The New Testament in Its World: Part 1

An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians

By: N. T. Wright, Michael F. Bird

Narrated by: Richard Littledale

Your ticket from the twenty-first century to the era of Jesus and the first Christians. A listenable, two-volume introduction placing the entire New Testament and early Christianity in its original context, written by distinguished scholar and author N. T. Wright.

An ideal guide for students, The New Testament in Its World addresses the many difficult questions faced by those studying early Christianity, including:

• What was the first century understanding of the Kingdom of God?
• What is the meaning of the resurrection in its original context?
• What were the Gospels, and how did they come about?
• Who was Paul and why are his letters so controversial?

Written for both classroom and personal use, this book brings together decades of ground-breaking research, writing, and teaching into one volume. It presents the New Testament books—along with their subjects: Jesus and the early church—within the historical and social context of Second Temple Judaism and Greco-Roman politics and culture.

The New Testament in Its World allows you to recover the excitement of what it was like to live as Christians in the first or second centuries.

Features include:

• Surveys of each New Testament book that discuss their significance and provides commentary on their contents, along with implications for the Christian life.
• Major sections on the historical Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and Paul's chronology and theology.
• Up-to-date discussions of textual criticism and the canonization of the New Testament.
• Frequent illustrations, maps, charts, diagrams, and artwork provide additional explanations and insights.
• A distillation of the life work of N. T. Wright on the New Testament with input from Michael Bird.

Accompanying figures, tables, images, and reference materials are available in the audiobook companion PDF download.

Very thorough

May be better in hard copy, rather in audio. Runs more like a textbook, good for in depth Bible studies

not just a regurgitation of facts

i went in thinking this would be just an introduction to the new testament, but foubd there was a lot of deeper discussion of scholarly theological concepts and debates. this really opened my eyes to many things I had never thought about with respect to the scriptures. thus this is better fit for people who already have read the new testament a few times and maybe have been introduced to some of the scholarly takes on it. Personally I loved this!

Looking for scholarship? You’ve found it.

Not just high-brow pretense, but the "down to the nitty-gritty" foundations. Very helpful!

Each Aspect Well-Read

The narrator did a great job of being sure that everything was read. There were only three things that I didn’t like. First, I had to speed it up to, I think, 1.4x, or there would be long breaks between sentences and even punctuation. This was easily taken care of as I just sped the narration up. Second, the words “First Timothy” would be said “Two Timothy,” easily understood, though. Lastly, as I follow along with the book, too, there were footnotes that could’ve been read but were not. In this case, I simply had to pause in order to read the footnotes. Aside from these things, well done, and I look forward to the next part!

The breadth of research that went into this is so valuable!

It is such a blessing to have access to teachers like this. This study gave me the ability to teleport mentally to the early Christian world in a way I did not anticipate. I now have a much greater understanding of context and the absolute genius of the scriptures. I can’t wait to move on part two.