Gospel traditions.11 The only two occurrences of “kingdom of God” in this Gospel are early in the narrative, associated with “birth from above,” and are followed by a transition to talk of “eternal life” (3:3–16), which then becomes a frequent usage. This may seem to shift the emphasis from God’s eschatological renewal of human life in society in all its dimensions to something more narrowly spiritual. On the face of it, it might seem that, whereas in the Synoptic Gospels Jesus’s “acts of power”
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