Narrative Design of the Synoptics

Abstract

Traditionally, discussions of Synoptic narrative design have drawn heavily from the subfield of literary formalism in order to illuminate constitutive components of story like plot, character, setting, and time. This chapter advocates engagement with the so-called New Formalism, which seeks to revive “old” formalists’ attention to narrative form and structure, while addressing critiques of formalism’s earlier iterations. After an introduction to New Formalism, the chapter explores how capacious considerations of the Gospels’ narrative design—and the polyvalent affordances of narrative form—can expand and deepen our conceptions of how the Synoptic Gospels work literarily as narrative structures. The famous Markan suspended ending serves as a case study.