Jesus the Hero

A Guided Literary Study of the Gospels

Leland Ryken

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781683591597
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This is the fourth of a six-volume series called Reading the Bible as Literature. This volume on the Gospels continues the tradition of the first three in the series by exploring the intersection of the Bible and literature. Ryken enables pastors, students, and teachers of the Bible to appreciate the craftsmanship and beauty of the Gospels and how to interpret them correctly. He goes one step further than merely explaining the literary dimensions of the Gospels - he includes exercises to help students master this rich literary treasure.

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Narrative Genre

The Primary Form

When we speak of narrative, or story, as the primary form of the Gospels, we have two dimensions in view. One is the overview of each Gospel as a book. While this narrative superstructure, or umbrella, for each book does not yield a methodology for interacting with individual passages, it is useful information to have at our disposal as we interact with individual units, which always contribute to an overall story. The other dimension is that we need to assimilate individual stories in the Gospels by using the usual tools of narrative analysis. The next module of this chapter will elaborate on that.

The Narrative Nature of the Gospels

Even though we do not read or teach the Gospels in a single session, it is important that we sometimes take an overview of them as a book. A book has a beginning, middle, and end. In the Gospels, this takes a narrative form. The Gospels do not have a thesis and subordinate points the way an informational book does. Instead, they tell the story of Jesus’ life and ministry. The beginning is Jesus’ birth and his initiation of his three-year public life. After that we accompany Jesus during his ministry as a traveling teacher and miracle worker. At the end, the Gospel writers devote a substantial segment of their account to the events surrounding Jesus’ last weeks on earth.

This does not mean that the entire middle of the Gospels consists of events. Nearly as much space is devoted to Jesus’ discourses and teaching (including dialogues and parables) as to stories that recount what he did. Nonetheless, all of the material fits into the general flow of the story of Jesus. What are the implications?

First, things fall into place if we operate with an awareness that stories consist of three main elements—action or plot, characters, and settings. A plot always has a protagonist, a word based on a Greek word that carries the meaning of “first struggler.” It is useful to think of Jesus as protagonist of the individual Gospels. We go through the action as the observant traveling companion of this “first struggler.”

Additionally, plots are constructed on the principle of conflict. In the Gospels, various individuals and groups oppose Jesus, and this adds up to an overall conflict between good and evil, belief and unbelief, submission to Jesus and hardness of heart toward him.

Stories always have a cast of characters, and it is useful to think of the Gospels in this way. The cast of characters represents a cross-section of humanity, not only in Jesus’ day but in all places and times. These characters often become our representatives, with the result that we can see ourselves and our acquaintances in them and in their choices for or against Jesus. It is no distortion to say that as we read the Gospels we do not primarily encounter a set of ideas but rather a memorable gallery of people.

We also experience the Gospels as an ever-changing series of places. Specific geographical places figure prominently in the Gospels and are part of the evidential or circumstantial reality of them. The Gospels are situated in real life, not a fictional world. This sense of reality is heightened by the high degree to which the Gospels root us in a world of elemental nature—mountain, sea, heat, pathway, plain, village, and such like. Geography often assumes a symbolic function in the Gospels, with Jerusalem (for example) symbolizing rejection of Jesus by the religious authorities and the countryside often being a place of conversion and discipleship.

The Narrative Units within the Gospels

The second importance of narrative as the primary form of the Gospels is that we need to apply the ordinary rules of narrative analysis whenever we come upon narrative units as we read the Gospels. Before we explore that in detail, we need to pause to note that the stories in the Gospels exist on a literary continuum.

At one end of the continuum is a barebones account of what happened, devoid of any embellishment or filling out of details. It is a summary of action and no more. It serves the documentary function of recording facts, much as a newspaper account does. Literary scholars and teachers of writing call this expository writing (informational or explanatory writing). There are many documentary, or expository, narrative fragments of the following type in the Gospels:

The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him. (Mark 1:12–13)

The usual narrative ingredients are present. Accordingly, the right terms to use when analyzing the passage are protagonist, antagonist, additional characters or agents, plot conflict, and setting. These elements, though, appear in such abbreviated form that there is little analysis that can be done with them.

As we move across the continuum, stories are told in greater detail. At the far end we have full-fledged literary narrative. In the background is the fact that literature is a presentation of human experience rendered as concretely as possible and in such a way as to allow us to relive the story in our imagination. The rest of this chapter will discuss how to read and analyze the literary narratives that we encounter in the Gospels, in the form of a primer or summary of “first things” in regard to the stories within the Gospels.

Literary Narratives within the Gospels

There is no prescribed order in which to analyze a literary narrative. In fact, if the story is told at such length that we can break it down into successive scenes or episodes, we might want to deal with plot, setting, and characterization in each unit, and then move to the next unit and do everything that the unit requires before moving on. But it is also possible to examine even a multi-episode story as a whole, dealing with the various elements one at a time.

Somewhat arbitrarily, then, I will start with plot. The plot of a story is the main action. While a long narrative like a novel or play might have multiple plot lines, this is unlikely in the concentrated stories in the Gospels. The first thing to identify in a Gospel story is thus the unifying action. For example, in the story of Jesus and the woman at the well (John 4:1–42), the unifying action is Jesus’ quest to bring the woman to salvation. It is also in the nature of plot to be constructed around one or more plot conflicts, and it is essential to name them. This requires analysis, but it pays big dividends in our understanding of a story.

Once we have identified the central action and one or more plot conflicts, we need to divide the story into its successive phases. These can be called episodes, units, or scenes (with the latter based on the model of a drama or play). Then we need to label these units in such a way as to keep the central action and conflict in view. It is also useful to keep the paradigm of beginning-middle-end in mind. The purpose of dividing a story into its successive phases is that it allows us to trace the development of the initial situation step by step to its conclusion. Most stories are based on the premise of an initial problem that gradually moves toward a solution.

Setting is the neglected element in most people’s experience of stories, and that is a great loss because setting plays a crucial role in stories. We need to start at an observational level by identifying the place in which an action occurs and noting the literal, physical properties of the place. Sometimes even a relatively short narrative might have multiple settings. For example, the five-verse story of Jesus’ calling of Levi, or Matthew (Matt. 9:9–13), begins at seaside, then shifts to Matthew’s tax booth on the side of the road, and ends at a dinner scene inside Matthew’s house.

Having identified the facts of the setting, we can usually move toward analysis of those facts. For example, the most frequent function of a setting is that it enables the action that occurs within it. Identifying this link or correspondence between setting and action yields a lot. Additionally, settings often take on symbolic overtones, and we can identify these as well.

The story of Jesus’ healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52) affords an illustration. The account begins with a crowd scene that includes Jesus, his disciples, and “a great crowd” leaving Jericho. The Gospels are travel stories, and one of the most common settings is the road, which is the enabling element for many events. This is what happens in the story of the healing of Bartimaeus, who is at the roadside when Jesus encounters him and heals him. At the end we read that Bartimaeus “followed him on the way.” The continuous picture of people being on the road with Jesus epitomizes Jesus’ life and takes on a symbolic meaning as well. To be on the road with Jesus is to follow him.

Characters are the third constant element in a story. The techniques by which storytellers create or present characters is called characterization. Before we examine how authors conduct characterization, we should take time to state the goal of character analysis.

The primary goal is simply to get to know the characters in a story as fully as the details in the story allow. Once we have codified what a character is like, we need to analyze the function or role of that character in the story. Much of what a storyteller wishes us to understand about life is embodied in the characters. The theme of a story often resides in the example that the storyteller puts before us to imitate or reject, and often the example is a character.

Here is a brief checklist to apply for analyzing the characters in a Gospel narrative:

1.It is always useful to begin by assembling the cast of characters.

2.In this cast of characters, who are the protagonist, the antagonist(s), additional characters of primary importance (if any), and the minor characters who are present mainly to fill a specific function (such as onlooker to the action)?

3.For the major characters, we need to compile as complete a portrait as the details allow: traits, roles, relationships, external actions and internal ones (thoughts and feelings), and such like. Anything that helps us know a character is relevant.

4.We need to reach conclusions about the function of a character in the story, including what we learn about life from a given character.

5.Finally, the ingredients of a story (plot, setting, character) work together to embody one or more themes (generalizations about life). A good working premise is that every story is at some level an example story, so we can always ask what the story is an example of. In performing this exercise, we need to be aware that storytellers put two types of examples before us—positive ones to follow and negative ones to avoid.

A Specimen Gospel Story

The story of Jesus’ stilling of the storm narrated in Mark 4:35–41 will enable us to see all that has been said above in a mere seven verses. Here is the text:

35On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 36And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”39And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Our starting premise is that a story is designed to get us to relive an event as fully as the details allow. The power of narrative is that it puts us into the middle of a situation and series of events. As readers we need to be active in visualizing and hearing as much as possible. With that as an assumed framework, the following is a very brief application of the narrative checklist presented above:

•Setting: a small boat on a sea notorious for sudden and violent storms; nighttime darkness; an atmosphere of danger and vulnerability; a scene of desperation as waves start to sink the boat. Contribution to the story: it enables the testing of the disciples that is the mainspring of the action.

•Characters: the disciples are the protagonists (not to be equated with heroes) with whom we go through the central action; Jesus is the master of the situation and a foil to the disciples. Ruling traits: the disciples’ fear and Jesus’ calmness; also the human weakness of the disciples and the divine power of Jesus.

•Plot or action: more complex than analysis of setting and character. Analysis begins by dividing the story into successive units and labeling each one. I call this “identifying the action,” and I have found in half a century of teaching literature that it always yields dividends for later analysis to take the time to identify the action. The first dividend is that it imposes a unity on the story. For the story of the calming of the sea, the action unfolds in these phases: departure from the safe land to the scene of danger and testing (vv. 35–36); the crisis of the storm (vv. 37–38); solving the crisis with a miracle (v. 39); Jesus’ response and verdict (v. 40); the disciples’ response and verdict (v. 41). After determining the sequential structure of the story, we need to identify the unifying action and plot conflicts. The unifying action is the testing of the disciples’ faith. At the physical level, the plot conflict is between the disciples and the storm that threatens their lives. That generates a personal conflict between the disciples and Jesus. At a more interpretive level, the questions that Jesus asks in verse 40 (“Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”) confirm a conflict that we can infer from earlier details between ...