ABSTRACT
The ability of a person or group to narrate their past is one of the most important tools available to them for defining their identity. This holds true for individuals, as they locate themselves in genealogies or depict their personal development in conversion narratives, as much as it does for groups and nations, which bolster their coherence and claims through the telling of collective or national histories. Human action is action in the present and is directed towards the future. Only occasionally do people ‘remember’ the past. While a group’s account of its past and its particular recollections of itself are not the only means of achieving orientation and constructing a coherent identity, historical narratives seem to be particularly important in serving these ends. While the rise of nationalist narratives and the overturning of colonial views by postcolonial rejections of such narratives receive ever more interest, religion is still largely absent from these studies.
