Historical and cultural context

R. T. France (“The Gospel of Mark” Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company © 2002):

The historical and cultural context of first-century Palestine is probably better appreciated by the world of NT scholarship these days than it has ever been previously in modern times, partly through the discovery of new material, but chiefly through the greater readiness of NT scholars to explore and benefit from what has long been available to them in Jewish and (to a lesser extent) classical studies. The result has been an impressive (though not, of course, unanimous) drawing together of data from a wide range of sources to help us see Jesus more as the people of his own time may have seen him (from the Introduction, pgs 2-3).