Arguing Like an Apocalypse: Galatians and an AncientToposOutside The Greco-Roman Rhetorical Tradition

Abstract

George Kennedy affirms that Galatians rests on ethos, that Paul maintains the appearance of logical argument ‘perhaps more to seem to recognize the possibility of objections and to be prepared to answer them confidently than to provide a developed response’. Kraftchick concurs: ‘Since Paul's case is no more logical than his opponents’ the argument depends on non-logical factors: ethos and pathos.’ Rhetorical interpreters have difficulty tracing a logical argument throughout the letter: most bracket off the hortatory section of Galatians; Joop Smit has argued on rhetorical grounds that Galatians 5.13–6.10 is a later addition. That rhetorical interpreters dispute the species of rhetoric to which Galatians belongs also implies confusion over logical progression in the letter. Of course, the place of the hortatory material in Paul's argument has long been hotly debated; Paul's highly compressed arguments have long challenged interpreters. Yet because rhetorical critics claim to clarify the flow of argument in a text, their failure is especially striking. Does this difficulty in delineating a logical argument imply that Galatians contains irreconcilable contradictions as Smit argues, or that Paul offers an ethical rather than a logical argument as Kennedy and Kraftchick indicate, or that rhetoric is irrelevant to parenesis as Barclay concludes, or does it imply that rhetorical interpreters have yet to grasp the logical proof in the letter?