Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityThe various uses of "Lord" for Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels suggest that there were differences in the sources used by the authors as well as differences of opinion as to the significance of the title. Since the word might have come from either the Judaic or the Hellenistic culture, the determination of the predominant influence would help to assign meanings to ambiguous uses in the text and would shed light on the Christology of the primitive church.
The method used in this study was twofold: an analysis of the uses of "Lord" in the Gospels, and a study of the cultural environments which might have influenced the Gospel writers. For the textual analysis, the relevant passages were isolated and grouped in Gospel units. The choice of passages was based on the incidence of a form of kurios in the Greek text and the specific or implied relation of the passage to the historic or the exalted Jesus. The passages were then put in tables to facilitate comparison with the other Gospels. [TRUNCATED
