The Bible and Sociology

Abstract

For the past twenty-five years, a sub-branch of bilica studies has engaged, sometimes rather vigously, in the pursuit of using sociological methods to understand the Bible. These, often autodidact biblical scholars, have taken over a branch of sciology of religion. The methods they fllow in their pursuit of the strange world of the Bible can teach socioogy how to retrieve a more critical sociology. The questions the ask uwould be helful more generaly to socioogy of religion. Like Caesar's Gaul, the ancients divided classical rhetoric into three component parts (Kennedy 1972: 428ff). Forensic rhetoric, contoured to the institution of the law courts, provides a justificatory apology for one's own or a client's, usually past, choice of action. Epideictic rhetoric is, institutionally, less specifically bound. It addresses, more broadly, public opinion and mores, engaging in praise and blame of present behaviors. Deliberative rhetoric, crafted for legislative debates in an assembly, looks to the future. Its function is, primarily, to persuade an audience in regard to some future action. Typically, classical rhetorical treatises include a narration, a proposition, and a peroration (Witherington 1995: 44). I evoke these arcane categories for two reasons. First, as a literary conceit, I will structure my presentation by employing forensic, epideictic, and deliberative rhetorical devises. I will justify, engage in praise and blame, and try to persuade. I will construct a narrative. The main proposition I want to argue is that a marriage of social-scientific critical studies of the Bible with literary and rhetorical criticism actually makes for, not only better biblical scholarship, but better sociology.