In a study recently published in this journal, Lawrence Wills has identified, in a wide range of Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian literature, a recurring pattern that is sometimes characterized in those sources as a “word of exhortation” (λόγος παρακλήσεως: Acts 13:15; Heb 13:22; cf. Acts 2:40; 1 Macc 10:24; 2 Macc 7:24; 15:11; Apostolic Constitutions 8.5). Toward the end of his article, Wills suggests that the form of this word of exhortation may define a point on a larger rhetorical trajectory within Greco-Roman Hellenism, and that “we can perhaps go further and note the actual compositional techniques that have passed over from Greek rhetoric into Jewish and Christian oratory.” In this assessment Wills is, I believe, quite correct, and in this essay I wish to build upon, and at specific points to refine, his analysis of the form of Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian sermons.

Most of the standard treatments of Martin Luther's biblical exegesis move deductively: general propositions are enunciated (e.g., Holy Scripture as its own interpreter; all correct interpretation standing under the rule of the analogy of faith, construed Christocentrically) and are then supported with extracts from the Weimar Ausgabe or Luther's Works. Genuinely instructive as such a procedure can be, its total effect is often a rather ‘flat’ or undifferentiated presentation of Luther's biblical interpretation throughout his career. Perhaps some of the dimensions of the subject — the unity and diversity, the constancy and development — would become clearer were we to adopt a more inductive procedure: to examine, compare, and contrast three different specimens of Luther's exegesis of a single text.