About the Book Traces the New Testament idea of agape love from its roots in the Hebrew Bible, in comparison with contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman thought, and places this concept in conversation with various modern understandings of love-- Book Synopsis In our fraught global environment, when political and ideological lines are drawn ever sharper and old allegiances are increasingly strained, love for neighbor as both individual and societal obligation needs to be thematized and justified anew. At the same time, the New Testament call to love ones enemies forms a sharp point of contrast to the current non-culture of hatred for all things different and foreign. Oda Wischmeyers Love as Agape: The Early Christian Concept and Modern Discourse , the ninth volume in the Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity series, aims to bring the New Testament concept of love into conversation with the current discussion about love. Wischmeyer investigates the commandment tradition of love for God and for neighbor, the ways in which the Septuagint and Plutarch speak of love, and the innovative concepts of love developed by Paul and John. She also presents an exegetically informed construction of the New Testament concept of love that is sharpened through a penetrating comparison with counter-, parallel, and alternative concepts from the ancient world. The book brings this holistic biblical vision forward into critical and constructive dialogue with key contemporary visions of love, including those of Julia Kristeva, Martha Nussbaum, Pope Benedict XVI, and Simon May. The tension that emerges stresses the need for fresh conceptualizations of ancient Jewish-Christian understandings, giving rise to the concluding question of the profile, limits, and impulses of the agape concept for present challenges. Through this academically rigorous and pastorally sensitive exploration, Wischmeyer points to the great love story between God and humanity, which realizes itself in the figure of Jesus Christ. This divine romance places love as the most intense, affirming, and life-creating relationship in Gods own self, a relationship into which human beings are drawn and by which they obtain special dignity when Gods love becomes their life. Review Quotes Oda Wischmeyer, Professor emerita for New Testament Studies at theFriedrich-Alexander Universitt Erlangen-Nrnberg, sets out to present anew theNew Testament concept of love, which has its own, indispensable contribution to make to contemporary debates on the meaning of love. --Susan E. Hylen Scottish Journal of Theology Wischmeyers study on agape is the most sophisticated to date. Through a refined historical hermeneutic, the book demonstrates that the concept of love did not originate in the minds of the early Jesus people or within Greco-Roman thought but instead enjoys a pedigree as ancient as Israels scriptures. Ultimately, the book successfully argues that the Jewish-Christian concept of love developed into a life-creating extension of Gods own self that finds its pinnacle in Jesus Christ. --Cory M. Marsh Review of Biblical Literature I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the NT concept of love and how it pertains to ourcurrent cultural climate. --Thomas Haviland-Pabst Books at a Glance ...A comprehensive and erudite study of agape. --Benjamin H. Dunning Theological Studies About the Author Oda Wischmeyer is Professor Emerita of Ancient Judaism and New Testament at University of Erlangen.