Historical and Text-Critical Studies
Related to Jesus and Early ChristianityLast revised: January 25, 2009
Compiler: Dr. Jan Garrett Note this list reflects my own reading. JS means the scholar is closely associated with the Jesus Seminar (aka Westar Institute). OJS means that, to my knowledge, the author has at some time participated in functions organized by Westar Institute or the Jesus Seminar. Not all such authors are represented here.
Opponents of the JS often, sometimes without reading much in this material, dismiss the JS as methodologically shallow. Though I make no claim to be a high-powered New Testament scholar, it seems to me that these authors are extremely conscious of methodological and epistemological issues. Nobody says that trying to discern the contours of the historical Jesus or early Christianity is easy. For an introduction to the methodological and epistemological issues by the founder of the JS, the late Robert Funk, see Funk 1996.
The Historical Jesus
Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, MacMillan 1964; German original 1906.
Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus, Harper SanFrancisco, 1996 (JS)
Robert W. Funk et al., The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus, HarperCollins, 1993 (JS)
Robert J. Miller, The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics, Polebridge 1999. (JS)
John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, Harper SanFrancisco, 1994 (JS)
----, Who Killed Jesus? (How the passion narrative evolves from one gospel to another) (JS)
John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, HarperSanFrancisco 1996 (OJS)
Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament, The Teaching Company DVD lecture series
Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed., 1999.
Richard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom, Fortress Press 1997
Early Christianity John Dominick Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, Harper SanFrancisco 1998. (JS)
Alan F. Segal, Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World, Harvard University Press, 1986. How Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism were born at the same time and in opposition to each other. (OJS)
Richard I. Pervo, The Mystery of Acts, Polebridge 2008 [argues that Acts of the Apostles, though poor history, is a brilliant literary contrivance, aiming to manifest and celebrate the steady march of Christianity from Jesus and the early disciples, away from Judaism, toward its destiny as a largely Gentile church. Its effect is to minimize the conflict and diversity of the very early Christian movement.] (OJS)
Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. Random House 1988. The role of the doctrine of original sin from Paul through Augustine.
--------, The Origin of Satan, Random House 1995.
Richard E. Rubinstein, When Jesus Became God, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1999. The controversies over the divinity of Jesus in the 4th century Rome.
See Bart D. Ehrman 1999, under Historical Jesus, for discussion of minor books and letters of the New Testament and the Book of Revelation.
Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities, The Teaching Company lecture series. Discusses the early Christian texts that were excluded from the canonical New Testament.
Paul
John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan Reed, In Search of Paul, HarperSanFrancisco 2004
Krister Stendhal, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, Fortress Press 1976
Gary Wills, What Paul Meant, Viking Penguin 2006
Luke T. Johnson, The Apostle Paul, The Teaching Company (CD Set), 2001 (Johnson treats the letters chiefly in terms of the situation to which they were addressed; minimizes theology; cautiously defends the disputed authenticity of the Deutero-Pauline epistles.)
Stephen Finlan, Problems with Atonement, Liturgical Press 2005 (OJS)
Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics, Westminster John Knox Press, 2000
Richard A. Horsley and Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom, Fortress Press 1997
See also Pervo and Pagels 1988 under Early Christianity and Ehrman 1999 under Historical Jesus.