As the Bandit Will I Confess you

Luke 23.39-43 in Early Christian Interpretation

By (author) Mark Glen Bilby

Book cover: As the Bandit Will I Confess you

Extent: 373, 373 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Biblical Studies

Series: Cahiers de Biblia Patristica

Series volume number: 13

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(March 2014)

ISBN: 9782906805125

Price: $49.00

On back order

The story of the so-called Good Thief (Luke 23:39-43) has a vibrant and diverse afterlife in early Christianity


The story of the so-called <> as found in Lc 23, 39-43 has a vibrant and diverse afterlife in early Christianity. Synoptic and eschatological disparities raise concerns and provoke a variety of harmonizations. Controversies notwithstanding, early interpreters occupy themselves most of all with the episode’s potential for exhortation as they identify themselves and their hearers with the good bandit. He becomes a model of Christian practices, beliefs and virtues including worship, faith (even Nicea’s formulation), justification by faith, conversion, catechesis, confession, martyrdom, baptism (in many modes), endurance, asceticism, simplicity of language, penitence, and last-minute salvation. A wide variety of typological readings fashion the bandit as the first to return to paradise and even a key participant in the pivotal moment of salvation-history. By around the late 4th century, the episode becomes a standard Good Friday lectionary reading and sermon topic in the East.

  • By (author) Mark Glen Bilby