Exploring the Texture of Texts

Socio-rhetorical criticism has established itself as one of the promising new methods of biblical study today. Vernon K. Robbins here provides an accessible introduction to socio-rhetorical criticism, illustrating the method by guiding the reader through the study of specific New Testament texts and stories.

An opening chapter outlines this new approach and its focus on values, convictions, and beliefs both in the texts we read and in the world in which we live. Then follow chapters on getting inside a text (inner texture), that is, studying the internal aspects of words and meanings in the text: entering the interactive world of the test (intertexture,), that is relating the text being interpreted to a wide range of phenomena that lie outside the text: living with the text in the world (social and cultural texture), that is, examining the social and cultural locations in the world that the language of the text evokes: and shared interests in commentary and in the text (ideological texture), that is, looking at the way the text itself and interpreters of the text position themselves in relation to other individuals and groups.

Texts studied include the rich man and Jesus in Mark 10:17-22 (inner texture): the Pentecost event in Acts 2 (intertexture): the woman who anointed Jesus in Luke 7:36-50 and John 9 (social and cultural texture): the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 and "women keep silent" in 1 Corinthians 14: 26-40 (ideological texture).

Vernon K. Robbins is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion, Emory University, and the author of Ancient Quotes and Anecdotes: From Crib to Crypt and The Rhetoric of Pronouncement.