New Testament texts cannot be adequately understood without careful attention to their Judaic and Second Temple roots. This volume contains twenty-four studies that shed essential light on the religious and biblical-interpretive matrix from which early Christianity emerged.

Richard Bauckham covers many aspects of the literature and thought of early Judaism, including life after death, the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, the Jewish apocalypses, the book of Tobit, and more. He discusses the "parting of the ways" between early Judaism and early Christianity and the relevance of early Jewish literature for the study of the New Testament. Bauckham also includes studies that explore specific aspects or texts of early Christianity by relating them to their early Jewish context, such as the delay of the parousia, the restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, and the use of Latin names by Paul and other Jews in the early Christian movement.

Richard Bauckham Born 1946; 1973 PhD, University of Cambridge; 1992–2007 Professor of New Testament Studies, St Andrews University, Scotland; 1998 elected Fellow of the British Academy; 2002 elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; since 2007 Emeritus Professor, St Andrews University, and Senior Scholar, Ridley Hall, Cambridge.