A Text centred rhetorical analysis of Paul's Letter to Titus

There have been some recent exceptions with one warranting a mention,
namely Mark Harding’s, Tradition and rhetoric in the Pastoral Epistles. As the
title indicates, Harding treats and interprets the letters collectively, arguing for
the “literateness of the PE as letters and as persuasive communications of the
received Pauline heritage ...” (Harding, 1998:4). His extensive treatment of
this group of letters, while valuable, is weakened by the cumulative-
complimentary reading of the texts. Plotting the way forward, he fortunately
expresses the conviction that these letters are “readily susceptible ... to
rhetorical analysis” (Harding, 1992:234).
There is to my knowledge, with the exception of Harding and Quinn, still room
or even a need for extensive rhetorical analysis of the individual letters, Titus
in particular. This little letter must be rescued from beneath the shadow of its
counterparts. Joachim Classen appears to be the only scholar who has
recently done a rhetorical interpretation or, as he calls it, “reading” of the
Letter to Titus.
1.1.5.2 Carl Joachim Classen: “A rhetorical reading of the Epistle to
Titus”
a) Introduction
In the book, Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testament, C. J. Classen has one
section in which he deals with the rhetoric of the Letter to Titus, entitled “A
rhetorical reading of the Epistle to Titus”. Classen (2002:45) defines rhetoric
as “the deliberate calculated use of language for the sake of communicating
various kinds of information in the manner intended by the speaker (and the
theory of such use)”. He explains rhetorical reading as,
[R]eading a text in order to grasp the information it intends to impart, to
understand its meaning or its message by appreciating and explaining
the function of every single part of it as well as of the composition as a
whole (Classen, 2002:46).
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