Book excerpt: Set against the backdrop of Roman imperial history, The Message and the Kingdom demonstrates how the quest for the kingdom of God by Jesus, Paul, and the earliest churches should be understood as both a spiritual journey and a political response to the "mindless acts of violence, inequality, and injustice that characterized the kings of men." Horsley and Silberman reveal how the message of Jesus and Paul was profoundly shaped by the history of their time as well as the social conditions of the congregations to whom they preached.