How Crime and Punishment drew on The Gospels
A documented line of influence: Fyodor Dostoevsky demonstrably engaged Matthew’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Gospels
Matthew · c. 85
BibleThe influenced
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866
The Age of the NovelRelevance
9/10
On Crime and Punishment’s page
- The Lazarus chapter from John (11:1-45) is the turning point — Sonya reads the dead man called back to life over Raskolnikov
- The resurrection model shapes the whole ending: a man passing from one world into another
- Dostoevsky lived it — the New Testament given to him at Tobolsk went with him into penal exile, just as the Gospels go with Raskolnikov into Siberia
On The Gospels’s page
- The raising of Lazarus from John's Gospel is the spiritual hinge of the novel — Sonya reads it aloud over the murderer
- Crime and Punishment's closing arc of "gradual regeneration, passing from one world into another" is built on that resurrection model
- Dostoevsky knew it from the inside: he carried the prison-gift New Testament to Siberia, the same book Raskolnikov carries at the end