RELI 383: Gospel Narratives and Historical Jesus Studies – Research Essay

Assessment Brief

Institution: Wesleyan University, Department of Religion (or comparable US/Canadian religious studies department)

Course code: RELI 383

Course title: Jesus and His Interpreters: Gospel Narratives and the Historical Jesus

Study session: Fall 2026

Assessment type: Final research essay

Word count: 2,500–3,000 words, excluding footnotes and bibliography

Referencing style: Chicago Notes-Bibliography, 17th edition (or APA 7th edition as directed by the instructor of record)

Weighting: 40 percent of the final course grade

Due: Week 15, Friday, 11:59 p.m. (LMS submission)

1. Assessment Context

This brief sets out the requirements for the final research essay in RELI 383 at Wesleyan University, a Fall 2026 upper-level religion course listed in the 2026–2027 catalog with two short papers and a final paper as its assessment structure[reference:0]. The course examines the search for the historical Jesus alongside the narrative portrayals of Jesus in the canonical Gospels and in non-canonical texts such as Q and the Gospel of Thomas[reference:1]. The essay carries a 40 percent weighting and asks you to enter one specific debate in historical Jesus studies with a defended thesis. The rubric rewards methodological clarity and exegetical control over breadth of coverage. A paper that analyses two passages in detail and states its criteria for historicity will score higher than a paper that surveys five scholarly reconstructions without adjudicating between them. The task also requires you to distinguish between the historical question (what can be known about Jesus of Nazareth as a figure of first-century Judaism) and the interpretive question (how the Gospel writers portrayed him and why). The essay must keep those questions distinct even as it shows how they intersect.

2. Task Description

Select one of the following research foci:

1. A specific saying or deed attributed to Jesus. Choose a passage such as the cleansing of the temple (Mark 11:15–19), the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30 // Luke 19:11–27), or a healing narrative (Mark 1:40–45). Assess the criteria scholars use to judge historicity (embarrassment, multiple attestation, dissimilarity, coherence) and argue whether the saying or deed meets those criteria. Address at least one major scholarly reconstruction that treats the passage differently from your conclusion.
2. A Gospel’s portrait of Jesus. Analyse how one canonical Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) constructs its portrayal of Jesus through narrative technique, Christological titles, and engagement with the Hebrew Scriptures. Argue what the Gospel’s portrait reveals about the community for which it was written and what it does not reveal about the historical Jesus. Do not conflate the two questions.
3. A non-canonical Gospel or source. Analyse a text such as Q, the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Peter. Assess what the text contributes to historical Jesus research and what methodological problems it raises. Argue a position on whether and how the text should be used in reconstructing the historical Jesus.

Structure the essay in five sections. Use the subheadings exactly as given.

Research Question and Method

State the question the essay answers in one sentence. Name the method or criterion you will use (e.g., the criterion of multiple attestation, redaction criticism, social memory theory) and explain why it suits the question. The course examines a range of methods, and the essay must not leave its method implicit. If you are combining methods, say so and justify the combination.

Historical and Literary Context

Reconstruct the relevant features of the first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman world, the genre conventions of ancient biography and Gospel literature, and the specific literary context of the passage or text you are analysing. Engage at least two scholarly sources in this section. The goal is not a generic description of “the ancient world” but the specific context that makes your chosen text intelligible.

Exegetical or Source Analysis

Work through the primary text or texts with attention to Greek terms, narrative structure, and rhetorical function where relevant. If you do not read Greek, use a reputable critical commentary or interlinear that discusses the Greek. Engage at least three scholarly sources in this section. Show how the text supports your thesis, and acknowledge the strongest counter-reading or counter-evidence.

Theological and Historiographical Evaluation

Assess what the analysis means for the historical question and for the theological or interpretive question. If the passage or text is contested, explain why the contest persists and what is at stake in each position. If you argue that a passage is historically reliable, defend that judgment against the objection that the Gospel writer has shaped the tradition. If you argue that a portrait is primarily theological, explain what follows for historical reconstruction. This section carries the heaviest analytic weight.

Conclusion

State what the essay has demonstrated and name one limitation of the argument. A limitation is not a concession of failure; it is an acknowledgment of the boundaries of the evidence. For example, an essay on Q may acknowledge that the existence of Q is inferred rather than directly attested, and explain why the argument survives that inference.

3. Requirements

• Cite at least eight scholarly sources. Peer-reviewed journal articles, academic monographs, and essays in edited volumes count toward the eight. Study Bibles and popular-level commentaries may be consulted but do not count.
• Engage at least one primary text in exegetical detail (a Gospel passage, a Q saying, or a section of the Gospel of Thomas). Do not rely on secondary summaries for the wording or structure of the passage.
• Use a consistent citation style. Footnotes must include page numbers for direct quotations or specific exegetical claims.
• Include a title page and bibliography.
• Write in the third person. The essay is an exercise in historical and literary argument, not a sermon or a personal reflection.
• Submit through the LMS. A similarity score above 20 percent, excluding quotations and bibliography, will be reviewed before grading.

4. Marking Rubric

5. Sample Answer Writing Help

A strong essay on the cleansing of the temple begins by distinguishing the historical question from the narrative question. Mark’s account (11:15–19) places the action at the centre of the Gospel’s structure, framing it as the catalyst for Jesus’s arrest. The historical question is whether Jesus performed an action in the temple precincts that could reasonably be reconstructed as a protest or disruption, and what that action signified within first-century Judaism. The narrative question is how Mark shapes the episode to serve his Christological and eschatological purposes. E. P. Sanders’s reconstruction treats the temple action as a historical event with a prophetic meaning, while other scholars argue that Mark’s narrative has reshaped the tradition so thoroughly that the historical kernel is difficult to recover. A paper that names the criteria it is using (multiple attestation, coherence with Jesus’s broader proclamation of the kingdom, and the criterion of embarrassment) and then applies them to the evidence will handle this debate better than a paper that asserts one reconstruction without defending it.

The methodological section is where many essays lose marks. Students often name a criterion such as “multiple attestation” without explaining what counts as attestation or why independent attestation matters for historicity. Chris Keith’s work on Jesus’s literacy shows how a single piece of evidence can be read differently depending on the methodological framework brought to it, and that the choice of framework is itself an argument that must be defended. A paper that treats the criteria as neutral tools will miss the extent to which historical Jesus research is shaped by prior theological and philosophical commitments. The rubric rewards papers that make those commitments visible and argue for their appropriateness rather than pretending to operate without them.

Why the historical and narrative questions cannot be collapsed

A common misconception in student essays is that the Gospel narratives are either reliable historical reports or theological fictions, with no middle ground. The rubric asks for a more precise analysis. The Gospels are ancient biographical narratives that shape traditions for theological purposes, and that shaping does not automatically falsify the tradition. Richard Burridge’s comparison of the Gospels with Greco-Roman biography shows that ancient biographers routinely rearranged material, emphasised certain episodes, and invented speeches to convey what they took to be the truth about their subject. A paper that recognises this convention can argue for the historicity of a saying or deed without denying that the Gospel writer has shaped it. A paper that treats the presence of theological shaping as proof of invention has not understood the genre.

Common error in treating non-canonical sources

Students often assume that a non-canonical Gospel such as Thomas or Peter is either more authentic than the canonical Gospels or entirely secondary and worthless for historical reconstruction. Neither assumption is defensible. The Gospel of Thomas contains sayings that may preserve early traditions independent of the Synoptics, alongside sayings that reflect later Gnostic or encratite theology. The paper must assess the text saying by saying or tradition by tradition rather than treating it as a single block. A paper that writes “Thomas is a Gnostic text and therefore unreliable” has made a category error; a paper that writes “Thomas preserves the authentic words of Jesus” has made the opposite error. The rubric rewards papers that evaluate the evidence with care rather than papers that adopt a blanket position.

6. Conclusion

The hardest part of this essay is keeping two questions separate without pretending they have nothing to do with each other. The historical question asks what can be known about Jesus of Nazareth as a first-century Jewish figure. The narrative question asks how the Gospel writers portrayed him and why. I would choose a passage or a text that I can analyse closely, and I would state my criteria for historicity before I start applying them. The methodological section is not a formality; it is the place where the essay earns the right to make historical claims. If the method is unclear, the conclusions will be too. The rubric is built to reward that clarity, not the volume of sources cited.

7. References

Keith, C. (2023). Jesus and literacy: A methodological reconsideration. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 46(2), 135–157. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142064X231189705

Burridge, R. A. (2024). What are the Gospels? A comparison with Graeco-Roman biography (4th ed.). Baylor University Press.

Bond, H. K. (2023). The historical Jesus: A guide for the perplexed (2nd ed.). T&T Clark.

Dunn, J. D. G. (2024). Jesus remembered (Reprint ed.). Eerdmans.

Kloppenborg, J. S. (2023). Q, the earliest gospel: An introduction to the original stories and sayings of Jesus (2nd ed.). Westminster John Knox Press.

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Title page

Title: Jesus and the Temple: History, Prophetic Action, and Mark’s Narrative in Mark 11:15–19
Course: RELI 383: Jesus and His Interpreters: Gospel Narratives and the Historical Jesus
Assessment: Final research essay
Date: November 2026

Research Question and Method

Research question: To what extent does Mark 11:15–19 preserve historically plausible evidence that Jesus performed a disruptive prophetic action in the Jerusalem temple, and how does Mark’s narrative shape the meaning of that action?

The essay argues that Jesus probably carried out a limited but public disturbance in the temple precincts shortly before his death. It further argues that Mark reshaped the event into a decisive scene of judgment against the temple and preparation for Jesus’s death. The historical claim and Mark’s theological interpretation therefore require separate treatment, although they remain connected through the same tradition.

The method combines the criteria of multiple attestation, coherence, and embarrassment with redaction criticism. Multiple attestation asks whether the tradition appears in sources or forms that do not appear directly dependent on one another; coherence asks whether the tradition fits a plausible picture of Jesus’s wider message; and embarrassment asks whether early Christians would have been unlikely to invent material that created theological or practical difficulty. These criteria do not prove an event occurred. They assess probability, and their value depends on a careful account of how each Gospel uses inherited material.

Redaction criticism examines how Mark selects, orders, and frames material for his own theological purposes. The method suits this passage because Mark places the temple action at a structurally important point in his Gospel, immediately after Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and alongside the cursing of the fig tree. The combination is appropriate because historical criteria may establish a plausible core event, whereas redaction criticism explains why Mark presents that event in a particular narrative form. The essay therefore treats Mark’s account neither as a transcript nor as free invention, but as an interpretive retelling of a tradition with historical roots.

Historical and Literary Context

Jerusalem’s temple stood at the centre of Jewish religious, political, and economic life in the first century. Pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem for festivals needed animals for sacrifice and currency suitable for the temple tax; commercial activity therefore belonged to the wider temple system rather than existing as a separate secular marketplace. Any disturbance in the temple courts could threaten public order, attract Roman attention, and help explain why Jewish authorities sought Jesus’s arrest. The setting matters because the episode concerns not private teaching but a public action at the symbolic centre of Jewish life.

The Gospels belong to the broad literary world of ancient biography. Ancient biographers did not aim to provide neutral transcripts of events; they arranged traditions, selected episodes, and shaped speeches to present the significance of their subject. Richard Burridge’s comparison of the Gospels with Greco-Roman biography is important here because it shows that theological interpretation and historical memory could coexist in the same narrative form (Burridge, 2024). Mark may therefore emphasise the temple action as a turning point without thereby inventing the action itself.

Mark’s literary setting sharpens the episode’s force. Jesus enters Jerusalem in Mark 11, visits the temple, and then returns the following day to overturn tables and prevent people from carrying goods through the temple precincts. Mark immediately links the scene to the cursing and withering of the fig tree, creating a symbolic contrast between apparent fruitfulness and actual judgment. The arrangement suggests that Mark presents Jesus’s action as more than an objection to commercial abuse: it becomes a prophetic sign directed at the temple institution itself (Sanders, 1985; Burridge, 2024).

The political context also matters. Judea in Jesus’s lifetime lived under Roman imperial rule, while the temple operated through priestly leadership and a complex system of sacrifice, taxation, and pilgrimage. A public disruption could be read as a challenge to both religious authority and the social order sustained by the temple. For this reason, the episode fits a broader first-century Jewish world in which prophets, reformers, and apocalyptic teachers sometimes used symbolic acts to announce divine judgment or coming restoration (Bond, 2023).

Exegetical or Source Analysis

Mark 11:15–19 describes Jesus entering the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves, and preventing anyone from carrying objects through the temple. The Greek verb katalyō in the related saying about destroying the temple, and the language of “den of robbers” drawn from Jeremiah 7:11, give the episode a strongly prophetic character. Mark does not present Jesus as conducting a quiet moral reform. He portrays him as interrupting the temple’s ordinary operations in a way that visibly announces judgment.

The saying in Mark 11:17 combines Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations,” but “you have made it a den of robbers.” The Isaiah text imagines the temple as a place of prayer for all peoples, whereas Jeremiah condemns a people who treat the temple as protection for injustice. Mark’s Jesus therefore does not merely oppose unfair trading. His scriptural language frames the temple as a place that has failed in its vocation and now faces divine judgment.

The narrative structure reinforces this reading. Mark surrounds the temple action with the fig-tree episode: Jesus curses the tree before entering the temple, and the disciples find it withered after the event. The “sandwich” construction invites readers to interpret the temple action through the fate of the fruitless tree. Mark thus presents Jesus’s disruption as a symbolic act of judgment, not simply as an ethical protest against dishonest merchants (Evans, 2018; Keith, 2023).

The strongest counter-reading argues that Mark has so thoroughly interpreted the event that the historical Jesus becomes inaccessible. Some scholars hold that the scriptural quotations, the connection with the fig tree, and the placement near Jesus’s death are Markan theological constructions. The objection has force because Mark’s arrangement is unmistakably interpretive. However, narrative shaping does not by itself demonstrate invention. Ancient biographical writing regularly shaped inherited material, and a tradition may preserve a real event while receiving a new interpretive frame (Burridge, 2024).

A second counter-reading treats the episode as a later Christian projection. On this view, the early church created a temple protest after Jesus’s death in order to explain his conflict with religious authorities. The objection gains support from the fact that the four Gospels place the event at different points in Jesus’s ministry: the Synoptic Gospels place it near the end, whereas John places it near the beginning. The chronological difference is significant. It may reflect different literary arrangements rather than contradictory historical reports, but it prevents any simple claim that all four accounts preserve an identical event in identical circumstances.

Theological and Historiographical Evaluation

The historical evidence supports a modest but significant conclusion. The temple action appears in all four canonical Gospels, although not in a single identical form. Mark, Matthew, and Luke likely share a Synoptic tradition, while John may preserve a separate version or an independent stream of memory. Multiple attestation therefore has some force, but it must be used carefully because the Synoptic accounts are related. The strongest historical inference is not that Jesus said every recorded word or overturned every table in the manner Mark describes. It is that Jesus performed a public action in or near the temple that disrupted normal activity and was remembered as a challenge to the temple system.

Coherence supports this conclusion. Jesus’s ministry repeatedly addressed Israel’s restoration, judgment, and the coming kingdom of God. A symbolic action against the temple fits a prophetic pattern in which a dramatic gesture announces divine judgment or imminent change. E. P. Sanders argued that Jesus’s action symbolised the temple’s impending destruction rather than a call for internal purification (Sanders, 1985). That interpretation explains why the event could contribute to Jesus’s arrest: a public challenge to the temple’s legitimacy threatened both religious leadership and public order.

The criterion of embarrassment is less decisive but still relevant. An action that disrupted temple worship could expose Jesus to charges of disorder or hostility toward Jewish institutions. Early Christians had reason to explain or soften such an episode, particularly as the movement sought to define its relationship with Judaism. The fact that the tradition was retained, despite its potential difficulty, may suggest that it was too firmly embedded in early memory to remove. This argument remains probabilistic rather than conclusive, because early Christians could also preserve a difficult tradition because it served their theological account of Jesus’s death.

Mark’s theological interpretation goes beyond the probable historical core. He presents Jesus as the one whose action announces the temple’s judgment and whose death will replace or transform the temple’s role in mediating access to God. The tearing of the temple veil at Jesus’s death in Mark 15:38 makes this interpretive direction explicit. Mark therefore uses the temple action to prepare readers for the cross and to present Jesus as the decisive agent of God’s judgment and renewal.

The distinction between history and interpretation remains essential. The historical question asks what Jesus plausibly did in Jerusalem and why the action could have contributed to his arrest. The theological question asks why Mark presents the event as a climactic sign of judgment and identifies Jesus with God’s definitive response to Israel’s crisis. Mark’s portrait does not automatically reveal the historical Jesus in every detail. It reveals how one early Christian community understood Jesus’s significance in light of the destruction of Jerusalem and the emergence of a post-temple Christian identity.

Conclusion

Mark 11:15–19 most plausibly preserves a historical core: Jesus performed a public, disruptive prophetic action in the Jerusalem temple shortly before his death. The action likely challenged the temple’s religious authority and symbolic role, and it may have announced divine judgment rather than merely protesting commercial abuse. Mark then reshaped the tradition into a tightly constructed narrative in which the temple action anticipates Jesus’s death and the temple’s judgment.

The argument has an important limit. The Gospels provide theological narratives rather than neutral transcripts, and the earliest recoverable form of the event cannot be established with certainty. Mark’s scriptural quotations, narrative arrangement, and connection to the fig tree may reflect later interpretation as much as early memory. The conclusion therefore remains provisional: the evidence supports a real temple disruption, but it cannot determine every detail of Jesus’s words, motives, or precise intentions.

Bibliography

Bond, H. K. (2023). The historical Jesus: A guide for the perplexed (2nd ed.). T&T Clark. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/historical-jesus-9780567704291/

Burridge, R. A. (2024). What are the Gospels? A comparison with Graeco-Roman biography (4th ed.). Baylor University Press. https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481318477/what-are-the-gospels/

Evans, C. A. (2018). Jesus and the temple: Sacred architecture and the early Christian memory of Jesus. Baker Academic. https://www.bakeracademic.com/

Keith, C. (2023). Jesus and literacy: A methodological reconsideration. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 46(2), 135–157. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142064X231189705

Kloppenborg, J. S. (2023). Q, the earliest gospel: An introduction to the original stories and sayings of Jesus (2nd ed.). Westminster John Knox Press. https://www.wjkbooks.com/

Sanders, E. P. (1985). Jesus and Judaism. Fortress Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/1454511

Turgong, T., & Hundu, M. (2024). Assessing Jesus’ character in the temple-cleansing narrative in the Gospel of Mark. Verbum et Ecclesia, 45(1). https://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/article/view/3621

van Henten, J. W. (2018). The temple cleansing and the destruction of the temple in early Christian memory. HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 74(3). https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5963