Blurb:

This chapter ambiguates the object defined as “rhetoric” in order to examine scholars’ temptation to understand the persuasion (and thus spread) of early Graeco-Roman Christianities as merely the effect of compelling ideas. Using first the ancient theorist, Gorgias of Leontini, and then the work of a modern one, Harvey Whitehouse, it inspects that common model by proposing rhetoric and persuasion as far more dynamic and complex items.