The Cosmopolitan World of Jesus presents a breath-taking vision of Jewish society during the Graeco-Roman period. Carsten Peter Thiede shatters the popular conception of Christ’s Palestine as an isolated backwater, depicting it instead as a highly cultured part of the Roman Empire.
Thiede reconstructs the world of Jesus using an interdisciplinary approach, employing evidence from archaeologists, papyrologists, philologists and classic historians. He reveals the concrete reality of the multicultural, multireligious environment that surrounded Jesus and offers a portrayal of the daily life of the real people who populated the world in which the message of Jesus was spread. As he explores this world’s geographical frontiers and borders, Thiede provides insight into the life of its businesses, homes and leisure.
The Cosmopolitan World of Jesus leaves behind, as Thiede terms it, the “bloodless creations” of so much New Testament research. It enters instead the theatres, literature, postal services, library systems and commerce of the vibrant and sophisticated world of Christ.
