Paul in Ephesus. From from the Acts of the Apostles to the Acts of Paul (EABS Annual Conference 2023 Siracusa)
Abstract
The paper dealt with the apostle's relationship to the city of Ephesus and the place of Ephesus in the Pauline tradition from the point of view of the theory of social memory. The apostle Paul talks about Ephesus in 1 Corinthians 15:32 and 16:8; the author of the Acts of the Apostles in the 19th chapter, where the report about Paul's stay is very comprehensive and the arena scene of the apostle, we have in the canon the letter to the Ephesians and Paul in Ephesus is described and the Acts of Paul.
In addition, arena scenes had a strong tradition in the Roman Empire, and venatio had a strong resonance in society, which we already know from Cicero. The paper dealt with the processing of events in individual genres and showed the shift in the image of the apostle Paul from 50 AD through the 80s of the first century to the end of the 2nd century.
The aim of depicting the apostle is not to present the historical experience of an individual but to offer an image experienced in collective memory, which will enable the harmonization of the memory of Christian communities in an attractive form in the environment of orality and the context of rhetorical-historiographical forms. The contribution was submitted in the section 'The 'remembered Paul' and the 'historical Paul'."