From Pharisee to Ascetic. The Shift of the Image of the Apostle Paul in the Literature of the Genre of Acts: The Effect of the Text on the Reader
Abstract
The paper dealt with the difference in the treatment of the image of the Hellenized Jew Saul of Tarsus, who persecuted the Jewish Movement in Jerusalem and Judea, and his transformation into a missionary who suddenly sympathizes with the Jesus Movement and allows followers of non-Jewish nations to participate in Judaism. The followers of Jesus of Nazareth no longer have to be God-fearing on the periphery of Judaism or in the wider circle of synagogues.
Still, they can organize their structures with their own identity. The reader/listener of the Acts of the Apostles receives an exciting work with many twists and turns that approach historical metafiction.
The work intends to entertain the listeners as well. The reader expects an adventure and an image of the hero that builds his identity.
The text has a reference function for it. The apocryphal Acts of Paul no longer capture the beginnings of Christianity but build an image of the ascetic Paul, who travels, speaks, meets a baptized talking lion and works with his gospel as an ideal of the end of the second century.
The image of the hero is transformed, corresponds to the genre and develops the already created portrait of the apostle maintained in the collective memory, but with generational "gaps" that transform the emphasis of Christian communities. The presentation included a section on hermeneutics and the exegetical methods used.