rhetoric before and beyond the greeksby carol s. lipson; roberta a. binkley

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Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks by Carol S. Lipson; Roberta A. Binkley Review by: Victor H. Matthews Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 125, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 2005), pp. 475-476 Published by: American Oriental Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064412 . Accessed: 16/06/2014 17:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Oriental Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.78.108.51 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:11:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeksby Carol S. Lipson; Roberta A. Binkley

Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks by Carol S. Lipson; Roberta A. BinkleyReview by: Victor H. MatthewsJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 125, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 2005), pp. 475-476Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064412 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 17:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofthe American Oriental Society.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.51 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:11:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeksby Carol S. Lipson; Roberta A. Binkley

Brief Reviews

The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal, vol. 2:

Ethics and Epics. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri.

New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Pp. vii + 445. Rs. $75.

This is the second of a two-volume collection of

Bimal Krishna Matilal's papers edited by Jonardon

Ganeri. The first volume, Mind, Language and World,

was devoted to Matilal's considerable body of works

dealing with philosophy, logic, and epistemology. The

companion volume reviewed here, although called

Ethics and Epics, deals with a sundry list of topics and

can best be viewed as "miscellaneous," save for the fact

that all the essays contain material relating to ethics or

the epics. Within the compass of this brief review it is im

possible to present in any detail the twenty-nine papers included in this volume. They range from essays on R?

makrsna, to explorations of rationality and dharma, to

peace and inter-faith studies, to karma and salvation.

Matilal brings his usual acumen and insight into a wide

range of issues of interest not just to scholars but also to

the general public. Indeed, some of the essays in this

collection were originally published in "popular" publi cations such as the Bulletin of the Rama Krishna Mission

Institute of Calcutta and Our Heritage. Of the many interesting papers here, I found those

dealing with the elusive concept of dharma both pro found and offering refreshingly new insights: "Moral

Dilemmas: Insights from Indian Epics," "Elusiveness

and Ambiguity in Dharma-Ethics," "Dharma and

Rationality," and "Rationality, Dharma, and the Bra

mar?a Theory!' The following quotation from the essay "Elusiveness" ' shows that Matilal was a sensitive reader

of history and saw the problems inherent in essen

tializing Indian religious history before "Orientalism"

became a fashion and a fad. Referring to Weber's re

flections on caste and karma, Matilal observes:

There was one component, caste, that was avowedly anti-rational in virtually sanctioning inequalities, and another that was a commendable expression of

ethical rationalism, the karma component of dharma.

I believe the story or history of Hindu thought has

been the tension and reaction between these two

opposite tendencies. The seemingly tension-free

perpetuation of the hierarchical social ethos for mil

1. Unfortunately it is impossible to say when this

paper was written. Ganeri simply ignores the provenance of it, but it was probably composed sometime in the

1980s.

lennia is simply a myth. For almost the same set of

reasons, I believe the Indologist's frequent construc

tion of a 'neo-Hinduism', distinct and distinguished from 'traditional Hinduism' by the influx of Western

ideas and ideology ... is also to be taken with a

pinch of salt. The tradition was self-conscious. It has

been interpreting and re-interpreting itself over the

ages. It is hardly a new phenomenon. The myth is

tied up with the Indologist's romantic search for a

classical, pure form of Hinduism (or Buddhism as

the case may be), and is little better than a dream,

which even attracts some sinister fundamentalist

sects of India today, (pp. 39-40)

One unfortunate aspect of this volume is the lack of

an index providing the provenance of the articles col

lected. Their provenance is given at the beginning of

the previous volume, Mind, Language and World, but a

reader who happens to have only this volume would not

know where the essays were originally published. Even

in the first volume where this information is found,

eleven essays are ignored. Perhaps these were unpub lished works, but Ganeri does not address the issue at

all. For this one must fault both Ganeri and the editors

of Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

One must, however, be grateful to both Ganeri and

OUP for making available in two handsomely produced volumes significant papers of one of the most influential

and versatile scholars of India's past and present. Read

ing Matilal's essays is always an enriching experience.

Patrick Olivelle

University of Texas

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. How

ever, feeling it necessary to demonstrate that Greek cul

ture 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 Mesopo

tamia, Egypt, China, and Israel. In particular, their aim is

to develop "a better understanding of how different rhe

torical approaches functioned and were situated within

very different cultures" (p. 3). Among the themes found

Journal of the American Oriental Society 125.3 (2005) 475

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.51 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:11:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeksby Carol S. Lipson; Roberta A. Binkley

476 Journal of the American Oriental Society 125.3 (2005)

in these essays is how to recover vestiges and charac

teristics of these ancient rhetorics, and the need for an

interdisciplinary approach?taking into account litera

ture from a number of eras and cultures within a par ticular region and how they contribute to the creation of

rhetorical style. One check on their research is the under

standing that copies of written texts do not always re

flect 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 ex

amination 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 scale measuring moral

valuation of types of speech, highlights the irony im

plicit in Confucian thought that advocates silence while

accomplishing its goals through eloquent persuasion. Arabella Lyon's approach, while also examining Con

fucian rhetoric, is to caution against drawing too close a

parallel between Aristotelian rhetoric and Chinese

forms. Finally, Yameng Liu advocates a new paradigm for the study of Chinese rhetoric that separates it from

the traditional ties to philosophy and linguistics. In

stead, he suggests that Chinese rhetoric is a "discipline/

practice in its own right" and the various "discourse

communities actually shared much in their rhetorical

thinking and modes of rhetorical practice" (p. 161).

In his essay on Biblical rhetoric in the Pentateuch,

David Metzger, after discussing the Graf-Wellhausen

literary hypothesis, contends that the various editors

rhetorically represent the voices and agenda of compet

ing power groups, including the Aaronides, the Levitic

priesthood, the prophets, and the various factions asso

ciated with the monarchy. He suggests that gaps in the

text can be overcome by positing "which power group

would speak that way" (p. 18; my emphasis). Richard Enos provides in his essay an opportunity to

see, separate from the lens of Athenian rhetoric methods

and forms, an alternative Greek approach from the island

of Rhodes. In particular, he finds the flexible nature of

Rhodian rhetoric to be typical of a culture that must

deal with a wide variety of peoples, and that is to be ex

pected of an island set at a crossroads between Asia and

Europe. The originator of this rhetoric, Aeschines, was

trained in Athens, but transcended its influence by stress

ing the need to recognize cultural differences (language and value system) in order to maximize the effectiveness

of commercial speech. The two cross-cultural studies that complete this

volume attempt to draw on examples from entire re

gions (Watts includes Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syro

Palestine; Swearingen draws on women's songs and

lamentations in Homeric and Biblical texts). They each

demonstrate the importance attached to a study of rhe

torical patterns in any attempt to recreate the emic per

spective of the authors and their ancient audiences.

This is a valuable collection of studies and one that

should spark additional cross-cultural analyses of ancient

rhetoric in all its forms. It is also a testament to the rec

ognition that no one culture "owns" a particular literary

genre.

Victor H. Matthews

Missouri State University

Von Berlin nach Meroe: Erinnerungen an den ?gyp

tologen Fritz Hintze (1915-1993). Edited by Erika

Endesfelder. Asien- und Afrikastudien der

Humboldt-Universit?t, vol. 3. Wiesbaden: Harras

sowitz Verlag, 2003. Pp. 111. (paper)

Volume 3 of Asien- und Afrikastudien der Humboldt

Universit?t contains a number of papers presented during a colloquium that took place on 20 April 1995 to cele

brate, two years after his sudden death in an accident, the eightieth birthday of the German Egyptologist and

pioneer in the study of Meroitic language and culture in

the Sudan, Fritz Hintze. The event, therefore, gathered above all Hintze's colleagues and students who followed

and accompanied the honor?e on his scholarly path. The

variety of his academic interests is also reflected by the

various disciplines of the participants in the colloquium.

Unfortunately, the volume appeared only after a consid

erable delay, and not all those who took part in the col

loquium submitted their papers for publication. The subtitle of the volume is mirrored in the per

sonal character of some contributions (e.g., H. H?rz,

"Das Verh?ltnis Fritz Hintzes zur Philosophie?Erinner

ungen mit Anmerkungen"). Since there had already been

two Festschriften in honor of Hintze's scholarly achieve

ments (on the occasion of his sixtieth and seventy-fifth

birthdays: ?gypten und Kusch [Berlin: Akademie

Verlag, 1977]; Studia in honorem Fritz Hintze [Berlin:

Akademie-Verlag, 1990]), these articles focus on

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