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 Many people find reading the New Testament difficult because they don't know much about how people lived in those days. Too often when we read a New Testament passage we assume the people of that time meant what we mean by certain terms that appear similar. But they lived two thousand years ago, in quite a different world. Even when we recognize that they were different from us, we may still wonder how different? How did they dress? What did they eat? How did they behave toward one another? And how did those differences affect what they thought and believed and ultimately wrote down? This book provides an introduction to numerous aspects of life and thought in the first century A. D. and will help its readers "read between the lines" of the New Testament books to gain a fuller understanding of those documents.
Chapters discuss topics such as: - How the Roman government was organized and how its decisions affected people's everyday lives (did you know that if you had a legal complaint against someone, you had to bring them to court and act as the prosecutor?).
- What different religious cults taught and how those ideas may have influenced Christianity (did you know that the god Mithra was supposedly born on Dec. 25?).
- How meals were eaten (did you know that Jesus and his disciples were reclining on couches at the Last Supper? Da Vinci had it all wrong.)
These and a host of other topics are discussed in this "must-have New Testament companion." Indexes and illustrations add to its usefulness. Here's what readers have said about Exploring the New Testament World: ". . . fascinating and extremely informative." Tom Clark "T. R. Glover's classic book, The World of the New Testament . . . will now be replaced for other generations . . . by the present volume written by Dr. Albert A. Bell, Jr." Bruce Metzger "Ministers, Bible teachers, professors, and all Bible students will find Bell's work to be a must-have New Testament companion." CenturyOne Bookstore "Owing to its user-friendly features . . . and its non-threatening way of presentation, college teachers may consider Bell's work as a text . . . ." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society To read a sample chapter from this book, click here. Exploring the New Testament World is published by Thomas Nelson Publishers. To order this book from Amazon, click here. To order it from Barnes & Noble, click here. |
Non-Fiction 
1956 -- what a year! "Ozzie and Harriet" and Lawrence Welk on TV. The Cold War and the Civil Rights movement in the news. And Elvis everywhere. In the midst of it all, an 11-year-old boy, an avid New York Yankees fan, finds himself uprooted from the security of a close-knit family in South Carolina and moved to Cincinnati. His new best friend proves to be a transplanted Brooklynite, a rabid Dodger fan. Their lives center around baseball -- playing it, talking about it, and collecting baseball cards and autographs. On October 8, a Monday, they skip school to watch the fifth game of the World Series on TV. As amazed as the rest of the country, they see a journeyman pitcher named Don Larsen hurl his way into the record books with the only perfect game ever pitched in the Series.