12 Great Books on the Historical Jesus

Given the vast array of different books we could read about Jesus, which ones are worth reading? I have picked 12 great books. If you are a casual reader, these books will probably be longer and more intense than what you are used to reading. This list is really for the serious student or minister who wants good resources on Jesus. I write as a professor of biblical studies, and some of these books I have used as textbooks for either my undergraduate or graduate classes on Jesus.

I limit this selection to the study of the historical Jesus. I would recommend different works had I wanted to focus on Christology and the Gospels. This list is in no particular order regarding which book is best. It is simply alphabetically ordered by the author’s last name.

12 Books on the Historical Jesus

1. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, Second Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017)

Bauckham’s good research and creative conclusions make this study an easy pick. His work centers on the eyewitness testimony of those who knew Jesus. And unlike a number of other scholars, he does not shy away from engaging with John’s Gospel in this regard. Oral memory is explored, along with fascinating sections on names in Gospel tradition, the 12 disciples, minor players in the Gospels, the testimony of Papias, and much more. The second edition adds further chapters with, for example, more on eyewitnesses in Mark, more on the beloved disciple, and a chapter provocatively entitled, “The End of Form Criticism.”

2. James K. Beilby and John Rhoades Eddy, editors, The Historical Jesus: Five Views (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009)

This book presents a wide spectrum of perspectives on the historical Jesus. The five scholars who engage with and critique each other’s works include Richard M. Price, John Dominic Crossan, Luke Timothy Johnson, James D. G. Dunn, and Darrell Bock. On the one end is Price, who barely regards even the existence of Jesus; and Bock, a conservative evangelical scholar. Crossan, Johnson, and Dunn take positions in between.

3. Darrell L. Bock and Robert L. Webb, editors, Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus: A Collaborative Exploration of Context and Coherence, WUNT 247 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2009)

This collaborative study focuses on what the editors consider the twelve major events in the life of Jesus. For example, Jesus’s baptism is often regarded by most scholars as an actual historical event, and there is a chapter dedicated to it. Another is dedicated to Jesus’s exorcisms, Jesus and the Twelve, the Last Supper, Jesus’s crucifixion, the empty tomb, and more. Each chapter is written by a different scholar, such as Craig Evans, I. Howard Marshall, and Scot McKnight. Eerdmans came out with a reprint that is more affordable.

4. Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From the Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narrative in the Four Gospels, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1999)

This hefty two-volume work is written by a well-respected scholar of Roman Catholic faith. The late Raymond Brown was well-known for his outstanding commentaries on John. As is customary with Brown, he approaches the text from a middle-of-the-road historical perspective that interprets certain events in the Gospels as historical and others as theological.

5. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Christianity in the Making 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003)

My Doktorvater wrote the first of his three massive volumes of Christianity in the Making not long after his famous Theology of Paul the Apostle. In Jesus Remembered, Dunn contributed to the now prevalent view of memory and oral tradition and how what Jesus said impacted his disciples. It became highly influential in the field. Dunn followed up this book with the more modestly sized, A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005). If you are pressed for time, the latter book might be a better place to start; it targets ministers, students, and informed laity.

6. Craig A. Evans, The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus (New York: Routledge, 2008)

This work functions better as a research tool than a book you might want to read cover to cover. There are a number of contributors who are well-recognized scholars that write in it on various topics of their expertise. This resource is often overlooked, being overshadowed by the more popular mini-encyclopedia edited by Joel B. Green, Jeaninne K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin entitled Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. Second edition (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013). Both volumes are worth getting, though Evans’s volume is highlighted here because the subject matter is centered on the historical Jesus. Among Evans’s many works, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, is also very relevant to our topic. Among other things, it is an evaluation and critique of the Gnostic Gospels and other non-canonical Gospels.

7. Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019)

Keener remains true to his reputation of doing meticulous work, this time on subjects of memory, oral tradition, and ancient biography in relation to Jesus. What I particularly like is his firm stand on miracles as coming for eyewitnesses (ch. 12). For my interview with him on Christobiography, click  here. Prior to this book, what is often overlooked is Keener’s two-volume research on Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011). He provides historical evidence/testimonies of miracles, both in the past and present. This is the most detailed study of its kind that I have ever seen. Also, prior to Christobiography, Keener wrote, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012).

8. Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010)

This is a superb volume when it comes to supporting the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. Although Licona’s work has an apologetics bent to it, he does a fairly good job when interpreting biblical texts (unlike certain other apologists I could mention). N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, surpasses Licona’s when it comes to biblical knowledge, but Licona’s work is clearer, more organized, less wordy, and more up-to-date than Wright’s. Another work I can highly recommend from Licona is his recent, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2024). It is basically a more user-friendly study of his earlier work, Why are there Differences in the Gospels? What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). These works support that the Gospels are indeed ancient biography, and we should approach the Gospels with the same type of flexibility we would other ancient biographies.

9. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 5 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991–2016)

The late Meier, a Roman Catholic scholar, dedicated many years of research producing this multi-volume set. His approach is traditionally historical-critical in a generally middle-of-the road way (not unlike Brown), and very thorough. He rarely leaves any stone unturned. Unfortunately, he never completed a volume on the death and resurrection of Jesus,.

10. Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee, Second edition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2013)

This is a helpful study when it comes to summarizing the different perspectives of Jesus by leading scholars of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus. To arrive at the Third Quest, Powell also gives a nice overview of the two previous quests. The style of this work is also very readable. To those who are not familiar with the three quests for the historical Jesus, this book might be a good place to start. Another work that might be complementary with this one is edited by James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight, The Historical Jesus in Recent Research (Winona Lake, IN: Eisebrauns, 2005). This work collects the views and reprints from some of the leading voices of the 20^th century on the historical Jesus.

11. Mark L. Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus, Second ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2021)

This is a textbook that is especially helpful for non-specialists and beginners. I use it in my undergraduate course on Jesus. It discusses not only the four Gospels but also historical critical methods, newer methods, historical, social, and cultural aspects relevant to the time of Jesus. Part IV of the book focuses specifically on the historical Jesus complete with a chapter on the three quests. Another work that might be at this same level is Helen Bond’s The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T. & T. Clark, 2012). I have not had the chance to read this book, but given that I know Helen and her earlier work (like me, she was a student of James Dunn in Durham), I trust that she has some valuable things to say. For another Patheos evaluation of it, click here.

12. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 2 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997)

This influential work did much to establish a challenging alternative to the Jesus Seminar during the earlier days of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus. Wright argues for Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and the embodiment of the divine return to Zion anticipated in Jewish scripture. What I appreciate about Wright’s works is that, as a significant advocate for the New Perspective on Paul, he has done much to support the importance of consulting Jewish Scripture and Second Temple Literature to arrive at one’s conclusions about Jesus and Paul. His criterion of “double similarity” argues that Jesus should sound similar both to the early Judaism of his day and the Christian movement that followed after him. This view stands the earlier criterion of double dissimilarity on its head. The other three volumes of this series, Christian Origins and the Question of God, are also worth getting: The New Testament and the People of God (vol. 1), The Resurrection of the Son of God (vol. 3) and Paul and the Faithfulness of God (vol. 4). These works establish Wright’s viewpoint of Christian origins.

Qualifications

Of course, this list is not a blanket endorsement of everything you might read from these scholars in these books. I have my disagreements with some of the things they argue. For example, I am not as skeptical as Brown might be on certain historical inquiries, and I disagree with Bauckham’s arguments that the son of Zebedee is not the “beloved disciple” in John’s Gospel. For another viewpoint on Johannine authorship, see recently my interview with Mark Goodacre.

This list is by no means exhaustive; I could recommend a number of other works, but in that case, my audience might be narrowed down more than what I would want it to be for this post. And some works I did not include because I consider them to be more about Christology (the theology of Christ) than the historical Jesus.

If I have a bias, it is admittedly with scholarly works that tend to support the historicity behind the life, times, and person of Jesus. I suppose that makes me more a maximalist than minimalist when it comes to the issue.

Hopefully, I will be able to write another list of recommendations centered on Christology soon.