Paul’s Model of Preaching

We can take a lesson from the way the apostles addressed various audiences in New Testament times. Their initial audiences consisted of the Jews of their day—people steeped in the Old Testament, with a firm grasp of key concepts like covenant, law, sin, and sacrifice. When addressing these audiences, the apostles could simply start with Jesus as the supreme sacrifice, the Lamb of God. With people already looking for the coming Messiah, the apostles could simply announce that Jesus was the One they were waiting for. By contrast, when Paul addressed secular Greek philosophers in Acts 17, the Stoics and Epicureans on Mars Hill, where did he begin? With Creation. 

 

Notice how carefully he builds his argument, step by step. First, he identifies God as the ultimate origin of the world: “The God who made the world and everything in it” is the “Lord of heaven and earth” (v. 24). Then, he identifies this God as the source of our own humanity: “He made from one man every nation of mankind” (v. 26). Finally, he draws the logical conclusion: “Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone” (v. 29). That is, God cannot be akin to material things like idols. Since He made us, He must have at least the qualities we have as personal, moral, rational, creative beings.

In that case, however, we stand in a personal relationship with God—we owe Him our allegiance, just as children owe honor and allegiance to the parents who brought them into the world. In fact, failure to acknowledge God is a moral fault and calls for repentance: “Now He commands all people everywhere to repent” (v. 30). Notice that it is only after having built a case based on Creation that Paul introduces the concepts of sin and repentance.

 

 - Nancy R. Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, 2004.

Synagogue

The destruction of the temple during the Jewish exile led the Jews to emphasize the study and application of Old Testament law. This attitude contributed to the establishment of the synagogue as a pillar of Jewish practice. The exact time of the origin of the synagogue is uncertain, but many scholars have suggested that synagogues first appeared during exilic or postexilic gatherings of Jews to read and study the law. By the first century, synagogues were widely located throughout Palestine and the Diaspora. It was customary to form a synagogue whenever as many as ten Jewish men resided in a community.

The synagogue served as the center of religious, social, and educational life for the Jewish community. Jews gathered weekly for the study of the law and the worship of Jehovah. During the week children were instructed in the Jewish faith and learned to read and write. The synagogue also served as a center for receiving offerings for the poor and administering charity to the needy.

The synagogue was organized around a head or president (Mark 5:22), who likely was elected by vote from the body of elders. He presided over synagogue services and intervened in any disputes (Luke 13:14). The elders had general responsibilities for spiritual care of the congregation. An officer known as a hazzan cared for the building and its contents, blew the trumpet announcing the Sabbath day, and sometimes taught in the school at the synagogue. Perhaps the official of Luke 4:20 who received the scroll of Scripture from Jesus held this office. The use of the term rabbi as a reference to an ordained scholar belongs to the period after the destruction of the temple in a.d. 70. In the New Testament, the term was largely used to address Jesus or others as an authoritative teacher or master (Matt. 23:7; Mark 9:5; John 1:38; 3:2).

The synagogue building was normally a substantial stone structure, often elaborately furnished. Each synagogue had a chest containing the law scroll. The speaker’s platform was raised, and the congregation sat on stone benches around the walls or on mats or wooden chairs in the center of the room. To read from the scroll, the speaker stood. To preach, he sat down (Luke 4:16–20).

The synagogue service consisted of a recitation of the Jewish creed known as the Shema (see Deut. 6:4–5). This recitation was accompanied with praises to God known as the Shemone Esreh and was followed by a ritual prayer. The term Shemone Esreh suggests that there were eighteen benedictions of praise, but the actual number of benedictions varied by time and place. The reading of the Scriptures was followed by a sermon, explaining the portion that had been read. A blessing by a priest closed the service. In the absence of a priest, a prayer was substituted.

Jesus regularly attended and participated in synagogue services. Paul made synagogues his initial point of contact in the cities he visited (Acts 13:5). Some early Christian worship may have taken place in the synagogue, ...
 
Title: The New Testament: Its Background and Message, 2nd edition
Authors: David Alan Black, Thomas D. Lea
Publisher: B&H
  

Rhetorical Analysis of Paul's Letters

Why was rhetoric so important to a young evangelistic religious movement like Christianity? T. Engberg-Pedersen explains the matter perfectly: "Paul has also shown that precisely when the question is one of changing other people's lives the very content of the gospel demands a ‘method' of effecting such changes which is directly opposed to any use of force [or trickery].... It is that of speaking to them in ways that do not encroach upon their independence." One cannot command people to believe the gospel but must persuade them, and the art of persuasion in the Greco-Roman world was rhetoric.
 
Even after one has persuaded persons to believe, an apostolic figure like Paul knew that it continued to be better to persuade than to command one's converts, as in his words to his coworker Philemon in the midst of another impressive piece of deliberative rhetoric: "Therefore, although I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.... I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would be voluntary" (Phlm. 8-9, 14). Paul knew perfectly well that proclaiming a monotheistic Jewish message in a polytheistic culture where anti-Semitism was rife required more than just words spoken in earnest and with passion. It required persuasion. The objections and the mental and emotional obstacles in the minds and hearts of the listeners had to be answered and removed if Jesus was to become their Lord and not merely another religious sideshow. And Paul knew that God had not left it simply up to the Holy Spirit to do all the heavy lifting of persuasion. Rather God commissioned proclaimers to do their part so that word and Spirit might work together to persuade and convert. The use of rhetoric was especially apropos and important in cities in the empire heavily influenced by Greco-Roman values, including by rhetoric - cities like Philippi, which had at the turn of the era become a Roman colony.
 
Deliberative rhetoric, had been the rhetoric of the Greek assembly (the ekklesia), the rhetoric of advice and consent, the rhetoric that helped people make decisions about the course they would take into the future. This sort of rhetoric, in the main, is what we find in Paul's persuasive missives as he seeks to shape the course charted by his charges into their future, including when he would no longer be around. As Quintilian stressed, letters that are meant to be proclaimed on arrival are in the main written-out speeches and were closer in both form and substance, in both style and content, to acts of persuasion than to ordinary mundane letters.
 
A bit more should be said at this juncture about the rhetorical device known as "exemplification." According to Quintilian, a named or anonymous person's character is set forth in part to excite or conciliate an audience's feelings and to spur them on to imitation. Using such examples was not merely an effective way to embellish one's oratory and bring it to the point of persuasion, but also a deliberate means of paraenesis, and used precisely that way by rhetoricians and moralists of Paul's era. The importance of this for analysis of Philippians should be obvious. Paul is using theologically charged arguments, including using a Christ hymn to urge the audience to have the same mindset as was found in Christ and in those who, like Paul, imitate Christ, and to walk worthily of the gospel and its principles.
 

--- Ben Witherington III, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, 2011.