Contents

Invitation to the Dance -- pg. 1

1. Oral Examination -- pg. 7 How Did “Oral” Texts Function in a Rhetorical Culture?

2. Canonical Pseudepigrapha -- pg. 19
Is It an Oxymoron?

3. Rethinking and Redescribing Scribal Culture -- pg. 33

4. The Question of Sermons and Homilies in the New Testament -- pg. 49

5. Romans 7:7-25 -- pg. 61
Retelling Adam’s Tale

6. What’s in a Name? -- pg. 77
Rethinking the Historical Figure of the Beloved Disciple in the Fourth Gospel

7. What’s in a Word? -- pg. 89
Part One—Eidolothuton

8. What’s in a Word? -- pg. 103
Part Two—Porneia

9. What’s in a Phrase? -- pg. 113
“No Male and Female” (Galatians 3:28)

10. “Christianity in the Making” -- pg. 121
Oral Mystery or Eyewitness History?

11. The Rise of Canon Consciousness and the Formation
of the New Testament -- pg. 143

12. Signposts along the Way -- pg. 165
On Taking the Less-Traveled Path

Notes -- pg. 171

Scripture Index -- pg. 189

Index of Subjects and Authors -- pg. 193

Written in clear, and at times colorful, prose, Ben Witherington's What's in the Word explains how the recognition of the oral and socio-rhetorical character of the New Testament and its environment necessitates a change in how the New Testament literature is read. Expanding on the work in which he has been fruitfully engaged for over a quarter century, Witherington challenges the previously assured results of historical criticism and demonstrates chapter by chapter how the socio-rhetorical study shifts the paradigm.
Taken together, the chapters in What's in the Word coalesce around three of Witherington's ongoing academic concerns: orality and rhetoric; New Testament history, including issues of authenticity and canonirity; and the exegesis of given words in their canonical and socio-cultural contexts. Always unpredictable, this book never fails to pique interest and proffer instruction.