Traditions of Western Rhetoric and Daesoon Jinrihoe: Prolegomena to Further Investigations

Abstract

Applying the long and distinguished heritage of rhetorical theory to any sacred text, such The Canonical Scripture of Daesoon Jinrihoe, could fill many volumes of many books. This study, then, will provide some suggestive prolegomena for directions rhetorical criticism of the Scripture can take, now and in future research. This study will, further, make necessarily broad strokes in order to familiarize audiences and scholars of new Korean religions, and Eastern thought generally, with Western, both ancient and more modern, modes of rhetorical thought. As rhetorical criticism is increasingly embraced by Western religious scholarship, and as comparative religious studies remain an important dimension of textual scholarship, this article will contribute to both areas by presenting perhaps the first rhetorical-critical approach to the sacred scriptures of Daesoon Jinrihoe. When the new English translation of the Scriptures becomes available in the West, general and scholarly readers will be interested to find parallels and departures with religious and critical traditions with which they are already familiar (in this case, early American Protestant Calvinism). This study will make contributions, then, to the areas of rhetorical-religious criticism, comparative East-West presentations of nature within scriptural contexts, and establishment of grounds for further comparative investigations of Western traditions and Daesoon Jinrihoe.