Kudo for the author.

Simply excellent. A real gem. One book one should be without if you are a Bible reader and if you are of thinking mind. Just click and get one copy to enjoy. I've read once; I'm planning to read again (possible again.)

His easy prose style of English is so smooth; one feels like reading an exciting fiction. I'm glad it is not a small book; it gives so much to fill your heart's desire.

You are not interested in early Christianity? Well, if you don't know your own root (biblically speaking), then you cannot be a Christ-believer and are not really reading the New Testament to hear ITS message but getting someone's messages and being happy to be their copycat. (It doesn't matter whether you do attend a church regularly and enjoy all its programs and get involved in lots of its activities).

A good introduction and reference to various socio-historical situations in Judaism from the first century to Rabbinic times and its influence upon or relation with the nascent Jewish and Gentile believers in Yeshua. A primary focus is how Temple thinking and understanding shaped and/or defined both religious milieus. Instead of forging its own academic arguments, this surveys many of the various scholastic views, choosing to substitute bibliographic lists of important books on the subject for argument-bearing footnotes. As befits a broad-reaching survey, many conclusions are not thoroughly examined and tested, leaving this to the reader. I did feel, however, that at some points, arguments or conclusions were so insubstantial that the author was chasing shadows. Unfortunately, the book teeters off at the end into quite a few disappointing chapters. Overall, however, this is an easy-to-understand, well-organized foundation with many jump-off points to delve into more serious academic study about first century Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, and the Jewish makeup of Christianity.

Skarsaune makes propositions faithful to and indicative of the origin of Christianity: Jewish monotheism.

'There was a rather extensive two-way dialogue between the religious authorities in Jerusalem and the Jews in the Disapora. Envoys were sent out from Jerusalem, carrying letters to the Diaspora communities, instructing them on matters of observance, the ritual calendar and doctrines to be avoided. This continued after the fall of the Temple; many of the leading rabbis of the second century A.D. are pictured in the rabbinic texts as traveling widely among the Jews of the Diaspora. Groups of pilgrims from the Diaspora came to the three great pilgrimage festivals in Jerusalem. They came not only to bring their temple tax and the prescribed sacrifices, but also hear the famous teachers of the Law and to bring back from Jerusalem a renewed zeal for their ancestral faith and its observances.' pg 74

'The synagogue, as institution and building, was an invention of the Diaspora Jews. Only later was the synagogue introduced in the Land, first in Galilee, far away from the Temple. In Judea there were for a long time no synagogues; the Temple was too close. Only in Jerusalem itself do we find synagogues at the same time as in Galilee, but they were built by and for Diaspora Jews visiting Jerusalem or residing there.' pg 79

It is a easy book to read and one finds oneself enjoying the trip down 'memory lane' with Skarsaune. I appreciate the back-drop of cultural context and history he set his work off with, for it begins at about 300BC.

This puts us squarely into the Jewish time-situation and helps us understand the times Christ was born into. The storyline develops further and we stay with the Jewish perspective on the Church in her formative years. A solid foundation is then hereby laid for all things Jewish in our Gentile gospel.

An important historical study.

Everyone knows that Christianity started out as just another Jewish sect. Interesting historical fact, but its implications for modern thinking and practice around Christianity are seldom addressed by the average layeperson (or clergy!). Oskar Skarsaune leads the reader to address this, and whether reading this from an aspiritual historical perspective or from a faith perspective, the reading is highly rewarding. He succeeds in bringing us back to ground zero, so to speak, of the explosion of Christianity upon the ancient near eastern world. What struck me reading this book was not so much the Jewishness of early Christianity, but the Gentileness of modern Christianity and how Christians have drifted away from many Jewish aspects of the faith which would certainly benefit individuals and churches alike by being re-explored afresh. Skarsaune leads one on the start of this journey, and hopefully for many this book will be the first step for many in travelling closer towards the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Christ. The only criticism I have is that the Skarsaune's momentum starts to die out around the last fifth of the book. Nevertheless, even with this the text deserves 5 stars!