How is modern science different from what was in the land of Israel 2000 years ago? 

The four main sects of (then religious) thinkers were:

Sadducees – conformists to the Greco-Roman rulers

Pharisees – purists and devotees to the established canon

Essenes – ‘holy’ ones waiting for Messiah

Zealots – radical and militant ones

There were also Scribes, but they were a sort of what Ivor Catt calls Parrots and they weren’t influential – they were often closer either to Pharisees or Sadducees.

An interesting self-test is to think which one (or none, or several) of them each one of us belongs.