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# What is repentance? Part Two
- URL: https://www.dashhouse.com/200762what-is-repentance-part-two-html/
- Published: 2007-06-02T16:28:08.000Z
- Updated: 2022-08-15T15:32:44.000Z
- Author: Darryl Dash
- Tags: Blog, Faith, Theology, #DashHouseCom, #wp

N.T. Wright says this about repentance in [*The Challenge of Jesus*](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0830822003/dashhouse-20?ref=dashhouse.com):

> Jesus’ opening challenge as reported in the Gospels was that people should “repent and believe.” This is a classic example…of a phrase whose meaning has changed over the years. If I were to go out on the street in my local town and proclaim that people should “repent and believe,” what they would hear would be a summons to give up their private sins…and to “get religion” in some shape or form; either experiencing a new inner sense of God’s presence, or believing a body of dogma, or joining the church or some sub-branch of it. But that is by no means exactly what the phrase “repent and believe” meant in first-century Galilee.

> …Consider, for example, the Jewish aristocrat and historian, Josephus, who was born a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion and who was sent in A.D. 66 as a young army commander to sort out some rebel movements in Galilee. His task…was to persuade the hot-headed Galileans to stop their mad rush into revolt against Rome and to trust him and the other Jerusalem aristocrats to work out a better *modus vivendi*. So when he confronted the rebel leader, he says that he told him to give up his own agenda and to trust him, Josephus, instead. And the word \[sic\] he uses are remarkably familiar to readers of the Gospels: he told the brigand leader to “repent and believe in me”. . . (p. 44)

Thanks to [Marc](https://www.dashhouse.com/darryl/2007/05/what%5Fis%5Frepentance.htm#comment-20009) for this quote.

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