Abstract:
Today, scholars employ the label ‘narrative Christology’ with relative frequency, though they
mean different things when they do so. In this article, I argue that to date, narrative Christology
has not yet fully explored the parameters of what it means to attend closely to the narrative
form of the Gospels’ presentations of Jesus. I propose, further, that recent developments in
literary theory’s so-called ‘New Formalism’ offer useful tools and concepts for moving in that
direction. The first part of the article briefly outlines previous scholarship, identifying
similarities and differences between various approaches labelled ‘narrative Christology’. The
second section introduces the major concepts of New Formalism and how they might extend
narrative Christology’s capacity to take narrative form seriously as an object of analysis. The
third section of the article offers a case study of a passage that appears in the triple tradition –
the intercalated healing stories of Jairus’ daughter and the haemorrhaging woman in Mark
5.21–43; Luke 8.40–56; and Matthew 9.18–26 – in order to explore narrative structure on the
micro-level. My ultimate goal is to show how New Formalism can contribute to a more robust
narrative Christology and, in so doing, advance our understanding of the distinctive ways in
which the Synoptic Gospels construct the figure of Jesus.
Description:
Prof. Dr Michal Beth Dinkler
is participating in the
research project, ‘Biblical
Theology and Hermeneutics’,
directed by Prof. Dr Andries
van Aarde, Post Retirement
Professor in the Dean’s Office
at the Faculty of Theology of
the University of Pretoria.
