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Trials, Plots and the Narrative of the Fourth Gospel

Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN

A survey of the narrative of the Fourth Gospel demonstrates the pervasiveness and significant positioning of the extended metaphor of a trial on a cosmic scale. This motif proves illuminating for a closer analysis of the plot in terms of both commission, complication and resolution, and of an actantial model. The cosmic lawsuit also colours the narrative's two-storey phenomenon, and the intertexual echoes of the motif from Isaiah 40-55 suggest a third foundational scriptural storey which shapes the narrative. Particularly important in support of Yahweh's claims in the trial scenes of Isaiah is the evidence stressing the correspondence between his predictive word and what happens in history. A similar correspondence can be seen to inform the function of the trial motif and its accompanying theme of truth when they appear in both the opening and the closure of the Fourth Gospel's narrative.

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