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

Accordingly, the research hypothesis on which this study is based will be as
follows: A thorough text-centred rhetorical approach to the Letter of Titus (i.e.,
without relating it to the other two Pastoral Letters or approaching it in terms of
the authenticity/inauthenticity debate) will yield new insights for its
interpretation.
1.2.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The first section of this research focused upon an overview of existing
scholarship on the Letter to Titus. The second section will be dedicated to the
actual analysis of the text with a view to reconstruct the rhetorical strategy
from the text itself. Above, in the presentation of the research hypothesis, I
have already indicated that the rhetorical approach that will be followed is a
“text-centred” approach. A text-centred approach is exactly that: it involves an
analysis of the rhetoric of a text that focuses primarily upon identifying and
describing the rhetorical strategies from the text itself instead of imposing pre-
selected systems or rhetorical models upon the text and making the text fit
into such systems or models. Thus, the major disadvantage of using pre-
selected models is that the text is forced to comply with a particular model.
Furthermore, such an approach implies that a particular rhetorical model can
explain every aspect of the text. It seems better, however, to let the text
“speak for itself” or to “trust in the text and in its own internal logic” (Meynet,
1998:177) instead of contorting it to fit into the rigours of a pre-existent model.
The fruitful results from Tolmie's rhetorical approach to the Letter of Galatians
open new possibilities for "other Pauline (and New Testament) letters"
(2005:247) and will be followed in this rhetorical analysis of the Letter to Titus.
I will use an adapted version of Tolmie’s (2005) minimal theoretical framework
approach. The following summary is given for the benefit of readers, who
might be unfamiliar with his approach. It comes from Tolmie’s book,
“Persuading the Galatians: A Text-Centred Rhetorical Analysis of a Pauline
Letter” (2005:28-29).
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