What is Man(kind)?: An Inter-Canonical Analysis of Notions of Individuality and Personhood in the New Testament

This project seeks to examine how notions of self and personhood are constructed and represented across the New Testament Canon, centred on the notions of ‘agency’, ‘self-knowledge,’ and ‘biography and identity.’ Based on the Christian-Jewish biblical hermeneutics of canonical discursivity developed by E. Zenger and utilising historical-critical methodologies, analysing the texts through a lens of diachronically reflected synchrony, the project aims to (1) examine how notions of anthropology present in the Old Testament are presented and reinterpreted in the New Testament texts and (2) compare and contrast notions of self and community between the different texts and authors of the New Testament. The goal is not to produce a singular notion of New Testament self or reduce differences between the texts but instead create and inter- and intra-canonical discourse in which different notions of self are able to contrast and complement each other.