“I am Joseph!”: Luther’s Last Lectures on the Last Chapters of Genesis

This book focuses on Luther’s very last lectures, which interpret the Joseph story in the final chapters of Genesis. Scholars have frequently neglected the later Luther and the Genesis Lectures, making this an important new contribution to the field. Luther’s lectures are not a modern scientific commentary, but enarrations, as Kenneth Hagen calls them, filled with public proclamation, expanded narrative, and a performative sense of language. The author furthers Oswald Bayer’s performative interpretation of Luther’s theology with a more sophisticated linguistic philosophy, while continuing Bayer’s theological direction.

The book is an important new contribution to Luther studies and will be of interest to seminarians as well as to students of hermeneutics, homiletics, the relevance of the performative in proclamation, and philosophy of language.

"Peter D. S. Krey offers a theologically expansive and polyvalent reading of Luther’s lectures on the last chapters of Genesis, the story of Joseph and his family in Egypt. Composed at the end of his days, the lectures were fully informed not only by Luther’s mature theology, but also by his own lifelong struggles with hopelessness and fear. Krey’s writing is lively, at times moving, his scholarship capacious. His book calls renewed attention to this most important work just when our own deeply troubled world needs it most."
―Christine Helmer, Peter B. Ritzma Chair of Humanities, Professor of German and Religious Studies, Northwestern University

"Dr. Peter Krey takes the reader on an energetic ride, as he examines Luther’s reading of the Joseph Story through a variety of intriguing interpretive lenses. With his unique and empathetic approach, Krey has accumulated an original examination of a key section of Luther’s Genesis lectures. Luther is alive on these pages that lay out the complexity of his theological language in ways that resonate with both mind and heart."
―Rev. Dr. Brooks Schramm and Rev. Dr. Kirsi Stjerna, Editors/Authors of Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People

Peter D. S. Krey was born in Erfurt in 1943. He has an MDiv from Hamma School of Theology, Springfield, Ohio, and a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union at University of California, Berkeley (2001). He ministered in West Berlin (1971-1975) and in Coney Island, NY (1976-1992). With his brother, Philip D. W. Krey, he published Luther’s Spirituality (2007), The Catholic Luther (2016), and The Reformation Commentary on Scripture: Romans 9-16 (2016). He was the first translator of Thomas Kaufmann’s A Short Life of Martin Luther (2016). Along with his son, Mark Krey, he is the composer of The Luther Musical, written to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.