Kids and Kingdom: The Precarious Presence of Children in the Synoptic Gospels

Kids and Kingdom challenges the traditional view that Jesus was deeply concerned over children. Instead, it is argued that despite the Synoptic authors' attempts to convince us that children are fully included in the kingdom of God—that "Jesus loves the little children"—their presentations fail to conceal images of household disruption and alienation of children brought about by Jesus' eschatological movement. After establishing what Greco-Roman and Jewish sources reveal about children by t...