ABSTRACT
The appearance of the New Hermeneutic during the 1960s was simply the beginning of a succession of challenges for biblical studies during the last half of this century. Liberation theology, feminist criticism and African-American interpretation have followed on its heels with exceptional vitality and persistence. In the midst of these vigorous movements, biblical interpreters have been applying new literary, rhetorical, structuralist, linguistic, sociological, materialist and ideological methods to biblical texts (Detweiler and Robbins 1991). It is no surprise that these movements and methods have given rise to an environment fragmented by individual interests and insights rather than an environment unified by issues they have in common with one another. The emergence of so many movements and methods in such a short span of time has produced a scientific revolution in biblical studies, and revolutions are times of disunity rather than widespread cooperation (Kuhn 1970). For both personal and professional reasons, I have viewed this situation as a challenge to integrate major strategies of the new movements and methods through a rhetorical approach that focuses on literary, social, cultural and ideological issues in texts. From my perspective, the issues exhibit the common ground among these movements and methods-namely, a growing perception that texts are performances of language, and language is a part of the inner fabric of society, culture, ideology and religion.
