The Bible's Art of Persuasion: Ideology, Rhetoric, and Poetics in Saul's Fall
In justifying the ways of God to man, the biblical persuader operates under a triple constraint. The rhetoric presses for consensus, the ideology for laying down the law, the poetics for an intricate treatment of character and history. The problem is always how to reconcile these opposites. How to w...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
College
1983
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| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
Year: 1983, Volume: 54, Pages: 45-82 |
| IxTheo Classification: | HB Old Testament |
| Further subjects: | B
Rhetoric
B Saul Israel, King |
| Parallel Edition: | Electronic
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| Summary: | In justifying the ways of God to man, the biblical persuader operates under a triple constraint. The rhetoric presses for consensus, the ideology for laying down the law, the poetics for an intricate treatment of character and history. The problem is always how to reconcile these opposites. How to win over the audience without betraying God? How to vindicate an awe-inspiring value system where the shortcuts of didacticism are precluded by poetic rule? Saul's rejection serves to illustrate the working of the Bible's art of ideological persuasion. The challenge arises from what to human eyes may appear a glaring disproportion between the king's sin and punishment. Hence the rhetoric functions to counteract and manipulate the reader's judgment so as to bring it into alignment with God's. This manipulation has some distinctive strategic features: the avoidance of black-and-white rendering; the multiple perspectives on the affair (notably a clash between God and Samuel); the narrator's flexible handling of the ideology to meet persuasive exigencies; the interplay of heavenly and social norms; and the principled recourse to indirection. Tactically, the rhetorical repertory includes the arts of sequence, analogy intratextual and intertextual, repetition with variation, dialogue, language in its various aspects — all coordinated into a single persuasive whole. With preaching ruled out, the control strategy turns on an artful network of relations. |
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| ISSN: | 0360-9049 |
| Contains: | In: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
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