Digital Logos Edition
What is the historical basis for today’s atonement theology? Where did it come from, and how has it evolved throughout time? In Atonement, a sterling collection of renowned biblical scholars investigates the early manifestations of this core concept in numerous ancient Jewish and Christian sources. Rather than imposing a particular view of atonement upon these texts, these specialists let the texts speak for themselves, so that the reader can truly understand atonement as it was variously conceived in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament, and early Christian literature. The resulting diverse ideas mirror the manifold perspectives on atonement today.
Contributors to this volume—Christian A. Eberhart, Crispin Fletcher-Louis, Martha Himmelfarb, T. J. Lang, Carol A. Newsom, Deborah W. Rooke, Catrin Williams, David P. Wright, and N. T. Wright—attend to the linguistic elements at work in these ancient writings without limiting their scope to explicit mentions of atonement. Instead, they explore atonement as a broader phenomenon that negotiates a constellation of features—sin, sacrifice, and salvation—to capture a more accurate and holistic picture. Atonement will serve as an indispensable resource for all future dialogue on these topics within Jewish and Christian circles.
“sin is the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual false worship” (Page 118)
“Jesus chose Passover to do what had to be done. He did not choose the Day of Atonement.” (Page 122)
“were looking for the renewal, not the abandonment, of heaven and earth” (Page 114)
“not another regular sacrifice, but a fresh, rescuing, divine action.” (Page 122)
“a story of how the creation-project was reaching its goal” (Page 116)
Max Botner is assistant professor of New Testament at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Justin Harrison Duff is a postdoctoral research fellow at St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews, Scotland
Simon Dürr is a research associate in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland