In the wake of suggestions that the doctrine of the atoning death of Christ did not come into being in the earliest stages of Christianity, Martin Hengel forcefully argues with impeccable scholarship that the doctrine can be traced back to the earliest church, indeed to the sayings of Jesus himself.
In the first part of this examination, Hengel explores a wide area of classical antiquity. Would it have made sense to Greeks and Romans of the first century to say that Jesus had died for them? Were there points of contact in their traditions? Surveying Greek and Latin literature, Hengel shows just how widespread the theme ‘dying for actually was, from Homer, through the Greek tragedians and orators, to Plutarch, Livy, and Caesar. The second part of the book is devoted to tracing the doctrine of atonement, moving back from the letters of Paul, through the pre-Pauline tradition, to Jesus.
About the author
John Stephen Bowden (1935–2010) was an English Anglican cleric, theologian and publisher. He was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, and was educated in St Paul's School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He translated a number of theological works, including Martin Noth's Exodus, Aloys Grillmeier's Christ in Christian Tradition, Martin Hengel's Judaism and Hellenism (1975), and Henning Graf Reventlow's The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World (1985). He won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize twice, for the Hengel and Graf Reventlow translations. In total, he translated more than 200 books. He also wrote a number of books himself. He ran the religious publisher SCM Press, which published works by leading continental theologians such as Martin Hengel, Gerd Theissen, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Küng, and Jürgen Moltmann.
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