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[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament I. Old Testament…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. Judaism – III. New Testament – IV. Dogmatic/Ethics – V. Islam I. Old Testament The direct statements of the Old Testament about mercy as a loving and helping approach to others who had fallen into need or guilt are crystallized in Hebrew around the root רחם ( rḥm). The situation is complicated by overlapping of content with the root חנן ( ḥnn, “to be gracious”; Grace: II). Moreover, the OT deals with mercy itself without using the roots חנן or רחר, for example, in the description of God in the primordial history (Gen 1–11). An etymological connection of the root רחם with the noun רֶחֶם ( rehem, “mother's womb”) is plausible, so that the motherly or family feeling…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Examination of repentance from the perspective of religious studies must confront the problem that the term itself has no culturally neutral meaning. Many of the phenomena in other religions that Christians tend to call repentance appear in a different light when viewed in the context of different anthropological presuppositions, ¶ so that due weight must be given to the religious anthropology in question. Generally speaking, it is true to say that in almost all non-Christian religions the notion of repentance carries less weight than in Christianity. If we keep this fundamental difference in mind, we can speak more freely of repentance in non-Christian religions as well. From the perspective of religious studies, we can point to structural analogies in other religions without prematurely suggesting identification.…