Abstract: In the past, the Bible was studied as a purely religious text but now there is a revolution in its study. At the center 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 literary instead of traditional theological terms to discuss the stories and poems in the Bible. The same applies to studies on the gospel of Matthew. Not much has been done on the Gospel according to St Matthew as an epic. Since the concept of the epic is universal and epics share most characteristics, there is need for people to know the Gospel according to St Matthew in a manner that resonates with them. This study therefore, using a literary approach, attempted to interrogate the depiction of the Gospel according to StMatthew as an epic. The main objective of this study was to explain how the Gospel according to St Matthew fits in the epic genre. The study employed Deconstruction as propounded by Jacques Derrida as its theoretical framework. The Bible, specifically the Gospel according to St 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 non-interactive 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 analytical research design was justified because it is ideal in a situation where a researcher attempts to make analyse a situation or make an evaluation. The study population was theGospel according St Matthew in the New Testament of the NIV Bible. It made use of purposive sampling to select fourteen chapters, which best depict the gospel as an epic, out of the twenty eight chapter in the text for analysis. Textual analysis formed the basis of the qualitative data from the Bible and literary 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 Bile and the Gospel according to St Matthew in particular.
Keywords: Literature, Bible, Epic. Epic Hero, Deconstruction.
Title: THE DEPICTION OF THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO STMATTHEW AS AN EPIC
Author: Julie E. Ogonya
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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