Biblical Studies and Rhetorical Criticism: Bridging the Divide Between the Hebrew Bible and Communication

Abstract

Throughout much of the 20th century, important albeit limited interactions have taken place between the disciplines of biblical studies and rhetorical criticism. Initially, such connections involved the study of genre in biblical form criticism. With James Muilenburg's Presidential Address to the Society of Biblical Literature in 1968, however, biblical studies became much more engaged in rhetorical criticism. Due to the narrowness of Muilenburg's vision, however, such engagement at first focused primarily on stylistics. It then expanded as Muilenburg's students and others arrived at more mature understandings of rhetoric. Biblical studies currently parallels rhetorical criticism in that it includes a fair amount of ideological criticism, which is usually focused on the biblical text, biblical scholarship, or broader society. Despite these areas of continuity, biblical scholars have often ignored some of the most prominent scholars in rhetorical criticism, including Edwin Black and Kenneth Burke.

Acknowledgements

He would like to thank Carole Blair and J. Robert Cox for their direction.

Notes

1. Thus, this half of the field is sometimes called “Old Testament studies.” Because that term is offensive to some Jewish scholars who understand it to entail supersessionist connotations, the term “Hebrew Bible” is frequently used. Other terms are used as well, such as the “First Testament” and the “Tanakh” (an acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the Torah, Nebiim, and Ketubim), though these are not as popular. The term “Old Testament” is still employed when a specifically Christian audience is in view, for example, with analyses of “Old Testament ethics.”

2. This society is the preeminent scholarly society for biblical studies, analogous to the National Communication Association. Its meeting in November 2005 (held jointly with the American Academy of Religion) hosted over 9,000 attendees.

3. For example, mature biblical form critics would quickly agree that a text “may have some elements of one genre … and still be an exemplar of another” (Campbell & Jamieson, 1977, p. 17).

4. As the work edited by Sweeney and ben Zvi (2003) and the essay by Newsom (2005) demonstrate, analysis of genre has continued to the present day, albeit with several important changes. Interestingly, at roughly the same time that Muilenburg (1969/1992) criticized biblical studies for giving too much attention to genre and focusing too much on generalities, Black (1965/1978, p. 177) criticized neo-Aristotelian approaches for giving insufficient attention to genre and focusing too much on particularities. While biblical studies moved beyond form criticism to what would lead to neo-Aristotelian approaches, rhetorical criticism moved beyond neo-Aristotelian approaches to analyses of form and genre. In this sense, the two disciplines simultaneously moved in opposite directions to where the other formerly was.

5. Muilenburg (1992, p. 50) himself uses the term in this sense.

6. Sometimes, the phrase “the new literary criticism” is used to differentiate this enterprise from “the old literary criticism,” i.e., source criticism. This phrase is more common in works from the 1980s and early 1990s than today.

7. Lenchak (1993) is a sophisticated study worthy of analysis. Haraguchi (2002), meanwhile, could have given additional attention to methodological issues.

8. One suspects that Black (1965/1978) received relatively little attention in biblical studies in part because he was calling rhetorical critics to move beyond an overemphasis on particularity to analyses of genre at roughly the same time that Muilenburg was calling biblical critics to move beyond an overemphasis on generality away from exclusive analyses of genre.

9. The only reviews of this work listed in an EBSCOhost search of the ATLA Religion Database are: Henderson (1989), Preus (1962), and Singh (1962). These reviews, especially the last two, appear in journals devoted more to the general study of religion than to the critical study of the Bible.

10. Another ideological critique of the guild is Avalos (2006). For a response, see Marchal (2006). One of the most controversial critiques of the guild is Whitelam (1996).

11. “YHWH” is the designation in biblical studies sometimes used to render the Hebrew yhwh, which most popular English translations render as “the Lord.”

12. “Textual criticism” in biblical studies refers to the analysis of variants among ancient biblical manuscripts.

13. This title is based on Deuteronomy 30:19, which reads, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (NRSV).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew R. Schlimm

Matthew R. Schlimm (B.A., Asbury College, 1998; M. Div., Duke University, 2001) is a Ph.D. student in religion, majoring in the Hebrew Bible at Duke University and minoring in rhetorical criticism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill