What do you think?
Rate this book
AD 33: The Year that Changed the World
AD 33 was the year when an obscure religious teacher died a criminal's death in an outpost of the Roman empire, an event which had world changing consequences in the form of the beginnings of Christianity. But what was the world like in that momentous year? Colin Duriez's compelling and wide-ranging book brings to life events in the Roman empire and beyond.
In AD 33 the huge Roman empire encompassed the countries surrounding the Mediterranean and much of north-western Europe. Cities had water and sewage systems, theatres and public baths. Roads cut across the countryside, facilitating both travel and governmental control. Beyond the empire other cultures and civilisations thrived. In Britannia, which had a well-developed Celtic oral tradition, Boudicca was a young girl and King Cunobelinus-immortalised by Shakespeare as Cymbeline-ruled much of south-east and central England. The vast Han dynasty of China was one of the major empires of the time, while, outside the known world, the Nazca culture, famous for its enormous geoglyphs, had been established in South America for centuries.
Back in Jerusalem, Colin Duriez draws on contemporary descriptions and Jewish scriptures of the early Church to portray the city during the year of Christ's death. He explores characters such as Pilate, King Herod, Tiberius, Peter, and Mary and Martha, and discusses the method of crucifixion and the likely cause of the darkness which descended on Jerusalem when Jesus was dying.
There is a widespread curiosity about the history that lies behind the Gospel tests. This richly detailed book reveals, for the first time, what the year that saw the inauguration of Christianity as a world religion was actually like.
In AD 33 the huge Roman empire encompassed the countries surrounding the Mediterranean and much of north-western Europe. Cities had water and sewage systems, theatres and public baths. Roads cut across the countryside, facilitating both travel and governmental control. Beyond the empire other cultures and civilisations thrived. In Britannia, which had a well-developed Celtic oral tradition, Boudicca was a young girl and King Cunobelinus-immortalised by Shakespeare as Cymbeline-ruled much of south-east and central England. The vast Han dynasty of China was one of the major empires of the time, while, outside the known world, the Nazca culture, famous for its enormous geoglyphs, had been established in South America for centuries.
Back in Jerusalem, Colin Duriez draws on contemporary descriptions and Jewish scriptures of the early Church to portray the city during the year of Christ's death. He explores characters such as Pilate, King Herod, Tiberius, Peter, and Mary and Martha, and discusses the method of crucifixion and the likely cause of the darkness which descended on Jerusalem when Jesus was dying.
There is a widespread curiosity about the history that lies behind the Gospel tests. This richly detailed book reveals, for the first time, what the year that saw the inauguration of Christianity as a world religion was actually like.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
About the author
Colin Duriez
39 books55 followersColin Duriez is an English writer and scholar best known for his work on the Inklings, the literary circle that included C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. Born in Derbyshire in 1947, he moved to Leicester in 1983 to work as a commissioning editor for the publisher IVP. Over the years he has combined editorial work with teaching, and in 2002 he established his own business, InWriting, in Keswick, Cumbria, providing writing and editorial services as well as book acquisition for publishers.
Winner of the Clyde S. Kilby Award in 1994 for his research on the Inklings, Duriez has been praised as one of the most valuable contemporary scholars on Lewis. His numerous books explore the lives, friendships, and imaginative worlds of Lewis and Tolkien, including Bedeviled: Lewis, Tolkien, and the Shadow of Evil, The Oxford Inklings, and Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship. His work has been lauded for accessibility, scholarly insight, and fresh perspectives.
Duriez has also appeared in television documentaries such as A Quest for Meaning – Myth, Imagination & Faith in the Literature of J. R. R. Tolkien & C. S. Lewis. He lives in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Winner of the Clyde S. Kilby Award in 1994 for his research on the Inklings, Duriez has been praised as one of the most valuable contemporary scholars on Lewis. His numerous books explore the lives, friendships, and imaginative worlds of Lewis and Tolkien, including Bedeviled: Lewis, Tolkien, and the Shadow of Evil, The Oxford Inklings, and Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship. His work has been lauded for accessibility, scholarly insight, and fresh perspectives.
Duriez has also appeared in television documentaries such as A Quest for Meaning – Myth, Imagination & Faith in the Literature of J. R. R. Tolkien & C. S. Lewis. He lives in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 5, 2026
“To the north above Jerusalem rose the hills. A man crucified on the cross could see the entire city.”
This is an excellent book, whose author simply reviews well‑known biblical events, pausing in detail and drawing the reader’s attention to each seemingly minor detail. For example, such a detail as Pontius Pilate being an appointee of Tiberius, and for some reason not a legate but a procurator (a lower rank). This meant that Pilate did not have the same broad powers as other appointees who governed territories of the Roman Empire. Above all, he lacked sufficient military support, necessary even for suppressing a revolt. Why was this so? Perhaps the victory of the so‑called anti‑Roman movement—part of which later came to be called Christianity—was predetermined in advance? As I see it, those behind this rather revolutionary current had a concrete goal: to dismantle the Roman imperial order.
If we look at the historical facts and the consequences of Jesus’ “uprising,” we are surprised to discover that after his death there came a literal flourishing of everything he had opposed! Opposing worship and sacrifices in temples, Jesus himself became the object of worship for Christians. And for the Jews, synagogues appeared in great numbers, and the Torah became even more popular. The new religion needed less than 300 years to wipe a mighty empire off the map. Rome, which embodied the rule of universal laws, gave way to the rule of a mixture of the Old and New Testaments.
From here we move to the Bible as a code of necessary laws. And immediately doubts begin to creep in about its reliability. For it is known that in those times there was a whole industry around scrolls (written works). An author could dictate a text to a whole group of scribes, and copies could be copied again, or rented out for further copying. At the same time, there were no proofreaders or editors to track errors.
Reference: A codex (from codex – “book”) was one form of manuscript with pages, like modern books.
The Gospels were written in the same way as other manuscripts. The prevailing opinion is that the Gospel of Mark was written first. Luke and Matthew used Mark’s Gospel for their manuscripts. The fourth Gospel was written independently of the first three and later. Strangely, these Gospels have no chronological sequence in their narratives and are diluted in the middle with various stories, episodes, and excerpts from conversations. About 20% of the narrative is devoted to the last week of Jesus’ life, his death, and resurrection. This very much resembles any biography of that era. The biographies of Plutarch, Tacitus, and Philostratus were written according to the same principle! This suggests that the Gospels were written primarily for a broad pagan audience, while also being accessible to Jews. Moreover, they are infused with the Hellenistic genre of biography, so that the Greco‑Roman audience could understand them. In other words, the main goal of the Gospels was to interest pagans in the idea of the Kingdom of God.
If we assume that the goal was the collapse of the Roman Empire, then this means that the Romans themselves had to serve the realization of this goal. Like all “bloody” tyrants (empires), they were so cruel that they themselves passed laws leading their empire to ruin. Thus, under the guise of preserving cultural diversity, the Romans at the legislative level allowed Jews to adhere to monotheism and not worship the Roman pantheon of gods. Moreover—they were allowed not to accept the cult of the emperor and not to participate in his veneration! And this despite the fact that Augustus, for example, was deified. The ruler of these lands, the “bloody” tyrant Tiberius, was so bloodthirsty and so eager to torment the Jews that he arranged his residence on the island of Capri, a piece of land only 6 by 3 kilometers in size. When you read about such “rulers,” it becomes genuinely laughable.
Another key figure was Pontius Pilate. He was so significant that in the manuscripts that have come down to us, not even the name of his wife—who accompanied him during his tenure as governor of Judea—is mentioned. Yet many historians, from the elite circle with access to manuscripts, confidently write that Pilate’s wife and some of his guards were drawn to Judaism. Pilate spent most of his time in Caesarea Maritima—the city appointed by Roman authorities as the capital of Judea. Pilate periodically left the capital to participate in various judicial processes. In the spring of the fateful year 33 CE, Pilate had to visit Jerusalem during the Jewish festival of Passover.
Rome was such a greedy empire that it handed part of the lands over to Antipas, son of Herod the Great. This man ruled the territories of Galilee and Perea in Palestine. He, depicted even in the Bible as a mocking fool over Jesus, was in fact a great builder. He organized the reconstruction of Sepphoris in Galilee, destroyed by the Romans after the uprising that followed the death of Herod the Great.
Interesting fact #1: The leader of that uprising was a certain Judas, who distributed weapons to his supporters from the royal palace, which became the center of the revolt.
Nazareth was 6 km from Sepphoris, and it is believed that Joseph, Jesus’ stepfather, found work there, and that this was where young Jesus first encountered Hellenism, since the city was built according to Greek traditions (and what other traditions could Rome have but Greek?). The Jews also experienced Greek influence, and even when Mary and Joseph hid in Alexandria from Herod the Great’s wrath, they hid in the Jewish community under Greek influence.
Reference: Between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE the Old Testament was translated into Greek. This translation was known as the Septuagint, after the number of translators—between 70 and 72.
Interesting fact #2: Thanks to this translation, scholars were able to improve their knowledge of ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek.
Interesting fact #3: Julius Caesar (another “bloody” tyrant) granted civil rights to the Jewish population of Alexandria. And in Judea, even in the time of Augustus, far fewer Jews lived than in the rest of the Roman Empire. It was precisely the Roman Empire that contributed to the development of the Jewish diaspora!
It was among such tyrants and tyrannical conditions that Jesus began his path to the cross. Sometimes he performed miracles. But strangely, his main miracle—the raising of Lazarus—is described in detail only in one Gospel (John) and not mentioned in the others!
Reference: There is a whole cohort of scholars who consider this episode a Hellenistic insertion.
Such discrepancies between the Gospels are very strange, since the raising of Lazarus, if we believe John, was the catalyst for subsequent events. If Jesus believed he came to divide people, then historically it turned out that he united hostile groups of orthodox Pharisees and most of the city and temple leaders, among whom the Sadducees dominated.
Reference: The Sadducees were pro‑Roman and more Hellenized than others. They were agents of Roman authority.
John also describes in his Gospel the prophecy made by Caiaphas: that it is better for one man to die than for the whole people to perish. If so, then Caiaphas would in any case strive to fulfill his prophecy. Otherwise, what kind of high priest would he be?
Reference: The duties of high priests of that period included making prophecies.
On the strangeness of Jesus’ path:
The devil, as is known, hides in the details. And when you begin to read the Gospel texts carefully, the details themselves erase that aura of magic or divinity with which we are accustomed to surround Jesus. It would seem that if you want to point to divine predestination, simply state that Jesus entered the city on a donkey. And no questions would arise. But when it turns out that Jesus had beforehand sent two of his disciples to the village of Bethphage (House of Figs), near Bethany, and these disciples were Peter and John, and he instructed them to find a donkey and a colt there—that is, to borrow or steal them—all this was called “they were needed by the Lord.” But that does not change the essence. Jesus and his disciples were enacting the scenario of the arrival of the messianic king from an ancient Old Testament prophecy. The people who shouted and greeted him, like extras in a theater, already knew from the moment the villagers explained why Jesus’ disciples needed the donkey. This was March 29. And on March 31 Jesus already went to the temple, in order to unite against himself, as mentioned above, the high priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. This would be one of the main results of Jesus’ appearance.
The second “achievement” of Jesus would be that “on that day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other, for before they had been enemies.” The third result of “divine” intervention would be that after Pilate, Judea once again received a popular vassal king—Herod Agrippa I. And this would be beneficial for everyone—except, notably, for the followers of Jesus, whom Agrippa began to persecute. Incidentally, in 38 CE, to insult Agrippa I, some anti‑Semitic individuals dressed a madman in purple robes (a symbol of power) and showed him to the procurator. Agrippa simply ignored this disrespect toward the Jewish king, and that was the end of it… Jesus, however, clothed in a mocking garment, was cursed by the crowd for a long time. Evidently, that was exactly the intended order.
On the name of Jesus: From the earliest times he was, for some reason, called the Messiah. That is, the word Christos (Christ), used in the New Testament, was a translation of the Hebrew word meaning “Messiah.” When Caiaphas asked Jesus, “Are you the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the Blessed (God)?” Jesus literally answered, “I am who I am,” but in translations only “I am” was included! This strongly smells of deliberate manipulation.
And finally, we must reflect on why the symbol of Christianity suddenly became an instrument of execution, used mainly by the Romans. Just as easily, the symbol of the religion could have been the gallows, for example, rather than the cross. It is astonishing how quickly (was it commissioned?) writers, painters, and architects picked up the theme of the cross…
And let us also think about how many believers Christianity would have lost if there had been no accounts from eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. Even Paul would not have converted to Christianity if he had not believed that Christ had risen as a living, breathing man!
Reference: After rising, Jesus appeared twice to women, who then tried to tell what they had seen, but they had no legal status as witnesses. Only after no one believed them did Jesus appear to a group of disciples in Jerusalem. It is also noteworthy that Peter, John, and other apostles not only told of seeing the risen Jesus, but also performed miracles left and right. It is said that even Peter’s shadow supposedly had healing power.
The comic aspect of the situation is that many Jews readily accepted Christianity, perceiving it as one of many variants of Judaism. The growth in the number of followers occurred mainly in Palestine. Incidentally, the Church expanded precisely during the so‑called persecutions under the rule of the “tyrant” Nero in the 60s!
But all these oddities fade into the background compared to the agonizing death of Stephen, whose ideas would be carried into the world by the apostle Paul, who later became the reformer of early Christianity. And strangely, when reading the description of Stephen’s execution—carried out by those who accused him—all the details fit together so naturally, more seamlessly than bricks in the foundation of most churches. And it seems there is no place there where the devil could hide.
Pay attention to the details, they matter. Amen!
This is an excellent book, whose author simply reviews well‑known biblical events, pausing in detail and drawing the reader’s attention to each seemingly minor detail. For example, such a detail as Pontius Pilate being an appointee of Tiberius, and for some reason not a legate but a procurator (a lower rank). This meant that Pilate did not have the same broad powers as other appointees who governed territories of the Roman Empire. Above all, he lacked sufficient military support, necessary even for suppressing a revolt. Why was this so? Perhaps the victory of the so‑called anti‑Roman movement—part of which later came to be called Christianity—was predetermined in advance? As I see it, those behind this rather revolutionary current had a concrete goal: to dismantle the Roman imperial order.
If we look at the historical facts and the consequences of Jesus’ “uprising,” we are surprised to discover that after his death there came a literal flourishing of everything he had opposed! Opposing worship and sacrifices in temples, Jesus himself became the object of worship for Christians. And for the Jews, synagogues appeared in great numbers, and the Torah became even more popular. The new religion needed less than 300 years to wipe a mighty empire off the map. Rome, which embodied the rule of universal laws, gave way to the rule of a mixture of the Old and New Testaments.
From here we move to the Bible as a code of necessary laws. And immediately doubts begin to creep in about its reliability. For it is known that in those times there was a whole industry around scrolls (written works). An author could dictate a text to a whole group of scribes, and copies could be copied again, or rented out for further copying. At the same time, there were no proofreaders or editors to track errors.
Reference: A codex (from codex – “book”) was one form of manuscript with pages, like modern books.
The Gospels were written in the same way as other manuscripts. The prevailing opinion is that the Gospel of Mark was written first. Luke and Matthew used Mark’s Gospel for their manuscripts. The fourth Gospel was written independently of the first three and later. Strangely, these Gospels have no chronological sequence in their narratives and are diluted in the middle with various stories, episodes, and excerpts from conversations. About 20% of the narrative is devoted to the last week of Jesus’ life, his death, and resurrection. This very much resembles any biography of that era. The biographies of Plutarch, Tacitus, and Philostratus were written according to the same principle! This suggests that the Gospels were written primarily for a broad pagan audience, while also being accessible to Jews. Moreover, they are infused with the Hellenistic genre of biography, so that the Greco‑Roman audience could understand them. In other words, the main goal of the Gospels was to interest pagans in the idea of the Kingdom of God.
If we assume that the goal was the collapse of the Roman Empire, then this means that the Romans themselves had to serve the realization of this goal. Like all “bloody” tyrants (empires), they were so cruel that they themselves passed laws leading their empire to ruin. Thus, under the guise of preserving cultural diversity, the Romans at the legislative level allowed Jews to adhere to monotheism and not worship the Roman pantheon of gods. Moreover—they were allowed not to accept the cult of the emperor and not to participate in his veneration! And this despite the fact that Augustus, for example, was deified. The ruler of these lands, the “bloody” tyrant Tiberius, was so bloodthirsty and so eager to torment the Jews that he arranged his residence on the island of Capri, a piece of land only 6 by 3 kilometers in size. When you read about such “rulers,” it becomes genuinely laughable.
Another key figure was Pontius Pilate. He was so significant that in the manuscripts that have come down to us, not even the name of his wife—who accompanied him during his tenure as governor of Judea—is mentioned. Yet many historians, from the elite circle with access to manuscripts, confidently write that Pilate’s wife and some of his guards were drawn to Judaism. Pilate spent most of his time in Caesarea Maritima—the city appointed by Roman authorities as the capital of Judea. Pilate periodically left the capital to participate in various judicial processes. In the spring of the fateful year 33 CE, Pilate had to visit Jerusalem during the Jewish festival of Passover.
Rome was such a greedy empire that it handed part of the lands over to Antipas, son of Herod the Great. This man ruled the territories of Galilee and Perea in Palestine. He, depicted even in the Bible as a mocking fool over Jesus, was in fact a great builder. He organized the reconstruction of Sepphoris in Galilee, destroyed by the Romans after the uprising that followed the death of Herod the Great.
Interesting fact #1: The leader of that uprising was a certain Judas, who distributed weapons to his supporters from the royal palace, which became the center of the revolt.
Nazareth was 6 km from Sepphoris, and it is believed that Joseph, Jesus’ stepfather, found work there, and that this was where young Jesus first encountered Hellenism, since the city was built according to Greek traditions (and what other traditions could Rome have but Greek?). The Jews also experienced Greek influence, and even when Mary and Joseph hid in Alexandria from Herod the Great’s wrath, they hid in the Jewish community under Greek influence.
Reference: Between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE the Old Testament was translated into Greek. This translation was known as the Septuagint, after the number of translators—between 70 and 72.
Interesting fact #2: Thanks to this translation, scholars were able to improve their knowledge of ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek.
Interesting fact #3: Julius Caesar (another “bloody” tyrant) granted civil rights to the Jewish population of Alexandria. And in Judea, even in the time of Augustus, far fewer Jews lived than in the rest of the Roman Empire. It was precisely the Roman Empire that contributed to the development of the Jewish diaspora!
It was among such tyrants and tyrannical conditions that Jesus began his path to the cross. Sometimes he performed miracles. But strangely, his main miracle—the raising of Lazarus—is described in detail only in one Gospel (John) and not mentioned in the others!
Reference: There is a whole cohort of scholars who consider this episode a Hellenistic insertion.
Such discrepancies between the Gospels are very strange, since the raising of Lazarus, if we believe John, was the catalyst for subsequent events. If Jesus believed he came to divide people, then historically it turned out that he united hostile groups of orthodox Pharisees and most of the city and temple leaders, among whom the Sadducees dominated.
Reference: The Sadducees were pro‑Roman and more Hellenized than others. They were agents of Roman authority.
John also describes in his Gospel the prophecy made by Caiaphas: that it is better for one man to die than for the whole people to perish. If so, then Caiaphas would in any case strive to fulfill his prophecy. Otherwise, what kind of high priest would he be?
Reference: The duties of high priests of that period included making prophecies.
On the strangeness of Jesus’ path:
The devil, as is known, hides in the details. And when you begin to read the Gospel texts carefully, the details themselves erase that aura of magic or divinity with which we are accustomed to surround Jesus. It would seem that if you want to point to divine predestination, simply state that Jesus entered the city on a donkey. And no questions would arise. But when it turns out that Jesus had beforehand sent two of his disciples to the village of Bethphage (House of Figs), near Bethany, and these disciples were Peter and John, and he instructed them to find a donkey and a colt there—that is, to borrow or steal them—all this was called “they were needed by the Lord.” But that does not change the essence. Jesus and his disciples were enacting the scenario of the arrival of the messianic king from an ancient Old Testament prophecy. The people who shouted and greeted him, like extras in a theater, already knew from the moment the villagers explained why Jesus’ disciples needed the donkey. This was March 29. And on March 31 Jesus already went to the temple, in order to unite against himself, as mentioned above, the high priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. This would be one of the main results of Jesus’ appearance.
The second “achievement” of Jesus would be that “on that day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other, for before they had been enemies.” The third result of “divine” intervention would be that after Pilate, Judea once again received a popular vassal king—Herod Agrippa I. And this would be beneficial for everyone—except, notably, for the followers of Jesus, whom Agrippa began to persecute. Incidentally, in 38 CE, to insult Agrippa I, some anti‑Semitic individuals dressed a madman in purple robes (a symbol of power) and showed him to the procurator. Agrippa simply ignored this disrespect toward the Jewish king, and that was the end of it… Jesus, however, clothed in a mocking garment, was cursed by the crowd for a long time. Evidently, that was exactly the intended order.
On the name of Jesus: From the earliest times he was, for some reason, called the Messiah. That is, the word Christos (Christ), used in the New Testament, was a translation of the Hebrew word meaning “Messiah.” When Caiaphas asked Jesus, “Are you the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the Blessed (God)?” Jesus literally answered, “I am who I am,” but in translations only “I am” was included! This strongly smells of deliberate manipulation.
And finally, we must reflect on why the symbol of Christianity suddenly became an instrument of execution, used mainly by the Romans. Just as easily, the symbol of the religion could have been the gallows, for example, rather than the cross. It is astonishing how quickly (was it commissioned?) writers, painters, and architects picked up the theme of the cross…
And let us also think about how many believers Christianity would have lost if there had been no accounts from eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. Even Paul would not have converted to Christianity if he had not believed that Christ had risen as a living, breathing man!
Reference: After rising, Jesus appeared twice to women, who then tried to tell what they had seen, but they had no legal status as witnesses. Only after no one believed them did Jesus appear to a group of disciples in Jerusalem. It is also noteworthy that Peter, John, and other apostles not only told of seeing the risen Jesus, but also performed miracles left and right. It is said that even Peter’s shadow supposedly had healing power.
The comic aspect of the situation is that many Jews readily accepted Christianity, perceiving it as one of many variants of Judaism. The growth in the number of followers occurred mainly in Palestine. Incidentally, the Church expanded precisely during the so‑called persecutions under the rule of the “tyrant” Nero in the 60s!
But all these oddities fade into the background compared to the agonizing death of Stephen, whose ideas would be carried into the world by the apostle Paul, who later became the reformer of early Christianity. And strangely, when reading the description of Stephen’s execution—carried out by those who accused him—all the details fit together so naturally, more seamlessly than bricks in the foundation of most churches. And it seems there is no place there where the devil could hide.
Pay attention to the details, they matter. Amen!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 12, 2012
I was disappointed. When Duriez stayed on the subject of 33 A.D. and stayed in Rome or the Middle East, the book worked. When he roamed to Great Britain, the Americas or Asia, I became frustrated with the irrelevance. I ended up feeling like he had to add filler to make the publisher happy. I was happy to learn the probable explanation as to why Joseph and Mary went to Egypt, but it is not one I will reread.
October 15, 2020
Very good book. I enjoyed it a lot
This book made me realize a lot of history happened between the birth of Jesus to him teaching in the temple around the age of 12 (not sure if that age is correct)
This has made me want to dig deeper in the between time
I would recommend this book
This book made me realize a lot of history happened between the birth of Jesus to him teaching in the temple around the age of 12 (not sure if that age is correct)
This has made me want to dig deeper in the between time
I would recommend this book
September 19, 2020
Presents some interesting historical contexts for the Early Christian Church and Holy Week.
Could be a matter of accessible sources, but I do get the impression that the author has no interest in the world outside the Roman Empire.
Could be a matter of accessible sources, but I do get the impression that the author has no interest in the world outside the Roman Empire.
May 5, 2015
I believe the author has the date off by a couple of years, but that is more of an academic debate, and not a critique of the book's premise. The book attempts to take a world view image of what was happening in that particular year, giving some insight to a whole world history around the time of Jesus. Understanding the larger world helps to better perceive 1st Century Palestine.
Read
January 13, 2009Essentially a work of historical fiction that presents itself as fact.
November 9, 2013
Rather a lot of information backgrounding biblical history and the particular year of AD33 when JC was about 37 years old and the Pax Romana or whatever it was, was in full swing.
November 11, 2015
I found this to be a fascinating story. The World in 33 AD is documented in Jerusalem, Rome, the Roman Empire, and what was then known outside the Roman Empire.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews