In the fullness of time the Christian religion sprang out of Judaism; as a fact, indeed, of divine revelation, but also inseparably joined by innumerable threads with the previous thousand years of Israel’s history. No incident in the gospel story, no word in the preaching of Jesus Christ, is intelligible apart from its setting in Jewish history, and without a clear understanding of that world of thought-distinction of the Jewish people. Aeterna Press

This book reviews an often-forgotten aspect of history, that is, the culture, beliefs, politics, and events in the Jewish community several centuries before and after the life of Jesus Christ. It tells about the Roman political system, the representation of the Jewish political parties, the messianic movements, and the Greek and Jewish literature, including Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha.