The story of the so-called "Good Thief" as found in Lc 23, 39-43

has a vibrant and diverse afterlife in early Christianity. Synoptic

and eschatological disparities raise concerns and provoke a

variety of harmonizations. Controversies notwithstanding,

early interpreters occupy themselves most of all with the

episode's potential for exhortation as they identify themselves

and their hearers with the good bandit. He becomes a model of

Christian practices, beliefs and virtues including worship, faith

(even Nicea's formulation), justification by faith, conversion,

catechesis, confession, martyrdom, baptism (in many modes),

endurance, asceticism, simplicity of language, penitence, and

last-minute salvation. A wide variety of typological readings

fashion the bandit as the first to return to paradise and even a

key participant in the pivotal moment of salvation-history. By

around the late 4th century, the episode becomes a standard

Good Friday lectionary reading and sermon topic in the East.