PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

Such identification [of a biblical book with one of the three supposed classical
species] is often inconclusive and controverted, and in the end not especially
efficacious in providing new insights. 46
These hesitancies about the ability to discern confidently a governing conventional
species, corresponding structure, and resulting unity for Pauline letters call into question
not only Mitchell’s conception of the literary integrity of 1 Corinthians (as a “deliberative
letter” consistently advising concord 47 ), but also Yeo’s argument against the literary
integrity of 1 Corinthians. Yeo formulates his fundamental objection to the unity of 1
Corinthians in relation to the problems of Mitchell’s project:
While I agree with Mitchell’s main thesis that Paul’s intention in using the
deliberative genre is to persuade the Corinthian church to be in concord as a body
of Christ, I find that not all of 1 Corinthians relates to the thesis statement of 1
Cor 1:10 as she contends. For example, chapter 15 (on resurrection) and 6:12-20
(on fornication) have little if anything to do with dissension in the Corinthian
church. There are discrepancies in the single thematic understanding of Paul’s
argumentation in 1 Corinthians taken as a whole composition, and that suggests
possible fusion of two or more letters. It is possible that Paul’s rhetorical intent
(for concord of the Corinthian church) is the same as for the three or four
separate letters he wrote to the Corinthians. 48
Kern, noted above. My task, rather, is the positive presentation of a credible alternative
rhetorical reading, with greater explanatory power.
46 Olbricht, “Rhetorical Criticism,” 16.
47 Mitchell’s limitation to the three alleged options of classical rhetoric is clear: “But the
overwhelming future emphasis in the letter, because it is, appropriately, a letter which
gives advice about behavioural changes in community life, indicates that of the three
rhetorical species, only the deliberative fits 1 Corinthians”. Mitchell, Paul and the
Rhetoric, 25; emphasis mine.
48 Yeo, Rhetorical Interaction, 76. Welborn, similarly, appears to frame his rejection of
the literary coherence of the letter in relation to Mitchell’s project: see the quotation at the
beginning of this chapter.
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