A Discourse Analysis of Matthew’s Nativity Narrative

Abstract

Discourse analysis (DA) as a discipline of studying written texts has been utilised in literary circles for over fifty years. Its emergence into biblical studies can be traced to the decade of the 1960s and it has been utilised mainly by scholars trained in descriptive linguistics. Although its terminology is still fluid, there is a common core methodology that warrants serious consideration that DA should be employed by NT scholars. Defining it simply as ‘grammar above the level of the sentence’, the author shows how DA’s tools can be employed to indicate how Matthew structured his Nativity narrative to convey his overall message. Scholars should not allow the distinctive terminology of DA to keep them from utilising it as a tool to discern authorial intent in the biblical texts.