|
Back to Robbins' Publications Jump to any page of the article: p. 284 p. 285 p. 286 p. 287 p. 288 p. 289 p. 290 p. 291 p. 292 p. 293 p. 294 p. 295 p. 296 p. 297 |
All four gospels move the operational processes of the stories and sayings of Jesus into representational processes by means of a hermeneutical rhetoric in which Old Testament scripture hovers over the stories and sayings of Jesus like the Declaration of Independence hovers over Lincoln's Gettysburg address (Leff 1995). Each gospel does this in its own way, but a primary feature that all the New Testament gospels share with each other that they often do not share with gospels not included in the canon is a "New Testament mode" of scripturalizing the stories and sayings of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles moves the aspect of Paul's hermeneutical rhetoric that focuses on the activities of himself and his followers into a representational model that scripturalizes stories of select followers of Jesus. The pastoral and catholic epistles, in turn, transform operational Pauline discourse into representational Christian discourse. The Apocalypse of John transforms apocalyptic discourse of Jesus into representational divine discourse and action, again employing a thick scripturalizing mode. The challenge for socio-rhetorical commentary is to exhibit and perpetuate the hermeneutical rhetoric at work in the transformation of the earlier operational processes into the later representational processes. Conclusion It is possible for interpreters to use social and rhetorical strategies of analysis and interpretation to advance goals of a historical, literary, social-scientific, theological, or ideological hermeneutics that are not constitutive of a socio-rhetorical hermeneutics. A socio-rhetorical hermeneutics is dynamically interactionist, creating a dialogical and dialectical relation among multiple disciplinary modes of analysis and interpretation. Likewise, a socio-rhetorical hermeneutics is grounded in ethnography of orality, writing, and reading. If social and rhetorical analysis limits itself to historical, literary, theological, or ideological aspects of the New Testament, rather than approaching the texts as socio-rhetorical discourse, it enacts some other hermeneutics than a socio-rhetorical hermeneutics. Socio-rhetorical commentary is a counterpart of socio-rhetorical hermeneutics. In rhetorical terms, socio-rhetorical commentary is hermeneutical rhetoric grounded in ethnography of orality, writing, and reading. Socio-rhetorical commentary enacts the operational and representational processes within New Testament discourse in an inventional mode. Beginning with socio-rhetorical features in the operational discourse, socio-rhetorical commentary produces a hermeneutical rhetoric of questions, if-then statements, when-then statements, rationales, negatives, commands, recitations of ancient authority, and narrative story in early Christian discourse. The production of socio-rhetorical commentary |