Phyllis Trible examines rhetorical criticism as a discipline within biblical studies. In Part One she surveys the historical antecedents of the method from ancient times to the postmodern era: classical rhetoric, literary critical theory, literary study of the Bible, and form criticism. Trible then presents samples of rhetorical analysis as the art of composition and as the art of persuasion.

In Part Two, formulated guidelines are applied to a detailed study of the book of Jonah. A close reading with respect to structure, syntax, style, and substance elicits a host of meanings embedded in text, enabling the relationship between artistry and theology to emerge with clarity.

Rhetorical Criticism has many distinctive features. It is

the first comprehensive treatment of biblical rhetorical criticism as it has emerged within the latter half of the twentieth century.

a didactic treatise that combines theoretical discussion, practical guidelines, and detailed exegesis

interdisciplinary in approach, engaging the rhetorical study of the Bible with expanding developments in secular literary criticism (structuralism, poetics, reader-response criticism, and deconstruction, for example) and in the similarly burgeoning field of contemporary rhetoric

itself a model of the rhetorical analysis that it describes

accessible both to the novice and to the scholar