This "work starts with a careful analysis and reconstruction of Jesus, his message, and his program based on assessment of the older layers of the gospel tradition. There is a fine assessment of both the social development of Christianity in the first century and its effort to exploit and to challenge the social and cultural features of the Roman world in this period. Analysis of the synoptics shows the theological development of the Jesus tradition in relation to the changing social and cultural settings of the movement, in which the tradition is freely affirmed and freshly appropriated. The social factors figure importantly in the treatment of the post-Pauline material and the engagement with Greco-Roman society, including apology, synthesis, and challenge."

-Howard Clark Kee