Die Erforschung apokrypher Apostelerzählungen: Entscheidende Ergebnisse und Wege in die Zukunft

This article reviews two generations of scholarship on the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles – or, more appropriately, apostolic narratives. Particular emphasis is placed on the contribution of Jan N. Bremmer and the clearly discernible paradigm shift in the study of these writings that his work helped to bring about. Looking ahead, several promising avenues for future research are outlined: broadening the source base (including intensified work on texts outside the Greek and Latin linguistic spheres); focusing on the fluidity of texts and textual forms (including greater interest in later textual versions); investigating various aspects of the texts’ heteronomy and their embedding within parabiblical traditions; and examining their intermedial relationships with evidence preserved in other media (e.g., images), an approach described as “entangled traditions.”