Death and Judgment in the Apocalypse of Paul: Old Imagery and Monastic Reinvention
-
Emiliano Fiori
Abstract
This paper focuses on the post-mortem judgment scene of the Apocalypse of Paul and explores how, while preserving the traditional judicial imagery of earlier apocalyptic texts, it profoundly reinvented its meaning. Nightmare visions of God’s tribunal were quite common in 4th-century Christianity, and were often placed at the starting or turning point of important ascetic careers, such as those of Jerome and Evagrius of Pontus. The embedding of God’s dreadful judgment in ascetic discipline, however, is most apparent in the Pachomian corpus. Here its features are similar to those in the Apocalypse of Paul, a work which stems, like the Pachomian literature, from late 4th-century Egypt. This helps interpret the tribunal setting of this apocalypse as a new monastic staging of old images, and provides further evidence to support the hypothesis of the origin of the Apocalypse of Paul within the Pachomian koinonia.
© 2016 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Editorial/Einleitung
- Artikel
- The Genre Apocalypse Reconsidered
- 3 Baruch Revisited: Jewish or Christian Composition, and Why It Matters
- Why did Early Believers in Jesus Write Apocalypses?
- The Concealment and Disclosure of Knowledge in the Old Irish In Tenga Bithnua
- Death and Judgment in the Apocalypse of Paul: Old Imagery and Monastic Reinvention
- Talking Skulls: On Some Personal Accounts of Hell and Their Place in Apocalyptic Literature
- Edfu and the Oriens: On Re-discovering Ancient Egyptian Lore in Two Coptic Apocalypses
- Audi, Thomas, . . . Audi a me signa quae futura sunt in fine huius saeculi – Zum Textbestand und zur Überlieferung der apokryphen Thomas-Apokalypse
- Rezensionen
- Vasilije Vranic: The Constancy and Development in the Christology of Theodoret of Cyrrhus
- Konrad F. Zawadzki: Der Kommentar Cyrills von Alexandrien zum 1. Korintherbrief. Einleitung, kritischer Text, Übersetzung, Einzelanalyse
- Nestor Kavvadas: Isaak von Ninive und seine Kephalaia Gnostika. Die Pneumatologie und ihr Kontext
- Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed: Proba the Prophet. The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba
- Helga Köhler, Hg.: C. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius. Die Briefe. Eingeleitet, übersetzt und erläutert von Helga Köhler
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Editorial/Einleitung
- Artikel
- The Genre Apocalypse Reconsidered
- 3 Baruch Revisited: Jewish or Christian Composition, and Why It Matters
- Why did Early Believers in Jesus Write Apocalypses?
- The Concealment and Disclosure of Knowledge in the Old Irish In Tenga Bithnua
- Death and Judgment in the Apocalypse of Paul: Old Imagery and Monastic Reinvention
- Talking Skulls: On Some Personal Accounts of Hell and Their Place in Apocalyptic Literature
- Edfu and the Oriens: On Re-discovering Ancient Egyptian Lore in Two Coptic Apocalypses
- Audi, Thomas, . . . Audi a me signa quae futura sunt in fine huius saeculi – Zum Textbestand und zur Überlieferung der apokryphen Thomas-Apokalypse
- Rezensionen
- Vasilije Vranic: The Constancy and Development in the Christology of Theodoret of Cyrrhus
- Konrad F. Zawadzki: Der Kommentar Cyrills von Alexandrien zum 1. Korintherbrief. Einleitung, kritischer Text, Übersetzung, Einzelanalyse
- Nestor Kavvadas: Isaak von Ninive und seine Kephalaia Gnostika. Die Pneumatologie und ihr Kontext
- Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed: Proba the Prophet. The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba
- Helga Köhler, Hg.: C. Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius. Die Briefe. Eingeleitet, übersetzt und erläutert von Helga Köhler
