Abstract
Vivid Rhetoric and Visual Persuasion brings together fourteen scholars from across New Testament and Early Christian studies to offer a fresh contribution to the growing interest in the visual rhetoric of Christian discourse in antiquity. As the editors illuminate in their introduction, the volume seeks to unpack something of the rhetorical complexity of works all too often considered only for their theological merits and not for the way those theological teachings are communicated (and, by implication, affected.)
The introduction sets the tone for a study that finds its intellectual moorings in Ruth Webb’s 2009 monograph; Ekphrasis, Imagination, and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009). In titling their introduction the editors borrow Webb’s language of setting arguments ‘before the eyes’ of the reader (p. 39), and this scholarly debt is felt throughout the study. Almost every single contribution borrows this phrase and its associated discussion from Webb, with the result that the reader experiences a number of fairly similar contextualising sections where Webb’s ideas are elaborated through the standard set of ancient rhetorical handbooks (Quintilian, Longinus, Theon, etc.) These repetitious elements at times limit the opportunity for extensive analysis of the Christian material at the heart of this volume, but as a whole they ought not to detract from the contribution this study makes.
After their introduction the editors offer two essays on Matthew’s Gospel. Their respective studies (Neumann on the vivid portrayal of Jesus in Matthew 14 and Henning on the eschatological implications of Matthew 25) demonstrate the strengths of this collection: an awareness of the relevant Classical context from which the concepts of ekphrasis (visual rhetoric) and the interrelated enargeia (vividness) are drawn, alongside exegetical creativity that brings out a broader sense of the texts under consideration. Other highlights include Bruehler’s illumination of Luke’s use of ekphrastic ideas in highlighting key themes across his writings, and Wang’s study of John’s efforts to bring the reader into his narrative through a repeated employ of enargeia in his Gospel.
Though Luther and Whitaker – in their respective chapters on ekphrasis in Revelation 19 and 21 – make the point that the Johannine Apocalypse has been widely examined for its visual language and the implications thereof, Vivid Rhetoric and Visual Persuasion extends the scope of this analysis. The study brings a range of early Christian writings into conversation with ancient rhetorical criticism, and the result is self-evident in the varied literary and theological conclusions. Though only the final three chapters move beyond the New Testament and into late Christian writings (including oft-understudied works such as Pontius’ Life of Cyprian and Paulinus of Nola’s Natalicium) the collection illustrates the benefits of such a contextualised reading. The writings of the earliest Christian communities did not emerge from an intellectual or cultural vacuum and reading these texts against a developed and often technical understanding of ancient rhetoric strengthens our understanding not only of their suasorial elements, but their theological complexities as well.