Kenneth Burke's writings on rhetoric may guide an exploration of how the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew functions as a persuasive act, inviting hearers to identify with the community being formed around a promised kingdom of heaven. Burke's approach provides, first, a way to evaluate how other interpreters have described formal features of the Sermon's rhetoric. Second, Burke's insights help elucidate the Sermon's agonistic elements—its enticements to social identification and detachment. Finally, a reading à la Burke points to the paradoxically destabilizing effects of the Sermon on the Mount's perfectionistic demands.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Allison, Dale1987 "The structure of the Sermon on the Mount." Journal of Biblical Literature106: 423-45.
2.
Betz, Hans Dieter1995The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount Including the Sermon on the Plain. Minneapolis : Fortress Press.
3.
Burke, Kenneth1961A Rhetoric of Religion. Boston : Beacon Press.
4.
1967 "Rhetoric-old and new." In Martin Steinmann, Jr. (ed.), New Rhetorics . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons .
5.
1968 "Dramatism." In David L. Sills (ed.), International Encycopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 7, 445-51. New York: Crowell Collier and Macmillan .
6.
1969a [1945] A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley : University of California Press .
7.
1969b [1950] A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley : University of California Press.
8.
Crafton, Jeffrey1993 " The dancing of an attitude: Burkean rhetorical criticism and the biblical interpreter." In Stanley E. Porter and Thomas H. Olbricht (eds.), Rhetoric and the New Testament: Essays from the 1992 Heidelberg Conference, 429-42. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 90. Sheffield Academic Press.
9.
Heath, Robert L1986 " Rhetoric through identification." In Realism and Relativism: A Perspective on Kenneth Burke, 195-228. Macon: Mercer University Press.
10.
Jameson, Fredric1978 "The symbolic inference; or, Kenneth Burke and ideological analysis." Critical Inquiry4: 508.
11.
Jeremias, Joachim1963The Sermon on the Mount. Translated by Norman Perrin. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
12.
Kennedy, George A.1984New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
13.
Kingsbury, Jack Dean1995 "The rhetoric of comprehension in the Gospel of Matthew ." New Testament Studies41: 358-77.
14.
Lentricchia, Frank1983Criticism and Social Change. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
15.
Levine, Amy-Jill1988The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Matthean Salvation History. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.
16.
Stanton, Graham N.1992 "The communities of Matthew." Interpretation46: 379-91.
17.
Steinmann, Martin, Jr., ed. 1967New Rhetorics. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
18.
Williams, James G.1990 "Paraenesis, excess, and ethics: Matthew's rhetoric in the Sermon on the Mount." Semeia50: 163-87.
19.
White, L. Michael1991 "Crisis management and boundary maintenance: The social location of the Matthean community." In David Balch (ed.), Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches, 211-47. Minneapolis : Fortress Press.
