Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks.

• Author: Matthews, Victor H.
• Position: Book review

Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks. Edited by CAROL S. LIPSON and ROBERTA A. BINKLEY. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2004. Pp. vi + 267. $62.50 (cloth); $20.95 (paper).

As the editors note, the study of ancient rhetoric is generally dominated by Greek classical rhetoric. However, feeling it necessary to demonstrate that Greek culture is not the sole possessor of this innovation, they have provided a collection of studies that examine "other rhetorics" as found in the literature of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and Israel. In particular, their aim is to develop "a better understanding of how different rhetorical approaches functioned and were situated within very different cultures" (p. 3). Among the themes found in these essays is how to recover vestiges and characteristics of these ancient rhetorics, and the need for an interdisciplinary approach--taking into account literature from a number of eras and cultures within a particular region and how they contribute to the creation of rhetorical style. One check on their research is the understanding that copies of written texts do not always reflect the rhetorics in actual use by a culture at the time the manuscript was composed.

The contents of the volume include three studies on Mesopotamian rhetoric, two on Egyptian rhetoric, three on Chinese rhetoric, one each on biblical rhetoric and "alternative Greek rhetoric" (from Rhodes), and two cross-cultural studies that deal with Near Eastern texts. Of particular interest here is the essay by William Hallo on "The Birth of Rhetoric," which provides a foundation, using Sumerian sources, for rhetoric in the ancient Near East. After examining the peculiarities of working with cuneiform literature, he focuses on the Gilgamesh Epic and its rhetorical devices. The two essays on ancient Egypt take diverging trajectories, but each contributes important insights to the discussion. Carol Lipson's examination of Maat as the central philosophical concept in Egyptian culture demonstrates how genre and forms of speech and textual expression are shaped by a value system. Deborah Sweeney brings the insights of an archaeologist into the mix and highlights the importance of examining everyday speech patterns in legal texts and court documents.

The authors of the three essays on Chinese rhetoric have the distinct advantage of intimate familiarity with the language and thus are not dependent on translations. George Xu's contribution, using a...