The New Testament in Its World is your passageway from the twenty-first century to the era of Jesus and the first Christians. A highly-readable, one-volume introduction placing the entire New Testament and early Christianity in its original context, it is an ideal guide for those seeking to learn more about the early church. The New Testament in Its World addresses the many difficult questions faced by those studying early Christianity, including: What is the purpose of the New Testament? What was the first-century understanding of the kingdom? As twenty-first-century people, how do we recover the excitement of what it was like to live as Christians in the first or second centuries?