In 1945, after one of the final battles of World War II, he threw away his weapons and uniform and walked home from France, completing his schooling in 1946.

In 1951 he qualified as a Lutheran parish minister, but in 1954 his father voiced his opposition to this and insisted that he join 'Hengella', the family textile business in Aalen, which makes women's underwear and lingerie.

[1] For a short period he was also able to lecture at a theological college, and served as an assistant to Professor Otto Michel in Tübingen, but this ended in 1957 when he was sent to manage a factory in Leicester for several years.

[6] In his article "Raising the Bar: A daring proposal for the future of evangelical New Testament scholarship",[7] Hengel therefore challenges scholars to delve into more extensive biblical research to ensure proper understandings of the texts being established.

Hengel's Christology strove to share an accurate illumination of who Jesus was and what he did and sought after as well as the notion that "Christianity emerged completely from within Judaism".

Much scholarly work is currently being done around the intersection of Hellenism, Judaism, Paganism, and Christianity and the ways in which these terms are potentially problematic for the Second Temple Period.

In his study, Judentum und Hellenismus, he documented that the designation of the apostle Paul exclusively as either Jewish or Hellenistic is a misunderstanding.

Hengel recognizes the importance of this awareness because of the multifaceted insight provided about the Second Temple Era and Hellenistic Judaism of the first century within these texts.

[3] He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Uppsala,[14] St Andrews, Cambridge, Durham, Strasbourg and Dublin.