Getting to Know Characters
Resource Pages

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Getting to Know Characters

Whatever the type New Testament literature, whether gospels, letters, history such as Acts or the apocalypse of Revelation, characters drive the plot. Humans and God act and react to events, and the story happens around them. The text holds information about personalities, motivations, and the effects that characters have on each other and the story as a whole. "Getting to Know Characters" is an exegetical skill that gathers and analyzes data about particular characters in order to discern what is going on in a particular text and what it means.

Desired Results

Each Into the New Testament unit has been designed to foster enduring understandings as well as key knowledge and key skills. Here are the learning goals for Comparing Similar Texts. (Here's more about the pedagogical theory behind Into the New Testament.)

Enduring Understandings

  1. Different NT authors develop the same characters in ways that emphasize different traits.
  2. Even without a name, someone can be a character in a story.
  3. God is a character in the New Testament.

Key Knowledge

  1. The four sources of information for characters in a narrative (what the character says, does, what others say/think about him/her, and what the narrator says about him/her).
  2. Flat characters do not change or grow in a story; round characters do.

Key Skills

  1. Use a concordance to find references to a character throughout the NT.
  2. Compare and contrast characterizations of the same figure in different texts.
  3. List a character's traits, offering textual support for each trait.
  4. Analyze a character's role and function in a New Testament story.

Resource Pages on this Skill

Getting to Know Characters | This is the introductory page you are reading right now.

Gathering Information | Review the use of concordance tools and other helps for finding out as much as possible about a New Testament character.

Creating a Character Analysis | Get to know the characters you have found information about. This list of questions will help you analyze your findings.

God as a Character? | Because God plays a central role in the Bible, to read the New Testament is to read theology (words about God). You can use skills for getting to know characters in order to explore what your text says about God.

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