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exhibiting the authority of Jesus by placing him in a position of power alongside God in the cosmic order.

Thesis: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation.
Rationale: Because in him all things in heaven and on earth were created--through him and for him. (Colossians 1.15-16)

The nature of this discourse is to heighten the christological reasoning in the other discourses. Wisdom discourse became wisdom brought to earth by the one through whom the world had been created. Miracle discourse became the signs of the redeemer doing the work of God while he was on earth. Apocalyptic discourse either lost its temporality in the service of cosmic intervention in the regular processes of life or intensified the temporality into a dramatic cosmic drama that completely and dramatically destroyed heaven, earth, and hell and replaced it with a new creation. Opposition discourse was no longer an encounter between people that could lead to reform on earth, but a confrontation between people in darkness and people saved by the light. Death and resurrection discourse, in turn, became a story of the glorification of the redeemer from heaven who came to dwell in the flesh for a time before returning to heaven to be in the realm of the divine.

4. Conclusion

The goal of this essay has been to get an initial socio-rhetorical insight into the multiple discourses in early Christian literature. Following the lead of insights by Clifford Geertz and James Peacock, it has been possible to locate syllogistic reasoning central to six different discourses in the New Testament. The presence of this reasoning signals the nature of these discourses as rhetorical dialects, which we have called rhetorolects through the encouragement of the sociolinguist Benjamin Hary. Each rhetorolect contains special reasoning about God's action and the implications of this action for the life of human beings on earth. Each rhetorolect contains major and minor premises that, when elaborated, generate further discourse. The activity of repeating this discourse and living out its implications generates cultural worlds in which people live. The limitations of space and time have made it possible only to give a most basic picture of these rhetorolects. A presentation of the full nature of each rhetorolect and the manner in which all the rhetorolects dialogue with one another to create Christian discourse must await other settings.

Bibliography

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986) Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, trans. V. W. McGee, ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. M. and Medvedev, P. N. (1978) The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics, trans. A. J. Wehrle, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bolinger, D. L. and Sears, D. L. (1981) Aspects of Language, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Geertz, Clifford (1957) "Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example," American Anthropologist 59: 35.

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