I’m delighted to be able to share with you the opening pages of our new book which has very recently appeared from Eerdmans. I had the honour of editing this book with my excellent colleagues Paul Trebilco (University of Otago, New Zealand) and David Gill (University of Suffolk). These pages include the contents, authors, and the introductory chapter, which summarises the contents of each chapter. That should give you a good flavour of the book and (hopefully) encourage you to ask your librarian to order it, and to get a copy for yourself.

The book is the product of an excellent conference organised in the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share the fruit of that conference with the wider world in this book.

Here are the kind things which Todd Still and Peter Oakes say:

Todd D. Still, Truett Seminary, Baylor University
“What do you get when you bring together human geographers, classicists, and Neutestamentlers to consider how ancient cities impacted the growth and thought of early Christian communities? Taken together, and along with the work of skilled editors and a strong press, you get The Urban World and the First Christians—a fascinating collection of learned, transdisciplinary essays by leading scholars in their respective fields. These substantive studies will shape your thinking about the urban landscape of the earliest Christ-followers and will lead you to think afresh about Christianity, whether ancient or modern, as an urban phenomenon.”

Peter Oakes, University of Manchester
“This book brings together an excellent collection of New Testament experts and historians to make fruitful inroads into a range of significant issues in the study of the urban context of early Christianity. Especially valuable is the juxtaposition of studies of particular cities and texts with studies of the idea of city among early Christians and their contemporaries. This will undoubtedly be a key resource in the field.”

Eerdmans have an overview of the book, drawn from the introduction, on their Eerdword blog, here.