I recently got word that my paper proposal for the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature was accepted. The title of the paper is: “Waiting for His Promised Coming: Eschatology and Ethics in Chain-link in 2 Peter 3.” I’ll be reading it in the Letters of James, Peter, and Jude Program Unit. Here’s the abstract:
The chain-link interlock is an ancient rhetorical transition device which, though long neglected in scholarship, has recently been identified by Bruce Longenecker. The chain-link transition involves two distinct textual units with overlapping material across the textual boundary which aims to effect a smooth rhetorical transition. This device is present in numerous New Testament texts and often effects how these texts should be interpreted and understood theologically. This paper will demonstrate that the transition in 2 Peter 3 from the argument of vv. 3:8-13 to the peroratio of vv. 14-18 is rhetorically structured by a chain-link interlock, and that this transition has been structured to link the author’s theology of the parousia with the ethical and moral development of the recipients’ character of life. The argument will progress by first presenting primary source evidence for the chain-link interlock from the ancient rhetorical handbooks. It will then be demonstrated that 2 Peter 3 fits the chain-link model and that the author intends this rhetorical feature to govern the way the peroratio is understood by the recipients of the letter. The paper will conclude by offering an interpretation of the peroratio in light of chain-link structure of the text.
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