Speaking of people in and around Israel at the time of Christ:
They told stories wich embodied, exemplified and so reinforced their worldview, and in so doing threw down a particularly subversive challenge to alternative worldviews.
Those who wished to encourage their fellow-Jews to think differentl told the same stories, but with a twist in the tail. [See the form of many of Jesus’ parables!]
The Essenes told a story about the secret beginning of the new covenant; Josephus, a story about Israel’s god going over to the Romans; Jesus, a story about vineyard-tenants whose infidelity would cause the death of the owner’s son and their own expulsion; the early Christians, stories about the kingdom of god and its inauguration through Jesus.
But one thing they never did. They never expressed a wolrdview in which the god in question was uninterested in, or uninvolved with, the created world in general, or the historical fortunes of his people in particular.
-N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, p.41