28 THE SETTING AND THE STORY

THE SETTING AND THE STORY

We have no reason to think that Middle Eastern politics were any less complicated in the first century than in the twenty-first. On the contrary, there is every reason to suppose that there were just as many tensions, problems, anomalies and puzzles then as now—just as much reason for some to throw up their hands in despair, for others to grit their teeth and forge ahead, and for others again to try to forget the whole ‘situation’ in the struggle to survive…