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1. Biblical 1.1. Greek Usage The word “gospel” is a translation of Gk. euangelion. Often found in the plural and attested from Homer, this word means “that which is proper to an euangelos, or messenger of good news.” The verb euangelizomai (mid. and pass.) means “speak as an euangelos,” that is, “bring (good) news.” The verb and noun have religious significance in the Greco-Roman world only in the emperor cult, in which ta euangelia is used for the good news of the birth or benevolence of the emperor. This usage has only background importance; it is not the source…

1. OT and Judaism 1.1. Atonement is a central concept in biblical theology. Along with the traditional misunderstanding of appeasing an angry deity, the penal definition of making good an offense and the viewing of the cultus as a human work have impeded a more relevant approach. In the OT, atonement breaks the nexus of sin and its evil consequences by “channeling ¶ the baneful influence of the evil into an animal that died vicariously for the man (or for the cultic object). Expiation was thus not a penalty, but a saving event” (G. von Rad, 271). The basis …

The original meaning of “hermeneutics” is “translation” in the broadest sense: the authoritative communication of a message (e.g., from God) that needs a mediator, the rendering of a text from one language into another, and the exposition of something said or written with a view to bringing out its meaning. The term is derived from the Greek hermēneuō, “interpret, explain, translate.” The root derives from the name of the Greek god Hermes, the mediator of meaning between the realm of gods and that of human beings. In the NT the term (including its use with the prefixes dia. and meta-) is t…