Irony in the New Testament

A Review of the English-language literature of the 20th–21st centuries

Abstract

The problem of the presence of irony in sacred texts has been raised by Christian authors since the II century ad. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this problem acquires a new urgency due to the obvious loss of religious values by a significant part of society and the resulting tension between religious and non-religious social groups, as well as the problem of observance of ethical boundaries for both. Until the question of the place of irony in sacred texts is clearly resolved within religious groups, there can be no question of building a dialogue on this issue between persons of religious and non-religious worldview.  This study is an overview of English-language research on biblical studies devoted to the study of irony in the New Testament. The research texts are grouped according to the thematic and chronological principle and cover the period from the beginning of the XX century to 2017. The main trends in the development of the topic and the growth of meanings are identified, the main research approaches are identified, as well as existing flaws and shortcomings in the topic. The article involved more than 50 research papers in English. The main purpose of this work is to fill in the missing material on the topic for the Russian-speaking reader, as well as to highlight the main areas of research in the field of biblical irony for the domestic biblical studies, where the development of this topic is almost zero.