REID, Robert S.

Spring 2005, pages 65 - 92

Paul's Conscious Use of the Ad Herennium's "Complete Argument"

ABSTRACT: This study provides substantive evidence that in composing 1 Corinthians Paul made conscious use of the Complete Argument as reported in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. This cross-cultural strategy of reasoning, in combination with Semitic structures of symmetrical reasoning, is employed to analyze the argument of 1 Corinthians 14, providing methodological criteria for accepting the modern tradition-critical thesis that the admonition silencing women in Corinth (1 Cor. 14 33b-35) is not original to Paul's epistolary argumentation. The study suggests the need for greater attention to the role of the Complete Argument as a strategy of cross-cultural persuasion in Greco-Roman epistolary literature while also providing an example of rhetorical criticism employed in the evaluative task of tradition-textual criticism.