first-century Jews, the religious, social, political, and economic world in which Christianity was born. The NT stood by itself as a serene island of divine revelation, while “history” swirled around it. But we have seen that such history, comprising pure facts about the past, does not exist anywhere. By definition, the past—Vespasian’s campaign against the Jews, the career of Josephus in Galilee, or the aims of John the Baptist—no longer exists. So it is not immediately accessible to us. We have