Emiliano Fiori: The Apocalypse of Paul. A Symbolic Synthesis of Christian Egypt

• Centre for Advanced Studies
• Open Talk

The Apocalypse of Paul (late 4th century) was one of the most successful Christian texts overall in Late Antiquity and especially in the Middle Ages. Despite its fame, its overall message remains unclear. This apocryphon presents the puzzled scholar with a mixture of traditional apocalyptic imagery, references to monasticism, and a description of rather generic "urban" sins, which sidetracks any attempt at contextualization. The present paper will try to locate it in a specific historical situation (the Alexandria of patriarch Theophilus) where all these elements concur with reasonable coherence, and acquire meaning as a symbolic representation of the Christian society of this specific Sitz im Leben.