{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"The New Testament in Its World - A Brief, Thousand-Page Intro","description":"Everything you wanted to know about 1st Century Palestine, but were afraid to ask\u2026 The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians By: N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird Published: 2019 992 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? An deep dive on the New Testament covering (as the subtitle suggests) the history: Second Temple Judaism against a Greco-Roman background; the literature: the New Testament\u2019s genesis, structure, authors and audience; and theology: the religious claims of the book, the doctrine, miracles, and contentions. What's the author's angle? Despite me saying that this is a deep dive, it is also something of a sampler for Wright\u2019s other, even more expansive books. Also it\u2019s important to note that Wright is very much a believing Christian and while the book is exceptionally scholarly, it\u2019s also backgrounded by the idea that Jesus Christ is the Messiah who died for the sins of the world and was gloriously resurrected.  Who should read this book? This is a long book, and I ended up deciding to read it, rather than listen to it. As such, it honestly took me several months to get through, so you should certainly take that into account. This should not be construed as saying the book is difficult. It\u2019s very accessible, and reads easily. I will say that I learned a lot, but I\u2019m not sure that will be true for everyone. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) don\u2019t generally focus on straight down the line Bible scholarship. To the extent that we do deep scholarship in this area it\u2019s in search of parallels between early Christianity and LDS Christianity. (For example in 1 Corinthians 15:29 when Paul mentions baptisms for the dead. Something no major denomination does, other than us.) This is all to say that I think LDS individuals might find this book particularly enjoyable, as being somewhat outside of our normal wheelhouse. Specific thoughts: It\u2019s both shocking how much New Testament we have and how little we have of everything else ","author_name":"We Are Not Saved","author_url":"http:\/\/wearenotsaved.com","html":"