A Discourse Analysis of Philippians: Methid and Rhetoric in the Debate over Literary Integrity

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 1999 by Peterman, G W

A Discourse Analysis of Philippians: Method and Rhetoric in the Debate over Literary Integrity. By Jeffrey T. Reed. JSNTSup 136. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997, 525 pp., $80.00.

Reed says concerning his work: "To my knowledge, it is the first monograph-- sized attempt at a New Testament discourse analysis based on systemic linguistics" (p. 24). Reed builds on the systemic-functional theories of M. A. K. Halliday, hoping to present "the framework of Halliday's theory in a readable and usable manner for the New Testament scholar" (p. 7). He applies this theory to the literary integrity of Philippians.

The book has two parts. The first part, "Discourse Analysis as New Testament Hermeneutic," divides into two chapters. Chapter one provides an introduction to discourse analysis, including a sketch of its history. Chapter two presents "A Model of New Testament Discourse Analysis." For those unfamiliar with discourse analysis or systemic linguistics, part one is worth reading, but the reading is very difficult. Though Reed seeks to present systemic linguistics in a readable and usable manner for the NT scholar, scholar and layperson both are likely to find this section laborious reading as they try to make sense of new (or differently used) terms such as cotext, rheme, thematisation, texture, slots, fillers, meronymy, temporal deixis, ideational, register, virtual system and transitivity. One cannot read through these first two chapters; one must study or gain almost nothing.

I must admit I found parts of Reed's first section to be quite tedious, as he delved into the obvious, such as that NT writers "are not readily available to be questioned regarding their assumptions and intentions" ( pp. 39-40) and that context limits word choice so that we cannot complete the statement I gulped down with the phrase a dog running through the park. At times hermeneutical guidelines are wrapped with different words and presented as fresh insights, even though a careful reader can find some of the same hermeneutical instruction being given in Plutarch's How a Young man Should Study Poetry (ca. AD 50-120). I do not imply that discourse analysis is without value, only that its insights are sometimes presented as new when in fact they are actually sharpening of old insights.

Part two is a "Discourse Analysis of Philippians" and has four chapters, titled "The Debate over the Literary Integrity of Philippians," "The Structure of Philippians," "The Texture of Philippians" and "Conclusion." Part two is the strength of Reed's work. In these chapters he is careful, detailed and insightful, virtually providing the reader with an introduction to ancient letter writing and epistolary theory. His voluminous citations of papyrus examples illustrate his points well. Particularly good is his proposal that Phil 3:1 employs an epistolary hesitation formula and should therefore not necessarily be viewed as a bad seam by a sloppy redactor.

Much of recent Pauline scholarship views his letters against the background of ancient rhetoric (and rhetorical handbooks). Reed neither rejects current theory regarding rhetoric and Pauline letters nor accepts it uncritically, but carefully steers his own path, based on documentable evidence in papyri. We can be thankful for his approach.

Part two also provides analysis of several chain interactions that span the disputed parts of the letter and thus support a single-letter theory (though Reed does not support a single-letter theory wholeheartedly). The participant Paul is introduced at 1:1 and the chain is continued with the first-person pronoun throughout the letter. The participant Philippians are introduced at 1:1 and continued with the second-- person pronoun (mentioned by name again in 4:14). So these two main participants in the letter (Paul and the Philippians) interact with third-person participants (supernatural beings, opponents and allies) across nearly all parts of the letter, indicating cohesiveness. Of course the reader immediately sees the potential problem with Reed's analysis: The first-person pronouns only refer to Paul if we assume Pauline authorship of the whole; the second-person pronouns only refer to the Philippians if we assume all this material was originally written to them.

The end of the book includes two appendixes: "Clause Structure in Philippians" and "The Influence of Rhetorical Theory on Greco-Roman Letter Writing." This latter section is quite informative and I recommend that students of Paul check out Reed's work and study through this appendix.

Reed's work provides us with an introduction to discourse analysis and NT Greek, but this introduction is available elsewhere (e.g. Porter and Carson, Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics, 1993; Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, 1992). For the scholar interested in Philippians studies, Reed is worth reading. Nevertheless, I anticipate his work having a minimal impact on Philippian scholarship, for two reasons: (1) He reaches no firm conclusions regarding integrity. Firm conclusions spark response and controversy. Controversy brings more readers and thus wider impact. (2) For the reader unfamiliar with linguistics, his work is hard reading.