This book challenges conventional accounts of early Christian exegesis of the Bible by placing its interpretation in the context of the Greco-Roman world. Professor Young describes how the Jewish scriptures were taken over, added to and reinterpreted as part of the process of forming the identity of the new Christian "race" with its distinct culture. Young emphasizes the importance of the way education was based on literature in the Roman Empire, and demonstrates how the methods and assumptions then taken for granted shaped Christian exegesis of scripture.