Induction and Example: A Rhetorical Exegesis in the Letter of Galatians

Very little work has been done on the function of example as a rhetorical induction in the New Testament. This lacuna in scholarship is particularly striking given Paul's personal (rhetorical) examples in his Letter to the Galatians. In Induction and Example, C. T. Johnson, therefore, addresses a much needed area of Pauline research. Johnson first constructs a methodology to assist readers in interpreting and identifying Aristotle’s induction and the rhetorical example, and then using this methodology, he focuses on Paul's personal (and rhetorical) examples to get at "the truth of the gospel" in the letter to the Galatians. The monograph defines and describes two aspects of induction (observation and experience) and how they function in the biblical text, especially how individuals arrive at their inductive conclusions. Further still, Johnson describes how the various types of example—historical, recent, personal, and analogical—are used as rhetorical devices to persuade a person, or community to embrace or reject a particular position in the future. Induction and Example is essential reading not only for scholars and students of New Testament rhetoric, but also for anyone interested in the ways in which the apostle Paul communicated personally and persuasively to the early churches under his influence.

C. T. Johnson has a PhD from Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He is the author of "The Earth's Ethos, Logos, and Pathos: An Ecological Reading of Revelation" (2014).





Troy Martin is Professor of Bible in the Department of Religious Studies at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. He is author of Apostolic Confirmation and Legitimation in an Early Christian Faith Document: A Commentary on the First Epistle of the Apostle Peter (forthcoming).