Religious Studies

This volume investigates the topic of Jesus's passion and resurrection with a broad scope, ranging from apocryphal gospels, such as the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Nicodemus, to Manichean texts and Coptic apocrypha from the sixth and seventh centuries. The ancient texts reinterpret Jesus's passion and resurrection in creative and diverse ways, for example by dramatizing the story or by emphasizing the cross as part of the divine plan of salvation.

Research is currently discovering the Letter to the Ephesians as an independent voice on other topics than ecclesiology that were also of interest to Paul. The contributors to this volume take this increased interest into account and discuss Deutero-Paul's Christological design, his revision of the Corpus Paulinum and the Letter to the Colossians, his early Christian interpretation of Greek philosophy and science, and his anthropological concept.

In his letters, Paul regularly speaks of being chosen or called by God. Annette Weippert examines Paul's understanding of election and calling, taking into account conceptions in the Pauline environment and focusing on the question of Paul's intentions when he addresses the idea in his letters.

In this work on the question of pseudepigraphy in the Pastoral Epistles, Martina Janßen examines the consolidation of the currently controversial corpus thesis. Against the background of ancient letterbooks, she develops a new reading of the Pastoral Epistles as a fictional letterbook, with the different nuances of the three letters serving as a key to interpreting the composition of the corpus.