The Depiction of Jesus Christ as an Epic Hero in The Gospel According to Matthew

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the past the Bible was studied as a purely religious text but now there is a revolution in its study. At the centre of this revolution is a growing awareness that the Bible is literature, taken that literature refers to pieces of writing that are valued as works of art. Since literary studies are useful in the study, evaluation and interpretation of literature, methods of literary scholarship are therefore a necessary part of any complete study of the Bible. In addition, there is now an inclination to use literary instead of traditional theological terms to discuss the stories and poems in the Bible. The same applies to studies on Jesus. Not much has been done on Jesus Christ as an epic hero. He has mainly been studied as a religious personality and less from a literary perspective. Since the concept of the epic hero is universal and epic heroes share most characteristics, there is need for more people to know Jesus in a manner that resonates with them. This study therefore, using a literary approach, attempted to interrogate the depiction of Jesus Christ as an epic hero. The main objective of this study was to explain how Jesus is depicted as an epic hero in the Gospel according to St Matthew. This was done by first explaining how the Gospel according to St Matthew fits in the epic genre, then analysing how Jesus Christ is depicted as an epic hero in the Gospel and finally, looking at Jesus Christ beyond the epic hero. The study employed Deconstruction as propounded by Jacques Derrida as its theoretical framework. The Bible, specifically The Gospel according to Matthew and the literary epic was the area of research. This is because this gospel, compared to the others, most resembles an epic in terms of themes and style. The study utilised the analytical research design. Analytical research, a style of qualitative inquiry, is a noninteractive document research which describes and interprets the past from selected sources. These sources might be documents preserved in collections or participants oral testimonials or in the case of this research, a literary text by an author. The use of the analytical design was justified because it is ideal in a situation where a researcher attempts to analyse a situation or make an evaluation. The study population was the Gospel according to St Matthew in the New Testament of the NIV Bible. It made use of purposive sampling to select fourteen chapters, which best depict Jesus Christ as an epic hero, out of the twenty-eight chapters in the text for analysis. Textual analysis formed the basis of the qualitative data from the Bible and library sources respectively. The study was expected to contribute in the field of literature by showing how skills of literary appreciation can enhance our understanding of the Bible and Jesus Christ in particular.