The first Christians in their social worlds

The First Christians in their Social Worlds is an excellent introduction to social-scientific interpretation of the New Testament. It shows that the various New Testament documents were written for diverse Christian communities, or 'social worlds'. To understand the theology of these texts we must examine what they meant to their original readers in the first century.

Philip Esler looks at the New Testament from both a sociological and anthropological perspective. He uses the model of legitimation developed by sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, with its emphasis on the creation and maintenance of social worlds, and complements this with an anthropological examination of the cultural script in which the New Testament texts were written.

This is in contrast to a more prevalent literary critical approach to the New Testament which focuses on the 'contemporary meaning' of the biblical texts. The First Christians in their Social Worlds employs a wide range of biblical data and socio-political ideas to illustrate this theoretical perspective, including charismatic phenomena, the admission of the Gentiles into early Christian communities, sectarianism, millenarianism and the Apocalypse.

This fascinating study of the New Testament, examined in the context of first-century social worlds, will appeal to biblical and theology students, academics and anyone with an interest in early Christian history.