Jesus and His Fellow Jews: A Register Analysis of Some Exchanges in the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel

Abstract

This thesis examines how the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels depict exchanges between Jesus and certain of his fellow Jews, with the goal being to further our understanding of the relationship between them. Halliday's concept of register is applied to analyze a certain portion oftheir conversations, including independent clause analysis, Subject analysis, and dependent clause analysis. This research illustrates that the relevant exchanges in John and the Synoptic Gospels are similar in terms of interpersonal meaning, are different in terms of experiential meaning, and are different in terms of clause complexing. Some possible explanations are also discussed at the end of the thesis.