Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 53:1 (Mar 2010)
Article: An Overlooked Scriptural Paradox: The Pseudosorites
Author: Richard D. Patterson

JETS 53:1 (March 2010) p. 19

An Overlooked Scriptural Paradox: The Pseudosorites

Richard D. Patterson

Richard Patterson is distinguished professor emeritus at Liberty University, 1971 University Blvd., Lynchburg, VA 24502.

That the OT prophets were particularly skilled in their use of figures of speech, imagery, and other literary features is well established. Such has been demonstrated in recent special studies relative to OT prophecy itself or the individual prophets, and in many standard commentaries.1 This study is concerned with a little-noted and oft-neglected or misunderstood literary figure known as a pseudosorites.2 By “pseudosorites” is meant a rhetorical device in which the speaker says that event A will (or will not) happen, but even if it does not (or does) it will be contradicted and conditioned substantially by event B.3 As such the pseudosorites constitutes a type of literary, if not logical, paradox. Thus O’Connor explains it as, “a form of paradox involving two or three clauses tied by repetition, anaphora, or their equivalents. The form begins by excluding an event or outcome; it is logically irreal and grammatically counter-factual.”4

The pseudosorites stands in contrast to the more familiar sorites, which may be developed in one of two ways. In the Aristotelian type, the predicate of the opening statement of a series of statements becomes the subject of the next statement and so on with each succeeding statement until in the conclusion the subject of the first statement is linked with the predicate of immediately preceding statement. Consider the following example:

All true believers seek the will of God,

All who seek the will of God desire to grow in grace,

All who desire to grow in grace read the Bible daily,

Therefore, all true believers read the Bible daily.5

JETS 53:1 (March 2010) p. 20

In the Goclenian type, the opposite order is followed. Thus the above example would be formed as follows:

All true believers read the Bible daily,

All who read the Bible daily desire to grow in grace,

All who desire to grow in grace seek the will of God,

Therefore all who seek the will of God are true believers.

In contrast to the logically progressive sorites, the pseudosorites conveys “a train of thought which does not seem logical as it moves from ...