Jörg Frey

Pauline Perspectives: The Apostle's Theology in Context presents key contributions from over 20 years of work by Jörg Frey, one of the world's most influential New Testament scholars, in English for the first time. The aim is to highlight the apostle's own perspective and message amid the confusion of perspectives on Paul. Frey brings old and new perspectives from European research and Reformation readings into current discussion and makes Paul's core message conceivable for theology and for the church today. Against the backdrop of a broad knowledge of the history of interpretation, Frey classifies the newer perspectives on Paul and discusses the Apostle's place in the Judaism of his time, his intellectual background, his interpretation of the Scriptures and his negotiation of circumcision and law. In its main part, the book exposes the core of Paul's message, the salvific significance and efficacy of Jesus's death from a post-Easter perspective. Based on the early confessions and the Pauline statements, the author discloses the meaning of atonement and substitution, Paul's theology of the cross, and the relevance of Jesus's resurrection. Further chapters focus on Paul's self-understanding as an Apostle, his relationship with his fellow-apostles, his struggle for unity and his ministry between zeal and tragedy. The final section discusses the problems and legacy of the Reformers' readings and, finally, the relevance of Paul's message for Christians today: What is Faith, according to Paul, and how can the Pauline perspective on faith and grace be understood and implemented in the life of the church and of believers? So, Pauline Perspectives is a fresh attempt to bring together new and old views on the hero of Protestantism for theology and Christian life.

Dieser Band vereint 30 Studien von Jörg Frey zum Johannesevangelium aus den Jahren 2009-2021, die mit einer neuen Einleitung versehen sind. Die Arbeiten widmen sich programmatischen Themen wie der Logik der johanneischen Theologie und dem Charakter des Evangeliums als einer narrativen Erinnerung an Jesus. Im Fokus sind weiter Themen der Christologie wie die vielfältigen Resonanzen des Logosbegriffs, die Inkarnation und das Problem des Doketismus. Exemplarische Interpretationen zu Semeia-Erzählungen und zur Passions- und Ostererzählung, theologische Themen wie die Rede von Gott, Glauben und Lieben, sowie Dualismus und Weltverständnis. Studien zum Kontext des Johannesevangeliums, zur Entwicklung des frühen Christentums in Ephesus, zur ‚Trennung der Wege' zwischen Juden und Christen und zur Frage des jüdischen Charakters und eines johanneischen Antijudaismus schließen den Band ab.

Among the archaeological discoveries of the modern era, the Qumran site and the Dead Sea Scrolls are some of the most significant. These finds offer rich understanding of not only Judaism but also the Christian New Testament. Jörg Frey, through careful study and insight, illuminates these texts for the modern reader. Qumran and Christian Origins examines the hermeneutical framework of Qumran scholarship, patterns for relating the Scrolls to early Christianity, and the methodological challenges faced by comparisons between Qumran texts and New Testament writings. In a critical evaluation of earlier views, Frey provides a summary of the Scrolls' impact on our views of the historical Jesus, Paul and his language, and the Johannine literature. Frey then considers how the Scrolls inform our understanding of the origins and meaning of apocalypticism, ancient concepts of scriptural authority, and the growth of the biblical canon. The final chapters discuss the relationship between the Qumran texts and ancient testimonies about the Essenes and the connection between the Scrolls and the archaeological site of Qumran. Drawing on several decades of Frey's research, this book demonstrates why students of the New Testament must study early Jewish texts, and in particular the Qumran corpus, and how these texts can be aptly applied. In the end, the hope is that we will have learned to see the New Testament more in terms of contemporary Judaism. Such insights are of profound theological importance, enabling us to pay attention to a feature of Christianity that was fundamental in its beginnings and is still significant today.

What happens after a suicide? Ten years after the suicide of a close friend, Sabrina Muller writes about her personal mourning process in short blogs and in-depth analyses. She tells of her numbness after the bad news, of the unbearable moments, of her phases of grief. She tells of rage, her own life tiredness, disappointment, and loneliness. Where were friends, community, even the church, when she herself urgently needed support? Muller speaks openly about the very difficult issues but also about what got her through this difficult time and how she slowly found her way back into a changed life. She profitably combines expert knowledge with personalities and breaks the taboo of talking about suicide. This book is a signpost and helpful orientation--for survivors and for people in helping professions.

The articles collected here present the fruits of 25 years of scholarship on Qumran and the New Testament. The author situates the New Testament within the pluralistic context of Second Temple Judaism, presents detailed overviews on the discoveries from Qumran, the source value of the ancient texts on the Essenes, the interpretation of the archaeological site, the various forms of dualism within the texts, the development of apocalyptic thought, Qumran meals, and scriptural authority in the Scrolls. He evaluates the various patterns of relating Jesus and the apostles to the Scrolls or the Qumran community, presents methodological reflections on comparisons and detailed surveys of the most important insights from the Qumran discoveries for the understanding of Jesus, Paul, and the Fourth Gospel. This volume demonstrates how the discovery of the Scrolls has influenced and changed New Testament scholarship.

The Fourth Gospel is deeply shaped by its remarkably high Christology. It depicts the earthly Jesus, the incarnate one, as fully divine. This unrelenting Christology has led interpreters, both ancient and modern, to question the historical value of John's Gospel. For many, the Gospel is just theology. It is to the vexed relationship between history and theology that Jorg Frey turns in Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel. John's theological obsession with Christology might suggest that history counts for little in the Gospel. But, as Frey argues, the Gospel's clear and central claim is that John narrates the story of Jesus of Nazareth, his ministry, and his death, as ""factual,"" and that this narrated ""history"" is foundational for the Christian message. Frey traces the Gospel's use of the available historical tradition by chiefly drawing from Mark and the Johannine community. Even if the Gospel of John used this received witness in a remarkably free manner, replotting and renarrating traditional episodes and even creatively staging new episodes, Frey contends that the historical life and person of Jesus remain central to John's enterprise. In the end, Frey warns that Johannine interpretation will miss the intention of the Gospel and the interpretive perspective of the evangelist if it remains preoccupied merely with questions of historical accuracy. The interpretive goal is to ""let John be John,"" and, as Frey shows, readers will always yield to the priority of theology over history in the Fourth Gospel. In John's telling of the Christ story, the significance of history lies precisely in its disclosure of theological meaning, just as the significance of the historical Jesus is only understood in the theological language of Christology.

Too small to be important, too different to be trusted. The New Testament's Catholic letters have suffered neglect when compared to the attention lavished upon Jesus, the Gospels, and Paul. Jude and 2 Peter, especially, have been ignored. Jorg Frey remedies this dearth with this full-scale commentary on Jude and 2 Peter. Frey's meticulous, sustained verse-by-verse interpretation highlights the theological achievements of the two canonical writings without sidestepping any of the open historical and literary questions plaguing these two pseudepigraphal letters. The Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of Peter investigates the historical location of the two writings, the literary context, the shape of their arguments, and the profile of the respective opponents that are the central concern of each epistle. The analysis also explores Jude and 2 Peter's use of biblical, Second Temple Jewish, and apocalyptic traditions, the long-recognized interrelation between the two letters, and the difficult text-critical issues that haunt both. Frey's careful interpretation points to the theological work each letter performs. Jude takes part in a critical debate within the Pauline and post-Pauline communities, while 2 Peter becomes a testimony to the theological discussions of the second century. Far from insignificant or irrelevant, the epistles provide invaluable insight into the growth and consolidation of early Christian tradition. With this groundbreaking commentary, Frey rightly draws our attention back to these texts' important role within the canon and early Christianity.

Jorg Frey has devoted decades of his scholarly career to exploring the rich landscape of John's Gospel. Frey chronicles the results of this work in The Glory of the Crucified One, demonstrating how the Gospel sits at the very heart of the New Testament witness. Frey begins by locating his approach to the Gospel in relation to five classic ways John has been interpreted (Part 1) and by offering a summary of the results of his own interpretation, in which Frey argues that the Gospel forms the apex of New Testament theology (Part 5). In between, Frey first untangles several problems, such as questions of anti-Judaism, dualism, and docetism, that are characteristic of any discussion of John's Gospel (Part 2). From there, he focuses attention on the weighty events that, for John, form the crucial "hour" of Jesus - the death, resurrection, and glorification of Christ (Part 3). Frey then builds on this central theme to explore the Christology and theology of John (Part 4). The Glory of the Crucified One underscores the central message Frey sees in the Gospel: "John's post-Easter memory (anamnesis) of the Jesus story aims at communicating that Jesus, who was crucified, has actually been glorified and is present in the realm of God, and in spite of his apparent absence from this world he is present in the community of believers through the Spirit." For John, according to Frey, there is no concealment of the cruel reality of Jesus' death on the cross. The narrative of Jesus' trial and his crucifixion deliberately shapes its readers' perception of the truth of faith visualized in John's narration. In the end, readers should contemplate the ""pierced,"" crucified one as the source of their life and their communion with God. Not for sale in Europe.

Der zweite Band der Kleinen Schriften des Zürcher Neutestamentlers versammelt 22 Beiträge aus fast 20 Jahren, die sich historisch und philologisch dem theologischen Anspruch der Texte des Neuen Testaments widmen. Der Bogen reicht dabei von der impliziten Christologie und der apokalyptischen Eschatologie in der Verkündigung Jesu über die Modelle der Deutung seines Todes, den religiösen Hintergrund und den geistigen Weg des Paulus und Fragen seiner Rechtfertigungs- und Kreuzestheologie bis hin zum Heilsverständnis, der Ekklesiologie und Eschatologie des Neuen Testaments und zu Fragen der Konstruktion einer Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Leitende Überzeugung ist dabei, dass das Neue Testament historisch und theologisch zu lesen ist und dass seine Interpretation auch für Fragen der gegenwärtigen Glaubenspraxis fruchtbar zu machen ist.

In the NT canon, the two minor catholic epistles of Jude and Second Peter are often considered somewhat marginal and have long been neglected by scholarship. This commentary aims to demonstrate the particular achievements of the two epistles without concealing their open theological questions. More precisely than before, the author elaborates on the historical importance of the two writings, their literary context, the profile of their respective opponents and the particular interests of their argument. Text critical issues and the reception of Biblical, early Jewish and Apocalyptic material are discussed in separate sections, and a synthesis of the respective theologies is included. Jude is ultimately read as part of a critical debate with Pauline and post-Pauline developments, whereas Second Peter turns out as a testimony of theological discussions of the second century.

Die weltberuhmte Alte Pinakothek in Munchen zeigt aus ihrem Sammlungsbestand uber 200 Meisterwerke mit biblischem Inhalt. "Bild und Botschaft II" erschliesst dem Betrachter in einer reprasentativen Auswahl von 33 Bildern Schlusselszenen des Alten und Neuen Testaments und knupft damit an den Erfolg des ersten Bandes an.

The articles discuss various aspects of Jewish identity in the Greco-Roman period. Was there a common ‘Jewish’ identity, and how could it be defined? How could different groups develop and maintain their identity within the challenge of Hellenistic and early Roman culture? What about the images of ‘others’? How could some of those ‘others’ adopt a Jewish lifestyle or identity, whereas others, abandoned their inherited identity? Among the questions discussed are the translation of Ioudaios, Jewish and universal identity in Philo, the status of women and their conversion to Judaism, the participation of non-Jews in the temple cult, the practice of Emperor worship in Judaea, and the image of Egypt and the Nile as ‘others’ in Philo. Two articles enter the debate whether Jewish identity had an ongoing influence within early Christianity, in Paul and in the rules known as the Apostolic Decree.

Metaphern haben für die Rede von Christus im Neuen Testament und in der Theologiegeschichte eine besondere Bedeutung. Untersucht werden hier Formen und Funktionen metaphorischer Christologie im Neuen Testament, die Christusmetaphorik in der Spätantike, in der Mystik Taulers, bei Luther und im 19. Jahrhundert. Systematische Beiträge erörtern die Rede von Christus als "Wort Gottes", das Verhältnis von Metapher und Erfahrung sowie Grundprobleme der Metaphorizität christologischer Rede. Thematisiert werden auch Christusmetaphern in der Lyrik und die Bedeutung der Metaphorik für die Rede von Christus im Religionsunterricht.