Frühchristliche Theologie im Prozess der Erzählung

While early Christian writings prove to be theologically plural, both canonical and apocryphal texts also claim to say in quite a similar way substantial and distinctive things about God, man, and the world. In the more specific case of narrative texts that this article focuses on, a discursive and playful reference to earlier narratives and characters can be discerned. However, neither form and source criticism nor intertextual readings fully uncover these narrative recountings, allusions, and Fortschreibungen. The added value of a cognitive science approach is, among other things, to sensitize to narrative references that are not situated on a textual level but can be explained by a more abstract knowledge of characters. A corresponding approach is presented in this paper and illustrated by the example of the anointing woman.