The New Testament in Its World - An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians

The New Testament in Its World by N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird brings together decades of groundbreaking research, writing, and teaching into one volume that will open readers’ eyes to the larger world of the New Testament. It presents the New Testament books as a literary, narrative, and social phenomena located in the world of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, covering the third century BCE to the mid-second century CE. An ideal guide for students, The New Testament in Its World addresses the many difficult questions faced by those studying early Christianity. Both large and small, these questions include:

• What is the purpose of the New Testament?
• What was the first-century understanding of the kingdom?
• What is the real meaning of the resurrection in its original context?
• What really were the Gospels?

As twenty-first-century people, how do we recover the excitement of what it was like to live as Christians in the second or third centuries?

Available for the first time, this comprehensive work also serves as a one-volume overview to the lifelong project of scholar N. T. Wright to understand the important questions surrounding the origins of Christianity. As such, it stands to become the definitive introduction in its field.