As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Click any of the following books to buy it on Amazon and bring me a commission (I’ll also get a commission on everything else you buy there at the same time). I’ve listed each in the order I think is the best or most important reading. For some I have even written up how you’ll benefit from reading them (check my ongoing series).
Introductory understanding of the Bible and the origins of Christianity begins with these:
And then:
Pagans and Christians
Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence
Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ
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And to explore and study the subject further, I highly recommend these:
Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed
Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus
The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings
Synopses of Epic, Tragedy, and the Gospels
The Spiral Gospel: Intratextuality in Luke’s Narrative
Ken’s Guide to the Bible
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995–2013
Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria
The New Interpreter’s Bible New Testament Survey
The New Interpreter’s Bible Old Testament Survey
The New Interpreter’s Bible One-Volume Commentary
Acts: A Commentary
The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, New Updated Edition
The Greek New Testament with Concise Greek-English Dictionary
The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English
Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land
New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Volumes 1–4
Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics
The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
Synopses of Epic, Tragedy, and the Gospels
And for an introduction to the bigger picture, placing Christianity in the context of world history, a good place to start is this series (worth it even just for the bibliographies, but also as a good and productive read):
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I also have recommendations for understanding Ancient Science and Modern Philosophy.
