Many Christians have recently been rediscovering the political dimension of the message of the Bible. This is really a return to normality, since the notion that biblical Christianity has nothing to do with politics is little more than a modern Western Christian aberration, which would not have been entertained by the Church in most interpretation of the Bible has many pifalls for the unwary. It is all too easy to move intelligently, without anachronism, between the political societies of biblical times and the very different societies of today.