Paul's Literary Style: A Stylistic and Historical Comparison of II Corinthians 11:16-12:13, Romans 8:9-39, and Philippians 3:2-4:13 - Tapa dura

Paul's Literary Style determines quantitatively how Paul varies the style of his writing to assist communication with different communities and to ascertain some constant characteristics of his writing. Using 2 Corinthians 11:16-12:13, Romans 8:9-39, and Philippians 3:2-4:13, the author uncovers the performance of ten stylistic operations: sentence changes, complexity of the writing, adverbs and adverbial clauses, propositional reduction; logical diagrams, abstract versus concrete nouns, imagery, Leo Spitzer's philological circle, verb density, and variety of sentence length.

Aida Besancon Spencer is the author of Prayer Life of Jesus (University Press of America, 1990) and is Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.