Christian Origins and the Language of the Kingdom of God

Download or read book Christian Origins and the Language of the Kingdom of God written by Michael L. Humphries and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditionally, scholars have traced the origin of Christianity to a single source - the kingdom of God as represented in the message of the historical Jesus. Through a rhetorical critical analysis of one of the most important texts in early Christian literature (the Beelzebul controversy), Michael L. Humphries addresses the issue of Christian origins, demonstrating how the language of the kingdom of God is best understood according to its locative or taxonomic effect where the demarcation of social and cultural boundaries contributes to the emergence of this new social foundation. Humphries establishes the Q and Markan versions of the Beelzebul controversy as relatively sophisticated compositions that are formally identified as elaborate chreiai (a literary form used in the teaching of rhetoric at the secondary and post-secondary level of Greco-Roman education) and that offer an excellent example of the rhetorical manipulation of language in the development of social and cultural identity.