We all know that the New Testament was written some time in the past but it can be hard to get a handle on just what that particular bit of the past was like. Simon Jones's book offers an engaging, helpful way in. He draws on the latest research, uses plenty of archaeological and textual detail, and still manages to put things across in a way that is easy to understand. The book will open your eyes to the strange and fascinating world of the first Christians. PETER OAKES, Greenwood Lecturer in New Testament a the University of Manchester, author `Reading Romans in Pompeii' -- Peter Oakes
Based on solid historical scholarship and original research, Simon Jones has produced a readable and informative account of everyday life in the Roman empire that brings alive for today's readers the social contact in which the first Christians worked out their faith. JOHN DRANE, Fellow of St John's College, Durham, and adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, California. -- John Drane
Thus, the reader of The World of the Early Church walks away from the book with a greater understanding of the first century Greco-Roman world, and therefore with a greater knowledge of the Scriptures that came from that world, so distant from our own. -- Matthew R. Crawford * Churchman *
