THE RHETORICIlY OF HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE: PAULINE DISCOURSEAND ITS CONTEXTUALlZATIONS

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Almost twenty years ago I had the opportunity to choose a topic for a graduate level seminar on Jewish and Christian traditions sponsored by the Rosenstiel foundation. I long had been an admirer of professor Georgi's book on the opponents of Paul,' which was translated into English only much later.2 Hence, I welcomed the opportunity to explore further the area of "religious propaganda," which his book had construct­ ed as an explanatory frame of meaning for interpreting Paul's correspondence and theology. Therefore, I invited hirn together with other Jewish and Christian scholars to address the problem of Greco-Roman, Jewish and Christian religious propaganda in the first century CE. Although during the early decades of this century considerable research had been done on the topic of religious propaganda in antiquity," such re­ search interests almost had disappeared in the intervening years, probably because of the negative political connotations of the term "propaganda." So I hoped that the subsequent publication of the invited papers would engender renewed dis­ cussion of religious propaganda among Jewish and Christian scholars.?

I Dieter Georgi, Die Gegner des Paulus im 2. Korintherbrief: Studien zur religiösen Propaganda in der Spätantike (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Ver­ lag, 1964). 2 The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) . 3 See, e.g., M. Friedländer, Geschichte der jüdischen Apologetik als Vorge­ schichte des Christentums (Zürich: Verlag Caesar Schmitt, 1903); K. Axenfeld, "Die jüdische Propaganda als Vorläuferin der urchristlichen Mission," Mis­ sionswissenschaftliche Studien. Festschrift Wameck (Berlin: Evangelische Mis­ sionsgesellschaft, 1904) 1-80; Paul Wendland, Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum und Urchristentum (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1907); P. Derwacter, Preparing the Way for Paul: The Proselyte Movement in Later (New York: Macmillan, 1930). See also the discussion of mis­ sionary activity in Dieter Georgi, The Opponents, 83-228, 358-89, 422-45. 4 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, ed., Aspects of Religious Propaganda in 444 ELISABETH SCHÜSSLER FIORENZA

Judaism as well as had aperiod of great expan­ sion at the beginning of our era. The spread of HeIlenistic cul­ ture had torn down many ethnic barriers separating peoples from peoples, cultures from cultures and from reli­ gions. The imperial imposition of the Pax Romarui' made reli­ gious exchange, extensive travel, and cultural alliances easy. In appealing to audiences of the Greco-Roman world, and Christians could utilize the means and methods of Greco-Ro­ man rhetoric. The appropriation of such missionary propagan­ distic forms was indispensable if Jews and Christians were to succeed in competing with other religious associations or philosophical movements. Centuries earlierJudaism already had confronted the task of communicating its ethos to a wider public, since over an extended period of time Jewish faith-communities had been spreading throughout the Creco-Roman world. Still, this suc­ cess of Jewish expansion provoked also anti-Semitic reactions and slanderous attacks. In order to counter such defamation Jewish thinkers had produced a body of sophisticated apolo­ getic literature in Creek. This literature sought to convince both members of the Jewish community and readers that such vilifying criticism of Judaism was not justified. Positively, Jewish writers wanted to persuade their diverse audiences of the truth, antiquity, and high moral standing of their own and community. In a similar fashion early Christian writers intended to strengthen the identity of Chris­ tian audiences who shared the pluralistic ethos of the Creco­ Roman world, although in many instances they were still members ofJewish communities. In my introduction to Aspects 0/ Religious Propaganda, I at­ tempted to highlight that early Christian writers engaged in rhetorical, persuasive discourses which were at horne in the public political sphere." Working within the methodological framework of redaction criticism, I sought to show how the author of Acts shapes his narrative in such a way that it func­ tions as a persuasive argument within the contesting dis-

Judaism and Early Christianity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976). 5 Cf. Klaus Wengst, Pax Romana. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986). 6 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, "Miracles, Mission and Apologetics: An Introduction," in Aspects ofReligious Propaganda, 1-26.