Engaging the Passion gathers an impressive array of scholars to survey how the death of Jesus has been portrayed and represented in Scripture, liturgy and music, literature, art and film, and theology and ethics—from the first to the twenty-first centuries. The contributors approach the passion from a variety of perspectives—diversely Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and secular. Their voices differ as well, from the challenging to the comforting and from the academic to the confessional. They address the faithful, the skeptical, and the curious.

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This Theological Commentary is the first full-length work in English to consider Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion in its entirety, both the words and the music. Bach’s oratorio is a globally popular musical work, and a significant expression of Lutheran theology. The commentary explains the Biblical and poetic text, and its musical setting, line by line. Bach’s Passion is shown to be the work of a master craftsman and trained theologian, in the collaborative and cultural milieu of eighteenth-century, Lutheran Leipzig. For the first time, this work makes much German scholarship available in English, including archival sources, and includes a new scholarly translation of the libretto. The musical and theological terms are explained, to enable an interdisciplinary understanding of the Passion’s meaning and continued significance.