Jezična i stilska obilježja četiriju evanđelja na hrvatskom jeziku
Authors:   , Đorđević Jelena 
Published: March 2024

The Bible is the holy book of Judaism and Christianity. It belongs to the common culture of humanity and represents the foundations of literature and the standardization of many languages. Of the numerous centuries-old biblical research carried out by experts in various fields, nowadays much research of the gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, has been made, both in the original language and in translations into the languages of other nations, for which biblical texts are an essential part of their own culture. In recent times, Croatian researchers make research of gospels due to the interest that is constantly big. It is believed the gospels were written by Jesusʼ apostles Matthew and John, disciples Mark and Luke. The aim of this thesis was to analyze and compare the language by which the same events were presented in the four gospels. By analyzing linguistic and textual features, the aim was to determine similarities and differences between the gospels translated to Croatian language. Considering the synoptic question, according to which the Gospel of John differs in terms of the content and the chronology of Jesus ministry, the goal was to determine how all the synoptic gospels differ linguistically and stylistically from John’s and how linguistically similar or different they all are. The aim was to determine whether there was a systematicity in the choice of vocabulary, sentence structure and meaning that resulted from language choices, which could be interpreted as the style in which a certain gospel was written. It was assumed that Markʼs and Matthewʼs gospels were quite similar in all features, while Lukeʼs was different in some, and in others it was more similar to Johnʼs gospel than to the gospel of the other two synoptics. The events presented in the Croatian translation of the New Testament by Bonaventura Duda and Jerko Fućak were explored. This translation was chosen because of its extremely wide liturgical and cultural use. The themes that were presented in all the gospels were explored. The texts and events that are common in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were chosen. There were 18 such texts in total. The events were: the sermon of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus (in John’s gospel this event was called Johnʼs testimony, so these two fragments were studied as one), the first disciples, the feeding of 5 000 people, the entry into Jerusalem, the expulsion from the Temple, the conspiracy against Jesus, the Passover Seder dinner (the traitor exposed), the prophecy of Peterʼs denial, Jesus arrested, Jesusʼ trial in front of the Council, Peterʼs failure, Jesusʼ trial in front of Pilate, the crucifixion, Jesusʼ death, Jesusʼ burial, resurrection, the apparition and mission. After presenting the purpose, structure and methodology of the work, the introductory part of the work stated the theoretical knowledge and approaches in the analysis of lexical, syntactic and discourse complexity, as well as the previous research of the Bible in other languages, which tried to determine the age of one gospel in relation to the others, and the general features that were different in the gospels. In the first part of analysis, the lexical complexity of fragments from the gospels was studied. In the analysis of the lexicon of the texts of the four gospels, the size of dictionary knowledge was determined by generally accepted measures of vocabulary richness: lexical diversity and lexical density. In addition to these two, the average number of words was also determined, as well as the number of context-dependent and context-independent words. In the next part of thesis, the syntactic characteristics of fragments from the gospel were explored. Words were explored as syntactic units, as well as word combinations or syntagms, and sentences. While exploring words as syntactic units, verb forms and noun forms were explored. Word compounds or syntagms were explored by describing the grammatical connections between the components of word compounds, noting three types of grammatical connections, and then the structure and syntactic functions of word compounds. The analysis at the syntactic level in the last part included the analysis of sentences, whereby the types of sentences and the ways of assembling clauses into a sentence was analyzed. In the last part, the semantic features of fragments from the gospel were studied. The events were divided into items, it was compared which items were crucial for each evangelist to present a certain event. The content and language choices that can result in different interpretations of the meaning of each passage were explored. It was determined how language versions and different stylistic determinants of the same text affected the meaning. By analyzing the linguistic characteristics, it was determined how the synoptic gospels differ linguistically from John’s and in what way. It was determined that the synoptic gospels were linguistically similar, but that Luke’s gospel differs by certain linguistic features from Matthew’s and Mark’s.