ASPECTS OF A RHETORIC OF THE BODY AND THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Abstract

Although the expansion of New Testament Studies to formal studies in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity have significantly changed modi of interpretation concerning Pauline material, the Cartesian effect has not been laid to rest. In addition, despite the problematisation of knowledge production which was initiated during the eighties of the twentieth century, the subject as primary originator of knowledge, born during the nineteenth century, is still haunting the production of knowledge within the field of Pauline studies, with little concern for the variety of diverse discursive practices compelling and enabling the production of a writing. Both these tendencies have infused the rhetorical paradigm within which Pauline letters have been read. I argue that a rhetoric of the body, functioning within the implicit tradition of Rhetorical Criticism, can enable the detection of discursive traces constituting a rhetoric of the body in the Graeco-Roman world. If a rhetoric of the body is used as interpretative framework for the letter to the Romans, no resistance against the Roman Empire can be discerned but rather an identification with a habitus that made a radicalisation of the Roman regulatory body possible.