48 Adelbert Denaux grammar, language development70 and literary genre71. His style manifests itself on different levels: - Word level: characteristic words, word forms and word groups that are not only defined by content or literary genre; the richness of vocabulary compared to text-length; distribution of words and word groups72. - Sentence level: characteristic syntactical structures. - Rhetorical-narrative level: figures, rhetorical-structural features constructing the text. - Socio-rhetorical level73: communication between author, text and recipient in their socio-historical context. The value of the above observations can only be proved when they are put into practice in the stylistic analysis of a particular text unit in Luke. We conclude this survey with a remark of Aristotle, who did not have a high esteem of style, and found it a matter of less importance: …the matter of style itself only lately came into notice; and rightly considered it is thought vulgar. But since the whole business of Rhetoric is to influence opinion, we must pay attention to it, not as being right, but necessary … in every system of instruction there is some slight necessity to pay attention to style; for it does make a difference, for the purpose of making a thing clear, to speak in this of that manner; still, the difference is not so very great, but all these things are mere outward show for pleasing the hearer; wherefore no one teaches geometry in this way (Aristotle, Rhet. III,1,5-6). Maybe Aristotle reduced style too much to the issue of rethorics and this resulted in his “depreciation” of the complex reality of style. I hope that the above observations have shown that there is more at stake than just “outward show”! Style can be consciously archaic and take up ancient language traditions as well as 70 take a modern shape and challenge in a provocative way the rules of grammar. See J.L. Bailey and L.D. Vander Broek, Literary Forms in The New Testament 71 (London 1992). See A. Denaux and R. Corstjens, in collab. with H. Mardaga, The Vocabulary of 72 Luke, Alphabetical List of Words, Word Groups, Characteristics of Luke in comparison to Mt and Mk, and Literature. With biblical references to Luke and Acts (and a comparison to the number of occurrences in Matthew and Mark), Leuven (forthcoming). A good example of a socio-rhetorical analysis of Luke 21 is L.G. Bloomquist, 73 “Rhetorical Argumentation and the Culture of Apocalyptic. A Socio-Rhetorical Analysis of Luke 21”, in S.E. Porter - D.L. Stamps (eds.), The Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture. Essays from the 1996 Malibu Conference (JSNT.SS 180; Sheffield 1999) 173-209.