This collection of essays on the theme of repentance/penitence emerged from an assembly of biblical scholars, systematic theologians, and church historians at the 2003-2004 meetings of the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature. Walter Brueggemann, one of the respondents to the project, calls this collection a wondrous and rich collage of historical and contemporary probes into the specific teachings and practices of penitence.

This volume is a major resource for the interpretation, theology, and practice of communal and individual penitence. Each chapter begins with the examination of a particular aspect of the theme 'repentance in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, private confession in the German Reformation, a Pentecostal understanding of penitence, the Catholic call to conversion. Implications of that aspect to the overall theme are given, along with a list of further readings and interpretative reflections by the assembly on the results of the project.

This volume gives teachers, preachers, and serious students of theology an exhaustive source of information and inspiration for renewing the initial call of Jesus to Repent and believe in the Gospel (Mark 1:15).

Mark J. Boda, Ph.D., is a professor of Old Testament at McMaster Divinity College, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. One of his areas of expertise is the penitential prayer tradition in the Old Testament.

Gordon T. Smith, Ph.D., is president of reSource Leadership International and an adjunct lecturer in spiritual theology at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. His interests include the nature of conversion and spiritual discernment.