The main feature of first-century Judaism, within Palestine at least, was neither a static sense of a religion to which one adhered, nor a private sphere of religion into which one escaped, but a total worldview, embracing all aspects of reality, and coming to sharp focus in a sense of longing and expectation, of recognition that the present state of affairs had not yet (to put it mildly) seen the full realization of the purposes of the covenant god for his people.
