Secondhand World

The events that shaped the New Testament were the Jewish background in a climate of Roman antisemitism. Three Jewish revolts caused an official Roman policy of antisemitism. This book shows how the New Testament was written by a Jewish group in such a time, and shows how the times shaped the New Testament. It shows how the Jewish milieu and Jewish writings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha influenced the writing of the New Testament, even to how the Hebrew Bible was quoted and used by Mark and John. It also shows how the Jewish background of the Apostle Paul influenced his attitudes towards Jews and gentiles in a setting of Roman antisemitism where Jewish Christians and gentile Christians were experiencing conflict, especially in the writing of Romans, and how a misunderstanding of this Jewish first-century background came about through the antisemitism of the early church fathers, affecting even the interpretations of Luther and Calvin.