By J. David Hester Amador
Sheffield Academic Press (1999)

Reviewer: Tom Craig
The BodyWorks Consultation

As a self-identified author of an "untraditional and atypical tome on rhetoric and the New Testament" (p. 10), J. David Hester Amador forges across the political landscape of modern biblical studies in an attempt "to fragment and disrupt" (p. 294) its damnable disciplinary commitment to a hegemonic maintenance of power. While it quickly becomes clear that this bold deconstructionist project arises on the postmodern "fringes of disciplinarity" (p. 10), the author goes on to sketch his own critical turn to a rhetoric of power that includes "the interpretations and interpreters of the Bible" (p. 295) and the pursuit of self-reflectively informed "tolerance and the pluralizing of discourse(s)" (p. 303).

After a brief preface and a section of "Miscellany" detailing the author's own idiosyncratic style, the book is laid out in five chapters which trace the history of rhetoric and its application to biblical studies across what is named named variously as "academentia," "the academented turn," "academented systems of power" and "credentialing," and (perhaps most conclusively) "acadamnia."

Chapter one traces the recent helpful, but predictably constrained resurgence of rhetorical methods in both "Old" and New Testament studies since the 1969 presidential address of James Muilenburg at the annual meeting of the (international and widely influential) Society of Biblical Literature. Unfortunately, the author writes, "In almost every case, the whole of the rhetorical interpretive enterprise has been set within a historical-critical paradigm [the defining feature of biblical interpretation] and its hermeneutical center: the reconstructed 'original' 'meaning'" [sic] (pp. 16-17). The rest of the chapter discusses the author's own "troubling, if not arrogant" (p. 18) sounding project of disrupting the disciplinary field of modern biblical studies from a rhetorical, hermeneutic reconstruction of "meaning" (as discursive practice) inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin.

Chapter two addresses the political context of rhetorical interpretation within the "monotonous/monolithic dominance" (p. 25) of the historical-critical regime of biblical scholars (particularly New Testament scholars) who focus primarily on "the analysis of situations" (p. 27, that is, the infamous pursuit of original "Sitzen im Leben" encountered by every beginning student of "critical methods" courses in modern biblical exegesis). Here, the author criticizes the "causalist assumption" of modernist biblical scholarship which operates as if there were a more or less direct correspondence between rhetorical "texts" and the "real or genuine" historical contexts and audiences to which they were addressed (pp. 27-29, 31). Such a "hegemonic, totalizing and restrictive paradigm" (p. 31), however, must be subjected to the same relentless critique raised thirty years ago about the "antiquarian" Neo-Aristotelian movement (p. 45). In sum, Hester Amador argues, "there is more to rhetorical criticism than rhetorical history" (p. 46). Indeed, there is the author's not immodest proposal for a new "rhetoric of power" and his claim to provide "the philosophical, theoretical and methodological foundation" that will: generate new methodological theories (which may be unavoidably "fascist"), suggest a new, self-reflective mechanism for theory and critique and, finally, break open new rhetorical-hermeneutical vistas that potentially could transform the discipline of biblical studies (pp. 46-47).

Chapter three attempts to move beyond the mechanistic (cause and effect) constraints of positivist and empiricist methodologies in Rhetoric and Biblical Studies by developing a critical rhetoric based--not surprisingly--on the argumentation theory of Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, as well as the application of their dialectic of rhetor and audience, epideictic discourse and values orientation to New Testament studies in recent works by Wilhelm Wuellner, and the reflexive hermeneutical turn of Steven Mailloux (on the impact of the institutional origins of disciplinary rhetoric). Hester Amador decries the presentation of any programmatic approach to rhetorical criticism and proposes instead an "experimental," "hysterical," "outlaw" philosophy of rhetoric that subverts the "academented assumption of arrogant interpretive activity" (pp. 52-53). He presents his own "organic," philosophical approach by arguing for a "symbiotic, symphonic, and museful" (p. 52) congruence of rhetorical activity and critical analysis that recognizes the mysterious "spiritual and eternal" dimensions of religious texts (p. 59). He goes on to argue that a museful approach to rhetorical theory denies any universal ontology of truth (as Logos or Rationality) and embraces irrational multiplicities in the dynamic, persuasive power of words. As the experienced postmodern reader of meta-narratives might notice, however, the author's curiously self-conscious style of "odd habits not often encountered in academented works" (p. 8) demonstrated throughout the book continues to play out a curious tension between this outrageous, "outlaw" dynamic (in a mimetic deja vu of Victor Vitanza's "Third Sophistic" musings) and a recurring concern for the claims of Catholic and Protestant orthodoxies (see, e.g., 280-81).

Hester Amador's material connections to the two dominant "orthodoxies" of Christianity (the third being, Pentecostalism), or the heterodoxies of what he labels the "demented" academy, are nowhere made clear in this book. However, his constant references to the latter (if I were writing in a more "postmodern" style, I might present this as some form of "latter/ladder/lather") and furtive references to the former lead this reader at least to wonder [surely there are others like me in this (parenthetical) bracket?] how these rhetorical/hermeneutical contexts may be (w)riting/riding/rioting through the (con)texts of power and legit/animation called "Academic Constraints..." [Sorry, I couldn't resist giving in to this push/pull re/flexion of my own post/mortem (self) critical play here]. More to the point of the intentionality of this project itself (what Ricoeur has called "the arrow of the text"), while the author aims to explore the notion of power loosely "in all its implicit and explicit forms" (p. 58, emphasis added--I flex again), I am curious about his own symbolic connections to the various means of enforced hegemony through violence, persuasion, and suppression of discourse which continue to allow adherents to "secure a position of prestige, wealth, control, and/or strength in society and 'the world'" (p. 57) while stigmatizing and demonizing others. As I work my way through the postmodern pouvoir/savoir politics of this book, I keep coming back to the "materio-symbolic nexus of multiple strategies" and its inextricable connection to a rhetoric of power that Hester Amador has suggested elsewhere (Subjecting Helen, p. 21). Left with only clues and few concrete traces of this nexus, for now, I continue to wonder.

Chapter four and the "non-chapter" 4e turn to the application of the author's proposed new rhetoric of power and its potential for further theoretical elaboration of the systems and contexts of power within the imploding field of Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testament. The goals here are stated as pointing to "possible new directions (institutional definitions) for the discipline which modern rhetoric (both theories and critical methods) can offer as a pragmatic [de(con)structive] response" (p. 126) to the ideologically motivated entrenchment of the discipline of biblical studies. Through a detailed discussion of New Testament scholars Burton Mack, Vernon Robbins, Antoinette Wire, and Elisabeth Shüssler Fiorenza, Hester Amador demonstrates again and again the historical-critical hegemony of the discipline and the inability of even the most enlightened scholars to "shake off the shackles of the discursive practices which have defined the discipline of 'biblical studies'" (127). Such a rhetorical code of bondage directed at the biblical studies profession is strangely reminiscent of the infamous writings of Hebrew Bible scholar, James Barr (see, e.g., the "Preface" to his Beyond Fundamentalism, 1984, vii-x), and his characterization of the world of fundamentalim as a "prison" from which many would try to escape. Unlike the generous spirit of Barr's "pastoral" approach to misguided believers, however, none escape the academic constraints of the myth of origins in Hester Amador's prison of biblical criticism. While Shüssler Fiorenza's critical feminist rhetorical hermeneutic of womyn church comes closest to the new ideals in her explication of not only the historical contexts of biblical tradition history (from oral to written performances and beyond to canonization) but also "the contexts of interpretation themselves, including in particular the institutional and disciplinary rhetoric of biblical exegesis as historiography" (p. 240), she too falls prey to the author's critique of biblical scholars who are constrained by disciplinary edifices to "use rhetoric" surreptiously "as a tool for historiography" (255, n. 395).

The "non-chapter" before the end reinforces (as if reinforcements were needed!) the argument of a devious historical-critical hegemony of biblical scholars who attempt to control interpretation of the Bible by enforcing "restricted initiation into methodological norms" (p. 273). By discerning "the academented context of power" through the new critical rhetoric of tolerance, the author continues to delineate the discipline of biblical scholarship as a nefarious historical practice which has separated biblical interpretation from public religious values and continues to "'drive a wedge between the Bible and the Church'" (p. 274, citing Terence J. Keegan, 1985). In a glaring section providing triumphant overstatements of the problematic of modern biblical studies, Hester Amador ignores an entire history of connection between both Catholic and Protestant interpreters who embrace the multi-faceted dimensions of historical criticism. The magnificently constituted, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, comes immediately to mind as a supreme example of contemporary Catholic biblical scholarship that takes its critical scholarly and ecclesial responsibilities as two complementary sides of divine calling. Numerous Protestant "Evangelical" scholars who embrace modern biblical criticism at various levels continue to participate in the Society of Biblical Literature as well as other more specialized organizations devoted to the task of biblical interpretation and ecclesial responsibility. The late 1970s anthology by R.K. Harrison, Bruce Waltke, Donald Guthrie, and Gordon Fee (1978, see, e.g., pp. 96-97) published by the Conservative, Zondervan Publishing House, is only one of scores of examples. One has only to look at the biblical studies programs at some of the leading Evangelical seminaries in the U.S. (Concordia Lutheran Seminary, Gordon Conwell Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to name just three) to see the continuing influence of historical criticism in Evangelical church-oriented graduate schools. The variety of other denominational organizations that contribute financial and political support to leading seminaries with historical-critically oriented biblical studies programs throughout the world are too vast even to begin to enumerate. Nevertheless, Hester Amador concludes with the maddening statement that "those have pursued historical criticism have done so precisely in order to undermine orthodoxy's claim to authoritative instruction in and interpretation of the Bible" (p. 281). While admittedly, there are plenty of Christian Fundamentalists who repudiate the "Godless," "Liberal" curriculum of the modern university, and thousands of "Liberal," Objectivist--and even "postmodern"--scholars who denounce the anti-intellectual entrenchment of "closed-minded" believers in equally challenged churches, there is also a healthy contingent of "outlaw" academics who recognize the hegemony on both sides of the fence and live as if transformation were possible!

The last chapter of this book brings us to the end of the promise of the rhetoric of power "to fragment and disrupt all previous assumptions regarding what it would mean to develop and implement a 'rhetorical criticism' of the Bible" (p. 294). At the proposed end of prior assumptions, readers are now ready to break beyond their own socio-political constraints and recognize the transformative power of rhetoric as "an unavoidable exchange of energy among beings attempting to impact upon each other's behavior" (p. 297). While the eclectic implications of such a move to a new, "critical," "postmodern" rhetorics could be appealing for cross-disciplinary, holistic, or even ethical purposes, its nebulous parameters and apparent lack of tolerance for the entire discipline of modern biblical studies leaves the author's claims to de(con)struct the hegemony of disciplinary practices and assess the "impact and strengh" of other interpretive biblical engagements (p. 304) somewhat presumptuous. The final brief acknowledgement of the necessity of a future move toward a rhetoric "which takes as its initial site the body of the individual and the constellation of the microforces of power which act upon it..." (p. 305) is, unfortunately, a too typical strategy among many postmodern theorists who recognize the critical importance of the contested site of the body but have little idea of how to include its material/symbolic nexus in analysis.

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