This text explores the foreign social context of first century Palestine and the Greco-Roman East, in which the Christian faith was first proclaimed and the New Testament documents were written. It demonstrates that a sophisticated analysis of the context is essential in order to understand the original meaning of the texts. The contributors examine social themes such as early Christian group formation, the centrality of kinship and honour and the economic setting. The book aims to provide significant new ideas on the relationship between social-scientific and literary-critical analysis, the theoretical justification for model-use and the way these new approaches can fertilize contemporary Christian theology.