Peter Martens - Greco-Roman Rhetorical Themes in Hadrian's Introduction to the Divine Scriptures

Hadrian wrote his Introduction (CPG 6527) as a guide for interpreting the demanding language and imagery of the Old Testament. This early fifth century treatise is the only textbook for scriptural interpretation that comes down to us from the "Antiochene school" of biblical interpretation. There are strong verbal and thematic continuities between his work and Theodore and Theodoret's exegetical writings. Yet more than any other work from that tradition, Hadrian's treatise codifies the leading principles of Old Testament exegesis associated with Antioch. This work has not been studied in any depth since it was critically edited (F. Goessling, 1887).

My paper is part of a larger project to study and translate this work. I propose to examine the role that the classical rhetorical tradition played in shaping Hadrian's approach to biblical interpretation. In so doing, I will build upon the work of C. Schäublin and F. Young, both of whom have drawn attention to the presence of rhetorical themes in Antiochene biblical exegesis. Hadrian saw the writers of Christian Scripture employing a rhetoric characterized by a wide range of figures and tropes, highly imagistic language about God, and well-established genres. On the basis of a few carefully selected passages, I will demonstrate that he drew upon the themes and categories of circulating rhetorical treatises to help him make sense of the rhetoric of the biblical text. 

One example will illustrate the approach of my paper. In the opening lines of his treatise, Hadrian says that the idiosyncrasies of the biblical literary style fall into three categories: oddities that "pertain to thought, diction, and composition." A TLG search reveals only one antecedent in all Greek literature (pagan and Christian) for this tripartite distinction: there is nearly identical phrasing in the first century BCE rhetorician Dionysius of Halicarnassus who praised the orator Lysias for how his speeches used "thought, diction and composition." I intend to highlight these sorts of parallels in my paper. In so doing, I will draw conclusions about the specific Hellenistic rhetorical texts that informed the approach to Scripture we see in Hadrian, and perhaps as well, in other Antiochene exegetes.