Metaleptisches Erzählen und kulturelles Gedächtnis in den Paulusakten

Abstract The Acts of Paul have received the most diverse and contradictory interpretations. Do the ActPl intend to promote the veneration of Paul or a particular theology? Do they offer transparent fiction or do they claim factuality? Are they a collection of oral traditions or a designed literary construction? From the perspective of cultural memory theory, however, the key question is rather how the text allows the reader to participate in a community-generating past. In this view, the opposites turn out to be complementary aspects of an integrative textual strategy. This becomes manifest especially in the technique of metaleptic narration, which transcends the boundary between the world of the text and the reader, between past and present.