Modelling Early Christianity

<p><em>Modelling Early Christianity</em> explores the intriguing foreign social context of first century Palestine and the Greco-Roman East in which the Christian faith was first proclaimed and the New Testament documents were written. It demonstrates that a sophisticated analysis of the context is essential in order to understand the original meaning of the texts.<br>The contributors examine social themes such as early Christian group formation the centrality of kinship and honour and the economic setting. They offer a wealth of novel and socially realistic interpretations which make sense of the texts. At the same time <em>Modelling Early Christianity</em> contains significant new ideas on the relationship between social-scientific and literary-critical analysis the theoretical justification for model-use and the way these new approaches can fertilise contemporary Christian theology.</p>