This wide-ranging, accessible and ambitious book gathers information from many sources to reinforce inferences about Jesus’ worldly life and times that might be made from the Gospels. It uses evidence from archaeological digs, museum collections, early fragments including material from Qumran, and non-canonical and secular texts from the early centuries of the Christian era. From this it assembles accounts of five aspects of Jesus’ society: possible contexts of his childhood in Nazareth; religious practices in the synagogues; the power and authority of the priests and the temple; burial practices; and, most interesting of all, evidence of widespread literacy. In two short appendices it also discusses evidence about the details of Jesus’ tomb and even of his appearance. The overall conclusion, broadly, is that the accounts of Jesus’ human experience in the Gospels are validated by such historical evidence as is cited here.