Book Review: Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels

THIS \OLLME evolved out the work of the SBL P r o n o u n c e m e n t Story G r o u p that was formed in 1975 T h e book consists of a collection of brief stories, culled from ancient l i terature, that reach their cli­ max in a striking saying or action T h e stories are g r o u p e d a r o u n d the life cycle—birth, youth, adult life, old age, a n d d e a t h — a n d various explanatory notes supply n e e d e d addit ional details T h e int roduct ion to the volume suc­ cinctly d o c u m e n t s such items as the rationale for the book and some statistics on the collection T h r e e indices—of n a m e s a n d places, passages, a n d sub­ jects—provide easy access to specific ar­ eas of interest to the reader T h e compilat ion of this volume was n o small task T h e collection itself encom­ passes approximately 1750 chreiai ("epi­ grams or anecdotes") but as the editor notes, some i m p o r t a n t l i terature—such as Plato's Dialogues—remains uncatalogued (pp xvi-xvn) Much work re­ mains to be d o n e , n o t only collecting such stories but analyzing t h e m as well O n e benefit of this volume is that just a brief perusal should make it clear that many chreiai from Greco-Roman litera­ ture are quite similar in length a n d rhetorical quality to stories found in the Synoptics Parallel stories a m o n g ancient narratives are also listed m this collec­ tion, which make interesting points of rhetor ica l compar i son with parallels a m o n g the Synoptic Cxospels Another positive aspect of the volume is that it is designed to encourage further reading in the primary sources, instead of be­ coming a substitute for those sources By design, as m u c h literary context as pos­ sible is included for each story (ρ xvii), but the structure of the volume does not invite the same kind of abuse that has plagued Strack-Billerbeck's Kommentar Used correctly, the volume is a fascinat­ ing resource that will pro\e extremely helpful to scholar, pastor, a n d layperson alike