use of the figure seen from behind in their graphic and pictorial oeuvre (i.e., in the frescoes in Palazzo Fava, in the Cloister of San Michele in Bosco by Ludovico, in the series of the body in art by Annibale, and the engravings Ogni cosa vince l'oro by Agostino). It claims that the figure seen from behind plays a rhetorical function instrumental to the Carracci's search for a new form of naturalism in painting. In particular it creates a 'reality effect' that enhances the naturalistic rendering of the pictorial composition. On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

Christmas presents for John Tzetzes: a new verse epistle from the letter collection

The corpus of Tzetzes’ epistles edited by Pietro Luigi Leone in 1972 includes 107 letters. However, two of the earliest manuscript witnesses of the collection bequeath a 108th letter consisting of 16 iambs and closing the corpus. The short missive is addressed to one Konstantinos Phyteianos. The present paper provides the first edition and translation into English of this letter, analysing its authorship and contents as well as its rhetorical function within the corpus.

Dissent and disparagement: Dealing with conflict and the pain of rejection in John

This article addressed the issue of how the author of the Gospel according to John portrayed dissent, in particular, how the author had his protagonists respond to the experience of rejection by those typically designated as ‘the Jews’. Research thus far has usually focused on the identity of the dissenters but rarely on the way dissent was handled. This article’s aim was to examine the range of responses to dissent. It employed a sequential reading of the text to identify the various responses and then brought these findings into comparison with the way dissent was handled in related documents of the time, Matthew and Hebrews. It found that responses included not only argument and blame, including threat of divine wrath but also, beyond these, ad hominem allegations that those who dissent were inherently bad or beholden to the devil or had not been predestined or chosen by God to respond. Such categories were, however, not absolute, because the author assumed that people could choose to respond positively and so move from one apparently fixed and predetermined category to another. They served a rhetorical function. A further ploy was to reduce Israel’s tradition to witness and foreshadowing within the tension of asserting both continuity and discontinuity.Contribution: The article concluded that such strategies served in part to comfort and reassure hearers engaged in the process of grief at rejection. As such they warranted critical reflection.

Rhetorical Codes of Political Discourse: the Realization of the Strategic Potential of Acrothesis

Pragmatics and expressiveness of texts are formed through rhetorical devices. However, when evaluating the potential of specific rhetorical devices, one should consider the discourse characteristics of the text. Modern linguistics draws attention to the suggestive nature of the rhe-torical devices that form the structure of utterances. In this regard, there is an increasing interest in in-depth analysis of rhetorical techniques used to implement high impact strategies. A systematic study of rhetorical devices within a certain discourse would give a clearer idea of their rhetorical function. Specific strategies can be understood by examining rhetorical devices in the context of the pragmatics and the genre of a given text. Thus, information about a specific rhetorical device is converted from separate independent facts into a conditional sign unity, or a code. Given the discourse specificity of this code, linguists describe it as “rhetorical.” By analyzing the text, we identify the rhetorical code of the discourse in question. The more rhetorical devices used in the discourse are considered, the more rhetorical codes can be used to form new speech strategies. In this article, we consider the implementation of acrothesis in political discourse. Acrothesis is a rhetorical device based on the relationship of affirming something at the expense of denying its opposite. It is implemented through utilizing homogeneous members of the sentence with the obligatory negation of the opposite in meaning. Perceiving the structure and content of the rhetorical device reveals the perlocutionary purpose of the utterance, and analyzing the rhetorical device allows us to understand its properties and to identify which speech strategies are implemented by using acrothesis. Primarily, these are strategies of persuasion, persuasion, and manipulation. Principles of implementing speech strategies are important for understanding the structure of political discourse.

“Can You Hear Me Now?…Good!”: A Deaf Adder and the Inversion of Disability Imagery in Psalm 58:5–6

This article explores the use of deaf imagery in Psalm 58 through a cultural model of disability and a historicist approach to highlight the unique rhetorical function of disability imagery within the psalm. In the Hebrew Bible, deafness is typically an affliction to be avoided, and deaf groups typically need Yahweh’s protection along with other disabled groups. In Psalm 58, however, an adder which represents wicked people who oppose the psalmist’s community voluntarily disables itself to better withstand the efforts of those who would try to neutralize its threat. For the adder, disability is a source of strength, not weakness. For the psalmist’s community, however, disability is still a problem which necessitates crying out to Yahweh for relief. The use of deaf imagery within this text highlights the contrast between Yahweh, who is righteous and fully-abled, and the wicked/their foreign deities, who judge unfairly and who are depicted as disabled.

The Parable of the Talents (Matt 25:14–30)

There is an unresolved tension between the parable of the Talent’s Matthean literary arrangement and readings proposed by modern scholars using socio-historical research to assess the parable’s reception by a first century audience. Drawing on metaphor theory and incorporating insights from the main interpretive trajectories found in modern scholarship on this parable, the author here proposes a new literary-critical reading that resolves this tension. He argues the parable’s rhetorical function within the Matthean narrative is to prepare the Matthean disciples to lead the universal expansion of the mission of the Matthean Jesus in the post-Easter period.