Book Review: Eberhard W. Güting and David L. Mealand. Asyndeton in Paul: A Text-critical and Statistical Inquiry into Pauline Style. Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity, no. 39. Mellen, 1998. Pp. xiv + 203. ISBN 0-7734-8369-1. US $89.95.

Abstract

"This interesting volume is divided into an introduction and three parts. The introduction (pp. 1-23) discusses asyndeton in relation to ancient rhetoric and modern linguistics, goes on to describe the text-critical methodology that will be followed, and then finally summarises the place of asyndeton within Paul's style. The kind of criticism that is adopted is a reasoned balance of external and internal criteria. It begins with the former, but it acknowledges the presence of error in even the best manuscripts: 'We need to analyse the tendencies of particular texts, and of groups of manuscripts, in order to recognize attempts to improve the text grammatically or stylistically' (p. 8). The authors follow Zuntz in accepting that the critic's task is to recover the oldest available text of the Corpus Paulinum (p. 9) (Zuntz 1953: 12). There is some direct overlap with Zuntz's work, since the book examines the text of Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians (Zuntz concentrated on 1 Corinthians and Hebrews). In addition, a few other passages are discussed; for example, 1 Thess. 5.3 (p. 38)."(pg 1)