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The Strategic Arousal of Emotions in the Apocalypse of John: A Rhetorical-Critical Investigation of the Oracles to the Seven Churches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2008

DAVID A. DESILVA
DAVID A. DESILVA
Affiliation:
Ashland Theological Seminary, 910 Center Street, Ashland, Ohio 44805, USA
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Abstract

Heuristic use of classical rhetorical theorists' discussion of appeals to the emotions allows the interpreter to discern the strategic arousal of three principal pairs of emotions in the seven oracles of Revelation: fear and confidence, friendship and enmity, and shame and emulation. While some of these emotional responses are evoked in multiple oracles, certain ones tend to be more fully nurtured in particular oracles, being more strategic to achieving the speaker's specific goals for the audiences in those settings. John gives attention to the multiple dimensions of appeals to emotion as discussed by Aristotle (nurturing the frame of mind that is disposed to that particular emotion, identifying particular ‘others’ in regard to whom that emotion is rightly directed, and inscribing situations that naturally give rise to that emotion).

Keywords

RevelationLettersRhetoricSeven churches
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 90 - 114
Copyright
© 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper was written during research leave made possible by a research fellowship award from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and study leave grant from Ashland Theological Seminary. The generous support of these institutions is most gratefully acknowledged. The author also wishes to express his thanks to the faculty of the Evangelisch-theologisches Seminar of the University of Tübingen, especially to Prof. Dr. Martin Hengel and Prof. Dr. Hermann Lichtenberger, for their gracious hospitality, and to Mrs. Marietta Haemmerle for her kind and ever-willing secretarial assistance throughout the period of this research leave.