From the early Church back to Jesus! If one were to sum up in one phrase the scope and purpose of modern New Testament study, this one, of Joachim Jeremias, could hardly be improved upon. One starts with the primitive Christian community; for by the time the earliest of the New Testament writings was composed, numerous groups had emerged of those who believed the gospel and were already striving to live their new faith. The New Testament enshrines the traditions by which they lived. It was written in response to their needs, among them and for them. In that important sense the New Testament is their book, the ‘prayer-book of the primitive Church’. These early Christian communities, springing up first at Jerusalem, then at Antioch, and then throughout the Roman empire, were striving to respond to a single historical event. What Jesus was, what he did and what he taught, these first Christians had received from ‘eye-witnesses and ministers of the word ‘(Lk. i, 2). And we receive it from them. Under the Holy Ghost we depend upon them utterly for our knowledge of our Saviour. It can be said then that the reality with which the New Testament faces and challenges our world is a body of believers swiftly growing and spreading throughout the empire of Claudius, Nero, Vespasian and Titus, each single member of which has his gaze steadfastly fixed upon a human figure at a point slightly further back in history, a point not directly visible to us. The community as a whole is responding with all its life-force to what it sees of ‘the Man on the other side of Easter Sunday morning’.