Persuading God

Written By AScholar Of Rhetoric, Persuading God Demonstrates That The Firstperson Psalms That Make Up Over AThird Of The Book Of Psalms Were Designed Not Simply To Express The Feelings Of Individual Israelites But To Persuade God To Act.the Book Casts ANew Light On The Roles Of All The Players In The Situations In Which The Psalms Were Composed And Performed: The Person Represented By The Speaker On Whose Particular Troubles The Psalm Is Based, The Spectators And Opponents Who Are Sometimes Addressed Directly By The Speaker, The Poetmusicians Who Craft The Speaker?s Case And Occasionally Undermine It, And, Most Of All, God As The Direct Addressee Whose Presumed Openness To Persuasion And Willingness To Intervene Underlie The Entire Event.the Readings Provide New Explanations For Many Longstanding Puzzles: How To Deal With The Long String Of Imprecations In Psalm , Whether Psalm Is Best Read As Protesting AFalse Accusation Or As Countering Apostasy, Why So Many Verses In Psalm Begin With The Exclamation Ach, And, More Generally, Why So Many Firstperson Psalms Seem To Swing Abruptly Between Despair And Praise.the Book Demonstrates The Relevance Of Contemporary Rhetorical Theory To Hebrew Bible Studies, Including The Work Of Chaïm Perelman And Lucie Olbrechtstyteca, Kenneth Burke, And Mikhail BakhtinIt Also Illuminates The State Of Rhetorical Practice In The Ancient Near East At The Same Time That Rhetorical Theories Were First Being Codified And Taught In Archaic And Classical Athens.
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