Grace, Reconciliation, Concord

How did the first Christians interpret the death of Christ? The answer lies within the earliest Christian documents, primarily within the Pauline letters. Before the users of a modern language could hope to come near an adequate description of what was expressed in these Greek texts of the first Christians, they have to deconstruct layers of later dogmatic interpretation. They need to keep to descriptive terminology reflecting the Greek of the sources and to trace the origin of the metaphoric language early Christians like Paul used. This volume sets out to construct some of the Jewish and Greco-Roman patterns of thought which were initially utilised to express the meaning of the death of Christ.

Cilliers Breytenbach, Dr. theol. (1983) Dr. theol. habil. (1986) both at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, is Professor for the Literature, Religion and History of Early Christianity at the Humboldt University in Berlin and Professor extra ordinary for New Testament at Stellenbosch University. He is the author of monographs on Mark, Paul and the Acts of the Apostles.

"… die Lektüre von B.s Sammelband [ist] in philologischer wie theologischer Hinsicht höchst anregend - sie ist ein Muss für alle, die sich mit den Kernfragen neutestamentlicher Theologie auseinandersetzen. Die einfache, klare Sprache des Bandes eröffnet auch Studierenden einen bequemen Zugang zur aktuellen Diskussion um die christliche Soteriologie." - Jürgen Wehnert (Braunschweig), in: Theologische Rundschau NEUE FOLGE 78 (2013) 168
"Zweifelsohne hat Breytenbach [...] bedeutende Beiträge zur Soteriologie der paulinischen Tradition vorgelegt." - Thomas Knöppler, Heroldstatt/München, in: Theologische Literaturzeitung 142 (2017) 3