Gathering Information on Characters

You can gather information about characters using many of the same tools you would use to gather information about themes, places or key words in the New Testament.

Concordance or Computer-Based Word Searches

Characters with Names

Let's say you want to study the character of Mary Magdalene in the New Testament. With a concordance and a Bible, you can find all the references to this Mary in the texts you are studying. You can search on a proper name, like "Mary" or an identifying adjective, like "Magdalene."

How To: Would it be better to search on "Mary" or "Magdalene" if you wanted all the appearances of Mary Magdalene in the gospels? Look for advice here.

Unnamed Characters with Identifying Characteristics

Sometimes you want to learn about characters whose names are not in the text, or you are studying generic types of people. A concordance can help here too. For example, you could search on "blind" to find all the references to Jesus healing blind people in the gospels. You could search for the word, "fishermen," to find anyone who is referred to this way in the New Testament.

Using a Synopsis of the Gospels

After you find even one reference to a character from the gospels, looking up the passage in a synopsis will tell you whether the same story in other places makes reference to the person you are researching.

For instance, you might be studying Malchus, the slave of the high priest. You find his name in the gospel of John. Other gospels tell a story very much like the one in which he is named in John 18. Is he named in the other stories? A synopsis will tell you this for sure.

Using a Bible Dictionary

If you are researching someone with a proper name, a Bible Dictionary may be the easiest way to begin a character study. Look up your person's name in the dictionary. There you should find a list of references to the person in the Bible along with a summary of their appearances.

What's Next: Seeing What You've Found

You can gather all sorts of data on a character—when and where they appear, who they are with, what they say, etc.—but the data needs your analysis and interpretation to become a character study. For suggestions of how to put together your character study, go to the next resource page for this skill.

Next: Creating a Character Analysis