Paul the Storyteller: A Narratological Approach

An incisive study of Paul’s use of stories and narratives in his letters

Paul is often thought of as a crafter of numerous and complex arguments, but some scholars, such as N. T. Wright and Richard Hays, have shown that narratives are vitally important in his letters. Through careful examination of the texts, Christoph Heilig demonstrates that Paul is indeed a talented teller of stories—not only explicit narratives but also implicit stories.

In this volume, after a decade of research and writing, Heilig presents his definitive report on narrative in Paul. While Richard Hays and N. T. Wright have argued that Paul’s letters contain implicit narratives, Heilig stresses that a sound methodology requires beginning with text-linguistic investigation of explicit narratives. As Heilig argues, focusing on explicit narratives repeatedly redirects our attention to implicit ("almost") stories. On this basis, he shows that Hays’s "narrative substructures" and Wright’s "worldview" narratives can also be fruitfully integrated into a narratological approach. Paul is a different kind of storyteller than the gospel writers, for example, but at countless points miniature narratives play a crucial role for Paul’s communicative goals.

Students and scholars of the New Testament will welcome Heilig’s expert guidance through a hotly debated area of Pauline studies.