apolytrōsis

Semantic range

1. 1release secured by the payment of a price (lytron)
2. 2deliverance, liberation
3. 3the final redemption of the body at the Resurrection

The lytron was the price paid to free a slave or a prisoner of war, and Jesus uses exactly that noun of Himself: "to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). Apolytrōsis is the resulting release.

The metaphor has a limit that early Christian writers sometimes overshot, asking to whom the ransom was paid and answering, badly, that it was paid to Satan. Scripture does not say so. What it says is that a price was paid and a captivity ended (Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:14). The Book of Mormon frames the same thing as deliverance from "the chains of hell" and from death (2 Nephi 9:10–13; Alma 5:9–10).

See also

• גֹּאֵלgōʾēl
• ἱλαστήριονhilastērion
• σωτηρίαsōtēria