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Disciplinary
Matters:
Prof.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
In this paper I want to continue the disciplinary redescription of biblical studies as a critical rhetoric of inquiry that treats biblical texts and scholarly interpretations as rhetorical arguments that have a public function. Such a critical rhetoric of inquiry pays special attention to the argumentative discourses of biblical writings as well as biblical scholarship and their theoretical and epistemological implications, social locations, investigative methods and cultural-religious or socio-political functions. In the interest of such a transformation of the discipline I will critically explore the present discourses of the discipline, for instance the rhetorics of revelation, the rhetorics of science, the rhetorics of text, the rhetorics of exegetical commentary, the rhetorics of historical data, the rhetorics of social-scientific code or the rhetorics of religious meaning. Such a critical rhetoric of inquiry does not need to suppress but is able to investigate the socio-political frameworks, cultural-religious implications and symbolic universes of biblical texts and their interpretations.
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