1 Peter and Christ's Descent to the Dead in Its Early Christian Reception

Chi-Kin Lei reexamines 1 Peter 3:19 and its early Christian reception, challenging the current scholarly consensus by exploring its association with the doctrine of Christ's descent into Hades ( descensus ) and its significance in Christian theology.

In the Christian Bible, there is a mysterious text in the First Epistle of Peter (1 Peter 3:19) which speaks about "Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison". Traditionally, this text has served as the major scriptural support for the doctrine of Christ's descent into Hades (the so-called descensus ) in Christian theology. Present scholarship, however, has rejected this traditional understanding and tends to detach 1 Peter 3:19 from the descensus . Such a critical judgment, unfortunately, remains insufficiently examined. Indeed, no previous study has specifically focused on how and why 1 Peter 3:19 came to be associated with the descensus in history, nor what bearing the descensus could have on the text of 1 Peter 3:19 itself. Thus, Chi-Kin Lei fills this lacuna by studying 1 Peter's early reception in relation to the descensus, ultimately challenging the current scholarly consensus on this issue.

Autorentext
Born 1989; 2011 Bachelor of Social Science at the University of Macau; 2018 MDiv at Trinity Theological College in Singapore; 2020 MPhil in Theology (New Testament) at the University of Oxford; 2024 DPhil in Theology and Religion (New Testament) at the University of Oxford; post-doctoral fellow at Tsinghua University.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: A Survey of Christ's Descent to the Dead in the Early Centuries
Chapter 3: 1 Peter and Christ's Descent to the Dead in Second-Century Reception
hapter 4: 1 Peter and Christ's Descent to the Dead in Third-Century Alexandrian Reception
Chapter 5: The Genesis of Clement's and Origen's Receptions of 1 Peter 3:19 in Relation to Christ's Descent to the Dead
Chapter 6: Conclusion