39 Style and Stylistcs, with Special Reference to Luke Botha lays an almost exclusive stress on the communicative/rhetorical function of style. It is obvious that style is often aiming at and leading to effective persuasion, but it would be exaggerated to reduce the function of style to its rhetorical effectiveness. Some stylistic features of Paul’s letters might have been persuasive in his time, but not necessarily in ours. That means that style should at least be distinguished from rhetorical effectiveness. In 1995, I.H. Henderson has published an interesting study on “Style- Switching” in the Didache which makes use of rhetorical and socio- linguistic theories33, and which can be fruitful for the stylistics of Luke’s Gospel. He defines style as follows: “Style is not something of which a text or author or corpus has one. Rather, style is a dynamic function of extra- and infra-textual variables, including educational institutions and traditions (e.g., the progymnasmatic curricu- lum), language contact, social conflict among and within groups, an author’s ethos and pathos in relation to projected readerships, and the wide (but not infinite) variety of language itself. From this perspective, style is not radically distinct from other aspects of rhetoric, notably argumentation, but makes part of a whole which is intentionally expressive as well as persuasive. Moreover, style is not static - it exists in relation to the communicative pro- cess of textual production and reading. Style is therefore stylistic variation, a judicious mixture of repetition, omission, and innovation”34. This definition excels in integrating all aspects of communication between text, author and recipient and is very dynamic. Henderson remarks that, different from his approach, traditional definitions of style either elaborate the personal style of the author, the style of a text, or the language habits of a group35. However, all three aspects are part of a communication process. Henderson makes another distinction: “The difference between a classical, rhetorical, and sociolinguistic stylistics, on the one hand, and either a redaction-critical or a neorhetorical (argu- See B. Kowalski, “Stil in der neutestamentlichen Exegese”, 109-11. 33 I.H. Henderson, “Style-Switching in the Didache. Fingerprint or Argument?”, in C.N. 34 Jefford (ed.), The Didache in Context. Essays on Its Text, History and Transmission (NT. S 77; Leiden 1995) 177-209. I.H. Henderson, Style-Switching, 195: “At the same time, rhetorical and sociolinguistic 35 theories of style resist both the romantic individualism and the theological communism of redaction criticism, which focuses upon the Personalstil (individual style) of a particular author, upon the style of a single text, or upon the habits of the presumed speech-community which lies behind a text”.