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

Verse 10 immediately takes up and builds upon the hostility introduced in the
latter part of verse 9. The apostle unleashes his verbal artillery upon the
aberrant ones through a technique I call emphatic clustering. He groups
together three words to launch his vilification campaign, namely ajnupovtakto~,
mataiolovgo~ and frenapavth~. This linguistic triplet, combined with the
adjective pa`~, intensifies the hostile sentiment that this section intends to
create. It furthermore serves as justification for the apostolic directives that
this correspondence conveys. Structurally, it cordons off this section and
magnifies the denigration to follow.
The vilification procedure is facilitated by several additional techniques, such
as implicit contrasting. That which is contrasted is not made obvious within a
sentence. In other words, the author gives no linguistic clues that a contrast is
being made. Instead, the author provides the information in such a manner
that the hearer or reader, almost intuitively, “sees” the glaring contrasts within
the larger discourse unit. For example, the description of the opposition in this
section is implicitly contrasted with the positive character requirements
associated with the office of the overseer mentioned earlier. The negative
attitude of the opposition towards the word (1:9), is made plausible by the
pejorative description of their character, which manifests firstly as
insubordination (ajnupovtakto~). This noun was used earlier with reference to
the children of elders (1:6). This is an example of repetition. The effect is to
evoke strong disapproval from the congregation for childish behaviour on the
part of the opposition. Unruly behaviour demands strong disciplinary
retaliation.
The noun mataiolovgo~ follows rapidly upon the first and is suggestive of the
apostolic view of the aberrant teaching. It is vain, empty, and lacking
substance. In fact, the false teachers are the personification of what they
teach. They themselves are empty and vain. The final noun in this cluster,
frenapavth~, describes the opposition as deceivers or impostors. In other
words, they are unauthorised, invalid and hence unqualified to minister to the
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