Group Activity--

Jesus's Trial and Execution

    While our class discussion have focused on the ways in which changes in the gospel stories alter the authors's portraits of Jesus, we haven't focused much on the most commented upon texts in the gospels, the trial and passion (from the Latin for "suffering").  Commentary on the passion narratives represents more than mere scholarly interpretation; rather, it has had a huge effect on the history of the Western world, affecting, for instance, the relations between Christians and Jews over the past two millenia.  The following assignment asks you to do for these texts some of the "structural description" that you did with the Exodus plagues, except this time your attention will be focused on minor variations between the four gospel accounts and what those differences mean.

1.     Choose a recorder. 

2.     Choose one of the four accounts assigned to your group and do a structural description of it like the one you did earlier this quarter for the Exodus plagues, dividing the passage into parts and giving each of those parts a label.

3.     Now look at another gospel account of the "same" events and determine, as a group, which features are retained, which are changed and what features, if any, are added.

4.     Continue this work with the other two gospel accounts.  The product of your close structural analysis of your passages should be a chart indicating which features are present in which gospels.

5.     Now, as a group, try to interpret the differences you find between the four accounts.  Do you notice any patterns in the differences between the four accounts?  What different meanings are created from the variations in the different accounts?  What different effects might the four gospels have on the early Christian community and on Christianity as it has developed throughout the last two thousand years?