Browsing by Subject "Characterization."
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Item Characterizing Jesus : a rhetorical analysis on the Fourth Gospel's use of Scripture in its presenation of Jesus.(2011-01-05T19:42:49Z) Myers, Alicia D.; Talbert, Charles H.; Religion.; Baylor University. Dept. of Religion.This dissertation explores how the Fourth Gospel's use of Scripture contributes to its characterization of Jesus. Utilizing literary-rhetorical criticism, it approaches the Gospel in its final form, paying particular attention to how Greco-Roman rhetoric can assist in understanding the ways in which Scripture is employed to support the presentation of Jesus. This study, therefore, crosses paths with three areas of current Johannine and New Testament scholarship: (1) literary-critical studies on the Fourth Gospel's characterization of Jesus; (2) studies on the presence (or absence) of Greco-Roman rhetoric in the Gospel; and (3) intertextual studies on John and the New Testament. This dissertation contributes to all three of these areas by expanding on how rhetorical practices affect ancient characterization, demonstrating further evidence in favor of the Gospel's use of rhetoric (particularly the practices of synkrisis, ekphrasis, and prosopopoiia), and, in so doing, offering a new way to use rhetoric to better understand the use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel and the New Testament as a whole. The dissertation accomplishes these tasks in three parts. First, it examines ancient Mediterranean practices of narration and characterization in relationship to the Gospel, concluding with an analysis of the Johannine prologue. In the second and third parts, the study investigates explicit appeals to Scripture made both in and outside of Jesus' discourses to discover how they contribute to the Gospel's presentation of its protagonist. Through these analyses, this study contends that the pervasive presence of Scripture in quotations, allusions, and references to key figures and events is meant to act as corroborating evidence supporting the evangelist's presentation of Jesus. Offering clarification of Jesus' words and actions—as well as of those reacting to Jesus within the narrative—Scripture contextualizes Jesus by means of well-known, comparative examples. In this way, Scripture testifies on behalf of the Johannine Jesus, consistently reinforcing the evangelist's initial presentation of his protagonist in John 1:1-18 and, therefore, increasing the credibility of his bios for his Gospel audience, even as it confounds other characters in the narrative itself.Item The death of Judas : the characterization of Judas Iscariot in three early Christian accounts of his death.(2011-05-12T15:49:09Z) Robertson, Jesse E., 1969-; Talbert, Charles H.; Religion.; Baylor University. Dept. of Religion.Three different accounts of the death of Judas Iscariot are preserved in Matthew 27:3–10, Acts 1:18–20, and fragments of Papias. The present study will argue that in the milieu of the ancient Mediterranean such death-accounts would have conveyed to the authorial audience particular character traits of Judas through established conventions. The rhetorical handbooks of the era reveal the strategies employed in the depiction of persons in general as well as in descriptions of death. By comparing these theoretical discussions with the actual practice in various types of discourse, the principal patterns of literary portraiture emerge. Using these patterns as an interpretive grid, the three early accounts of Judas’ death reveal character-shaping details that are relevant to the overall plot and theological interests of each work. In Matthew, Judas is depicted as a traitor of a Davidic king and a failure as a disciple. In Acts, the portrait of Judas presents him as an apostate apostle and a defeated enemy of God’s people. In Papias, Judas is characterized as a greedy and intemperate miscreant who plots against a righteous benefactor.