Rhetorics in the New Millennium: Promise and Fulfillment

Abstract

The genesis of this book lies in the rationale of The Rhetorical New Testament Project, which was the brain child of Prof. James M. Rob-inson, past director of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, and Prof. Burton L. Mack, now retired from the School of Theology, Claremont. In 1992, they met with James D. Hester, then profes-sor of religion at the University of Redlands, to discuss the nature and scope of the Project. They recognized that rhetorical studies by Amos Wilder, Hans Dieter Betz, and Mack himself would soon lead to the recognition by others that more such studies of the diverse literary heritage of early Christianity were needed. The problem lay in the fact that few New Testament scholars had studied the peda-gogy and theory of classical rhetoric, and even fewer its modern counterparts. Where to begin addressing the need?