At this juncture it will be well and wise to define more specifically what the phrase rhetorical criticism means in my view, and how it applies to the NT. Rhetorical criticism is by definition the study of rhetoric, whether ancient or modern, with a broad definition of rhetoric being the art of persuasion, though sometimes it has degenerated into the art of speaking well, or mere verbal eloquence. As applied to the field of NT studies, rhetorical criticism has been approached