Asking for Rhetoric: The Hebrew Bible's Protean Interrogative

by Kenneth M. Craig Jr.

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0391042319
• ISBN13: 9780391042315
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 9.4"