Die Rede von »Wiedergeburt« im Neuen Testament

Ursula Ulrike Kaiser studies »rebirth« in the New Testament, showing for the first time that there is a great lack of clarity about it as a subject of research. This stems from its uncritical mixing as an »idea« and an »object«, and which, in terms of metaphor theory, corresponds to a commingling of source domain and target domain that often leads to concepts actually belonging to description language being imposed on the source text. In contrast, the author shows that with a consistent approach to verbal expressions of rebirth and a metaphor-oriented exegetical methodology, a clear number of New Testament texts can be distinguished, which use, strictly speaking, not rebirth but birth/procreation as a conceptual domain to metaphorically elaborate the event of coming to belief in Christ in a creative and differentiated way.