Number DOI: http://doi.org/10.33209/2519-4348-2707-9627-2022-10-114

VB. – № 10, 2022. – P. 67-84

Summary

Rhetoric was not only the cornerstone of traditional education in the Mediterranean culture of the 1st century after Christ, but also permeated all forms of oral and written communication: official documents, public letters, private correspondence, legal proceedings, speeches on the occasion of celebrations and memorable events, literary works, etc. Palestine was no exception: it was located on the ridge between Jewish and Greek cultures, which led to the spread of classical rhetoric into its territory resulting symbiosis with traditional Jewish or biblical rhetoric. It is well-founded historically fact that the authors of the New Testament, in order to present the principles of the Christian faith, resorted to the rules of eloquence from the heritage of both rhetoric. This has been confirmed by the original oral purpose of the biblical texts, since in the first centuries of Christianity the Bible was read aloud to the assembled community (cf. Col. 4:16), which involved taking into account the rhetorical aspects of constructing an argumentation according to a form that would take into account the expectations of the audience. Therefore, it is necessary to underline the importance and role of a rhetorical approach to the biblical interpretation, considering its positive and negative aspects. In this article has been applicated a rhetorical and literary approach to analysis of Jas. 2:1-13. The singularity of this approach is that it takes into account the principles of classical and Jewish rhetoric for the interpretation of New Testament texts, avoiding a formal imposition of fixed taxonomic schemes on the biblical text. Contextual, compositional, syntactic and intertextual aspects have been taken into account which significantly have improved the interpretation and understanding of the rhetorical situation in coherence with the literary analysis of the text. Based on this, it is worth to emphasize the important contribution and benefit of rhetorical and literary analysis for biblical exegesis, since the design and construction of the text have been skillfully put by the author at the service of theological concepts. The complex of aspects of analysis demonstrates a fruitful connection between the rhetorical-literary approach and biblical texts at the argumentative-communicative and theological levels.

Key words: rhetorical and literary analysis, personal prejudices, authenticity of faith, composition, context, rhetorical figures, intertextual analysis.

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