Asking For Rhetoric

What is a question? Kenneth Craig poses this query in the introductory chapter of his innovative study on the function of interrogatives in the Hebrew Bible. He describes a question as a special literary phenomenon. A question is an opening that seeks to be closed, and its rhetorical play derives from how it disposes its energies: how it invites opening, how it imposes closure (p. 2). Carefully analyzing texts from Genesis, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, Haggai and Zechariah, Craig demonstrates the nuanced and multifaceted ways in which the Hebrew Bible s interrogatives function to advance the Bible s literary and ideological goals.

Kenneth M. Craig, Jr., is professor of biblical studies at Lees-McRae College.

Tables

viii

Preface

ix

Abbreviations

xi

1 What Is a Question?

1

(10)

2 Fielding Questions in Eden (Genesis 2:16-3:13)

11

(16)

3 Fielding Questions outside Eden (Genesis 4:1-16)

27

(22)

4 Questions Answered with Silence and Literary Frames (1 Samuel 14:37 and 28:6)

49

(24)

5 The Triumph of Irony by Means of a Threadand-Frame (1 Samuel 18:7, 21:12, and 29:5)

73

(14)

6 Sequential Questions I (1 Samuel 26:6-25)

87

(19)

7 Sequential Questions II (2 Samuel 19:32-44)

106

(16)

8 Sequential Questions III (1 Samuel 20)

122

(27)

9 Questions and the Characterization of God (2 Samuel 7:1-17)

149

(19)

10 The Duplicitous Question (1 Kings 1:11-31)

168

(22)

11 Questions as Literary Threads (Haggai to Zechariah 1-8)

190

(21)

Bibliography

211

(5)

Index

216

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

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