I would recommend Social and Economic Life in Second Temple Judea by Samuel L. Adams. I've also heard good things about Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus by Jodi Magness. Did you have specific areas/topics that you wanted to know about?

There's a two part book called History, Culture, And Religion of the Hellenistic Age (the author is Koester) that's very good. And Sanders "Paul: A Very Short Introduction" is easy to read and very informative and well-written.

While our users may be able to help you out here, we hope that you also will take the time to check out our six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which should hopefully prove to be helpful for you as you continue in your research.

If you want a period-appropriate primary source, there's no better place than a good scholarly edition of The Jewish War by Flavius Josephus, which is ostensibly about the First Roman-Jewish War 66-73 CE but which devotes nearly half of its text to backstory and therefore starts out around 150 BCE. Josephus is an incredibly biased and problematic source, but his work book is approachable and very important as one of the few period books written about 1st century Judea from a Jewish perspective, and you will encounter many famous figures from the New Testament, from Herod the Great to his sons and grandsons and great-grandsons to Pontius Pilate and others.

Josephus was the son of a priest, was born in the late 30s CE, and was a general in the Jewish revolt against Rome, responsible for defending the Galilee. After his forces were creamed at Jotapata, he surrendered to Vespasian and promptly became a Quisling, encouraging Jews to surrender and accept Roman rule. His book, aimed at a Roman audience, explains Jewish culture and history and why the war happened as it did (he also wrote a book called Antiquities of the Jews, which tries to first summarize the Old Testament for a Roman audience and then explain Jewish history up to the present for his day). Josephus is intensely critical of the other leaders of the Jewish revolt and accuses them of short-sighted, incompetent infighting and blames them for the defeat of the revolt, and it's hard to blame him for this perspective: he recounts how beseiged Jerusalem, with a massive Roman army outside of its city walls, had three different armed bands of rebels who spent most of the siege fighting against each other and not cooperating against the advancing Romans.