Customer Reviews

Readings from the First-Century World: Primary Sources for New Testament Study (Encountering Biblical Studies)

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This book is an excellent anthology. The editors have taken pertinent selections from ancient writings and grouped them into subjects involving the New Testament. Examples of the sub-groupings are The History of the Jews; The Religious Life of the Jews; Jesus Outside of the New Testament; and Romans-Galatians. The selected writings include authors such as Josephus, Philo, Suetonius, Origen, and Justin Maryr. I agree with the book's editors that this collection of readings will enable those with a limited background in ancient literature to obtain a sense of those times and the New Testament. In addition, this anthology is an inexpensive way of possessing a good selection of ancient writings. This book is perfect for new students and personal theological libraries. This book would not be of interest to the advanced theological professional.

Serious biblical students must attempt to understand first century thought since the Jesus of history as well as the canonical scriptures are historically tied to the first century. The Jews and early Christians were an extremely textual people and it is necessary to read their writings. This book gives the bible student an open door into the first century thought by virtue of the writings of various authors of that time period. Don't expect to find any great discoveries, but do expect to find a wonderful collection of ancient quotes, stories, and historical facts collated by two of the most qualified authors alive today, Elwell and Yarbrough.

I had to purchase this book for a masters class and though most of your typical NT studies class will draw your attention standard opinions from the academic field this book just gives the unbiased primary sources that are speaking to the age in which the NT was authored.

I have used this as my standard NT Backgrounds course textbook at Singapore Bible College for many years. Students weak in English struggle with the older, more difficult English translations of ancient material. However, the quick introductions to each ancient reading are invaluable. The readings themselves are also concise as the editors have eliminated readings that do not enlighten any NT texts.