Thomas Cherian

“The Temple, its Ministry and Services as they were at the Time of Jesus Christ. In both I have wished to transport the reader into the land of Palestine at the time of our Lord and of His apostles, and to show him, so far as lay within the scope of each book, as it were, the scene on which, and the persons among whom the events recorded in New Testament history had taken place. For I believe, that in measure as we realise its surroundings — so to speak, see and hear for ourselves what passed at the time, enter into its ideas, become familiar with its habits, modes of thinking, its teaching and worship — shall we not only understand many of the expressions and allusions in the New Testament, but also gain fresh evidence of the truth of its history alike from its faithfulness to the picture of society, such as we know it to have been, and from the contrast of its teaching and aims to those of the contemporaries of our Lord. For, a careful study of the period leaves this conviction on the mind: that — with reverence be it said — Jesus Christ was strictly of His time, and that the New Testament is, in its narratives, language, and allusions, strictly true to the period and circumstances in which its events are laid. But in another, and far more important, aspect there is no similarity between Christ and His period. “Never man” — of that, or any subsequent period — “spake like this man”; never man lived or died as He. Assuredly, if He was the Son of David, He also is the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.”
― Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life