This companion or introductory volume to Black's New Testament Commentaries looks at the New Testament in the light thrown on the earlier days of the Christian Church by the large body of research in recent years on the first period of Christianity and the immediately preceding times.

Professor Moule does not duplicate previous work by systematically investigating the authorship, date and composition of each writing, nor is his book primarily a theology of the New Testament, though a number of theological issues are discussed. It is an investigation of the circumstances which led to the making of the New Testament which should lead readers back again to the scriptures more alive to the questions that need to be asked, and especially the questions that actually were asked in those early days and from which the New Testament took its genesis.