Asking for Rhetoric : : The Hebrew Bible's Protean Interrogative / / Kenneth Craig.

• Superior document: Biblical Interpretation Series ; Volume 73
• VerfasserIn: Craig, Kenneth,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Brill Academic Publishers,, [2005]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2005
• Edition: First edition.
• Language: English
• Series: Biblical interpretation series ; Volume 73.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

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.

Table of Contents

What is a question? -- Fielding questions in Eden (Genesis 2:16-3:13) -- Fielding questions outside Eden (Genesis 4:1-16) -- Questions answered with silence and literary frames (1 Samuel 14:37 and 28:6) -- The triumph of irony by means of a thread-and-frame (1 Samuel 18:7, 21:12, and 29:5 ) -- Sequential questions I (1 Samuel 26:6-25) -- Sequential questions II (2 Samuel 19:32-44) -- Sequential questions III (1 Samuel 20) -- Questions and the characterization of God (2 Samuel 7:1-17) -- The duplicitous question (1 Kings 1:11-31) -- Questions as literary threads (Haggai-Zechariah 1-8).