A portrayal of the daily life of real people in the world of Jesus and his time This book portrays the cultural, economic and religious life of real people in the real world of Jesus and his time. Palestine was not a backwater, but a highly cultivated part of the Roman empire with theatre, literature, postal services, library systems and commerce. The author presents an entirely different picture to the popular conception of a provincial world in the back of beyond to give us a better understanding of the context from which the message of Jesus was spread.