Narrative Style of the Tour of Hell in the Acts of Philip

• Applicant: Dr. Petrus Maritz
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology ; Protestant Theology ; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: from 2013 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 243015998

The inclusion of the tour of hell in one of the manuscripts of the Acts of Philip and not another raises the question how this banned apocryphal writing, most probably a product of a fringe community from the fifth-sixth century, anchors itself in the Holy Scriptures, in doctrinal discussions on the after-life, the genre tours of hell, and in the other so-called apocryphal acts of the apostles. The importance of this project is seen in its exposing the closer narrative relations between the canonical and non-canonical writings, and shows how, in the case of ActPhil, this foreign corpus is integral in the whole work, even as the work functions equally well without it. In this piece of original research, which is planned to run for three years, in light of the preceding but limited literature, the narrative style of the Tour of Hell in ActPhil 1 will be analysed using a three-tier approach to style: 1. identification or characterisation; 2 technique or method, how composed and how read; 3. quality and language register. This text with its strong moral codes will be compared to its clear sources, to illustrate the continuity and discontinuity of thought between the official church confessions and the popular religious literature, between the canonical and the non-canonical, and across the inter-religious divide of Jewish, Christian and Islamic writings. The project will base its orientation on the allusions and common material in the sources to ascertain how the author of ActPhil went to work, incorporating the tour of hell into his greater work to form a sensible whole. A comparison will be drawn between the two noted manuscripts, the one containing the tour and the other not, and the clear redactional activity that has brought about two clearly different but justified readings. Within the redaction activity of the Acts of Philip it is clear how the attitudes of the reading community (the main stream church) helped shape the final text on the missionary activities of the revered Apostle Philip with a strong moralistic undertone. Today too, we find community expectations shaping religious discourse, though probably more diversely than in antiquity. Ironically, the author of ActPhil has anchored his work in a religious and literary tradition that has rejected him.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants