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EPI TO AUTO: Studies in Honour of Petr Pokorny on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, pp. 284-297 Socio-Rhetorical Hermeneutics and CommentaryIt is a great pleasure to begin a discussion of socio-rhetorical hermeneutics and commentary in a volume dedicated to Professor Dr. Petr Pokorny. He has performed a major role of leadership in the application of new methods and the development of new hermeneutical theory in his home context of the Czech Republic, and his unending devotion and love for the field of New Testament study has enriched the lives of people in many countries throughout the world. It has been the pleasure of my wife and me to welcome Professor Pokorny both to Emory University and our home in the United States. We also have enjoyed the gracious hospitality of Professor Pokorny and his wife Vera in Prague. During our visit in October 1993, a robust crowd of students and professors listened intently as he translated my lecture on socio-rhetorical criticism during my delivery of it at Charles University. With the subsequent publication of The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse (Robbins 1996a) and Exploring the Texture of Texts (Robbins 1996b), basic guides to socio-rhetorical interpretation are now available to interpreters. A basic question remains, however, concerning how an interpreter should use the insights in these two books. The term "socio-rhetorical" is currently appearing in significantly different contexts, and interpreters are pursuing somewhat different goals with strategies they consider to be socio-rhetorical in nature. It is an honor to reflect on the nature of socio-rhetorical hermeneutics and commentary in a volume dedicated to Professor Pokorny. This essay unfolds in two sections. The first section identifies central features of the hermeneutic that guides the socio-rhetorical approach described in the two books cited above. The second section contains an initial attempt to delineate a procedure whereby socio-rhetorical commentary may produce a mode of interpretation that takes the rich tradition of New Testament commentary into yet richer fields of historical, social, cultural, ideological, and theological insight to equip it with flexibility and tenacity for the twenty-first century. Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation as a Rhetorical Hermeneutics The first step is to associate socio-rhetorical criticism with rhetorical hermeneutics. There are strong reasons for exploring the relation of socio-rhetorical interpretation to hermeneutics. All knowledge, according |