Christian Texts and History • Re: 'The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship'

The Inference of Situational Stability in Paul's Letters
In his 1968 article in Philosophy & Rhetoric, Lloyd Bitzer developed a theory of the rhetorical situation. According to him, a stable and reliable situation not only initiates ensuing rhetorical discourse but also serves as its control. For Bitzer, rhetorical discourse itself is situational, pragmatic and based in reality. He defines the rhetorical situation as, "a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance" ("The Rhetorical Situation," p. 5). Subsequent to Bitzer's analysis, other modern scholars of rhetoric and philosophy critiqued and refined his theory. Richard Vatz, for instance, made a significant shift in Bitzer's understanding regarding the stability of a situation. According to him, situations themselves do not call forth discourse nor do situations in and of themselves elicit meaning. Rather, by selecting from among an array of possible elements pertaining to a situation and translating those selections into something worthy of consideration, rhetors produce meaning through a creative process ("The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation," p. 157). Later, Alan Brinton ("Situation in the Theory of Rhetoric") questioned Bitzer's assumption of the objective nature of exigence implied by his theory. After a discussion of these theories, I wish to explore their relative significance on inferences pertaining to Paul's rhetorical situation within selected Pauline scholarship and then offer implications of those inferences for our understanding of Paul, early Christianity and early Judaism.