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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.7, No.7

Publication Date: July 25, 2020

DOI:10.14738/assrj.77.8596.

Padilla, J. D. (2020). New Rhetoric and the Socio-Rhetorical Method: As a Modern Approach to Biblical Literary Criticism. Advances in

Social Sciences Research Journal, 7(7) 178-188.

New Rhetoric and the Socio-Rhetorical Method: As a Modern

Approach to Biblical Literary Criticism

José David Padilla

Department of Theology and Philosophy

Barry University, Miami Shores, Florida,

United States of America

ABSTRACT

The new rhetoric studies the discursive practices present in a text and

tries to understand them as a literary method to persuade a specific

audience to accept a new law or change their behavior, assuming a

worthy moral, philosophical or religious truth. The new rhetoric covers

the literary or rhetorical analysis of discourse while analyzing the

elements proper to the social and cultural milieu of its intended

audience. The aid of the human sciences, especially cultural

anthropology and the sociology of religion, is necessary to capture

better the world the loci of the speaker and the audience of the text. The

method, which combines social and anthropological analysis with the

new rhetorical analysis, is called social rhetoric. The social rhetoric

analysis aims to hit the socio-cultural context in which the texts were

conceived, especially when the text does not give any clues of it. In

Biblical interpretation, these two forms of literary analysis will help to

understand the relationships existent between the author of a discourse

and its readers (the intended audience). Such an approach will not only

study the social history and social aspects where the books of the Bible

were born, but will also see the rhetoric of the texts as an essential

component of the text’s social, political, cultural, and ideological

context. After all, the Word of God became flesh and dwelt in a particular

culture, with a specific language and in a precise historical time.

Keywords: rhetoric, new rhetoric, socio-rhetoric, sociology, cultural

anthropology, Biblical criticism, exegesis.

INTRODUCTION

Biblical scholars have used new methods of literary criticism, which has evolved considerably since

the last century, in part due to their fascination with the Bible not only as a sacred text but as a work

of literature. It is within this context of significant developments in the field of linguistic and literary

studies that Biblical interpretation has moved one step forward from its historical-critical method

into the area of persuasive language, one of them being rhetorical analysis1. The Pontifical Biblical

Commission document The Interpretation of the Bible in the church highlights the importance of this

method of literary analysis, “The Bible is not simply a statement of truths. It is a message that carries

within itself a function of communication within a particular context, a message which carries with

it a certain power of argument and a rhetorical strategy” (Pontifical Biblical Commission, 1994)2.

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol.7, Issue 7, July-2020

With this analysis, the Biblical interpreter identifies and examines the proclamation of the Word of

God in its rhetorical structure including not only it’s beginning, thesis, and conclusion, but also the

rhetorical situation in which the original communication took place, the issue addressed in it, and

the solution to solve it3. The same Pontifical Biblical Commission presents three layers of rhetorical

analysis in the interpretation of the Bible, the classical rhetoric of the Greco-Roman period of the

Bible, the Semitic literary style, and the new rhetoric that aim to penetrate the impact of the

discourses in the social context of the original audiences. It is the latest that has emerged as one of

the most recent rhetorical analysis, especially in one of its methods called socio-rhetorical approach

and how to apply it in the interpretation of a Biblical discourse.

NEW RHETORIC AS METHOD OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION

Rhetoric, as the art of speaking in public to persuade an audience. However, in recent years, the

popular concept of a rhetorical discourse as a weapon used by tricksters and demagogues who

manipulated their audience with beautiful and flattering words4. Desiring to rescue the reputation

of rhetoric, a good number of academics in the United States of America and Europe began, in the

middle of the 20th century, to develop what they called “theory of argument.” They discovered that

contemporary informal speeches and discourses were more successful when they adopted the five

canons of a Greco-Roman persuasive discourse (inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and

pronuntiatio)5. This style of analyzing non-formal discursive composition is known as “the new

rhetoric.” The new rhetoric is, then, a theory of argumentation that aims to study the discursive

techniques used by a speaker to provoke or increase the adherence of its audience to specific

predetermined values, previously accepted and now presented in the rhetorical speech6.

The new rhetoric starts precisely from the third category of Greco-Roman rhetoric (elocutio),

focusing on the way the audience accepts the message. The speaker’s ethos is verified in the ability

to obtain a good response from the audience. In turn, the speaker’s logos is not something inherent

to him but comes from the assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs shared with the addressed audience.

Finally, the audience does not have a mere passive function in its emotional reaction (pathos). Still,

it offers the referential framework (rhetorical-situational context) that will give the absolute value

to the message transmitted and for which the speaker chose and organized its arguments cleverly.

Hence, the audience is the focus for the new rhetoric because it investigates those familiar and

understandable elements for the listeners of a persuasive speech, and how the discourse uses them

to induce their audience to accept its thesis. In this way, the new rhetoric demonstrates that the

transmission of a doctrine is not unilaterally but reciprocally: the speaker uses examples, images,

stories, poems, and any elements familiar to its listeners to ensure that its theory is understood and

accepted7. According to Chaïm Perelman, new rhetoric takes into consideration the following steps

in evaluating a speech8:

The audience

The speech must be adapted to the circumstances of the audience to be effective. The speaker takes

into account the intended audience when preparing the argumentation of the discourse, to win their

acceptance or reinforce the values of the thesis. It invites, therefore, to elaborate the discourse,

keeping in mind two models of an audience: the specific audience and the universal audience. When

it comes to the first, the speaker who presents a proposal or thesis to a group of listeners or readers

of a specific place should build their arguments based on values already known and previously

accepted by them. Thus, starting from a common consensus, it will elaborate arguments that invite

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.77.8596 180

Padilla, J. D. (2020). New Rhetoric and the Socio-Rhetorical Method: As a Modern Approach to Biblical Literary Criticism. Advances in Social Sciences

Research Journal, 7(7) 178-188.

its private audience to rethink their present condition, to adhere to the proposed thesis and, if it is

the case, reject any other proposal offered as contrary to their values. If, later on, a publisher desires

to address the same speech to a broad audience, the discourse will transmit the necessary and

fundamental values of the original author, avoiding the elements that characterized the first or

particular audience. This revision is possible because both audiences share in common the authority

given to the author, the value, and the doctrine of the discourse, even if they are very different from

each other, depending on their own culture and history. Furthermore, in the general audience, some

of its members may even reproduce many features of the historical situation of the original audience

(i.e., the internal conflicts among members of the same church).

Shared values

The speaker must be clear about the values accepted in common by his audience before presenting

his thesis and organizing the arguments. It must include those values rooted in the daily life of the

intended audience. These values will be the starting point of the discourse and do not need to defend

them in the argument. Then, the speaker must select and organize those values hierarchically

because the most important of them may serve as a starting point for the discussion according to

the goal conceived by the speaker. If the speaker wants to introduce a new thesis, the method used

must criticize the old argument and replace it with an original dissertation and with new values

(based on shared values) so that the audience accepts and adheres to this new proposal. The aim of

the speech is for the audience to distinguish between those values accepting the true ones and

rejecting the obvious ones. The former will have an ethical and moral weight in themselves, while

the latter will be dismissed as worthless. The author could present these values in abstract or

concrete forms (such as values), in a homogeneous or a heterogeneous form (in the case of their

gradualness, honesty, and truth).

Prepare a thesis

For a speaker to succeed, even in an informal speech, he must offer an argument designed according

to the values previously accepted by his audience. According to new rhetoric, the discourse should

focus on reinforcing listeners’ filial adherence to values accepted as “fundamental values” such as

truth, reason, freedom, justice, humanity, etc. Thus, the speaker will achieve the adherence of his

listeners to his proposed thesis. Otherwise, the audience would not have a solid basis to assess

whether or not the arguments presented are good enough to motivate them to accept the objective

proposed in the thesis9. The speaker should strive to define these values as clearly as possible and

interpret them according to the author’s purposes, as each listener may have a different or

inaccurate notion of these shared values10

The organization of the arguments

A good speech requires a hierarchical organization of selected arguments to persuade an audience.

The choice of each one of them should follow these three steps: (1) Delimitation. The thesis of the

speech shall be unpretentious and brief, making it more attractive and convincing. To expand or add

more arguments may result in a misunderstanding of the thesis and will not convince the target

audience. The audience’s willingness and span of attention is limited. No one would listen to a ten- hour speech or read a thousand-page book while keeping track if the arguments presented in it are

good or not. (2) Selection. Knowing the limitations of the audience, the speaker needs to choose

which arguments to use, considering that not all the arguments have the same persuasive force on

a particular or universal audience. If a speech presents weak arguments of which he has little