Reviewed by: Galatians and the Rhetoric of Crisis: Demosthenes–Cicero–Paul by Nina Livesey Andrew Boakye nina livesey, Galatians and the Rhetoric of Crisis: Demosthenes–Cicero–Paul (Salem, OR: Polebridge, 2016). Pp. x + 273. Paper $26. A growing undercurrent of discontent with the varied reactions to the "works versus grace" hermeneutics associated with the Protestant Reformers is opening up a wealth of avenues for a scholarly rethink of the polemics of Galatians. In a fashion almost reminiscent of Heikki Räisänen, Nina Livesey's deconstruction of Galatians aims to uncover motives and agendas beyond consistency or coherence, by which readers might navigate Paul's [End Page 146] enterprise to facilitate gentile induction into the covenant people. Moving on from her critique of certain scholarly attempts to explicate the vehemence of Paul's anti-circumcision directives, L. observes a theatrical form of rhetoric in Galatians, aimed at exacerbating the ideological divide between the apostle and the circumcising lobby. She employs the "rhetoric of crisis" model developed by classicist Cecil W. Wooten (Cicero's Philippics and Their Demosthenic Model: The Rhetoric of Crisis [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983]), a specialist in Greek rhetoric and oratory, to interpret Galatians. Wooten examined the speeches of two great ancient orators. The first was Demosthenes, who championed democracy and sought to rally Athenians to defend Athens against the imperialist onslaught of Philip II of Macedon. The second, inspired by Demosthenes, was the politician and lawyer Cicero, who waged a rhetorical war against Mark Anthony following the assassination of Julius Caesar and the ensuing infighting. In both historical scenarios, Wooten postulates that the rhetorical dynamics aim to advance the agenda of the author, undermine and even demonize rival agendas, bolster the author's reputation, and ultimately make refusing the author's stance a nonsensical position. While L. wisely stops short of assuming Paul's acquaintance with either Demosthenes or Cicero, or indeed Paul's level of rhetorical training, she suggests that the same dynamics are in operation in Galatians. The work is clearly reliant on, though in places rightly critical of, Hans Dieter Betz, whose landmark commentary on Galatians often reads as if Paul had one of Quintilian's rhetorical handbooks open as he penned Galatians, following its literary stipulations closely. (See Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Churches in Galatia [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979].) The structure of L.'s book is particularly elegant, with four main chapters, each devoted to one of the principal components of Wooten's model applied to Demosthenes, Cicero, and Paul, respectively. The first chapter addresses how each author turns his respective sociopolitical scenario into a crisis-drama. The second details how they accentuate their moral profiles and portray their superior prestige. Chapter 3 offers insight into the use of emotive discourse to marginalize and devalue interlocutors. The fourth and final principal chapter tackles the nucleus of the model, the employment of disjunctive polemicizing to create what Wooten terms the "simplicity of decision making." Thus, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Paul manufacture a number of binary alternatives to corner their audiences into choosing their "morally proper" stance while rejecting any other, by definition, morally retrograde one. Hermeneutically, much of what readers will make of L.'s thesis will depend on the degree to which the "rhetoric-of-crisis" model offers more plausible explanations for Paul's assertions than other interpretive models. Regarding the aforementioned rhetorical commentary by Betz, even those influenced by its exegetical sophistication were skeptical of the apparent "force-fit" of Galatians 5–6 into Aristotelian rhetorical categories. This, it would seem, is the perennial difficulty with imposing rhetorical models on biblical texts. So when, for example, L. notes that Gal 3:1-5 exhibits Paul's attempt to intensify the feeling of crisis using exaggeration, metabasis (the sudden shift from or return to a subject for dramatic effect) and even reproach, one has to ask what Paul's immediate task actually was. In the initial instance, despite the sudden change of tone from Gal 2:21 to 3:1, the subject of Christ's death by crucifixion still looms in the foreground as the end of 3:1 suggests. The co-text would...
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Oct 1, 2018
Graham Tulloch 
Open Access