 | Shattering the Christ Myth by James Patrick Holding
Buy new: $20.51 / Used from: $20.09 A lay Christian apologetic against the Jesus Myther arguments. While not by a scholarly expert, it provides a helpful introduction to the various leading arguments from the Myther side as found on the internet these days.
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 | Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant
Buy used from: $2.99 The late Michael Grant, a non-Christian historian, provides a modern scholarly interpretation of the Gospels, supporting the historical existence of Jesus.
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 | Jesus As a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee by Mark Allan Powell
Buy new: $21.86 / Used from: $4.99 Helpful overview of the critical historical views of Jesus today.
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 | The Evidence for Jesus by James D. G. Dunn
Buy new: $24.33 / Used from: $0.67 Another scholarly treatment of the historical Jesus.
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 | Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Studying the Historical Jesus) by Robert E. Van Voorst
Buy new: $21.84 / Used from: $13.99 As the title suggests, a scholarly presentation of extra-biblical evidence for Jesus' historical existence.
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 | How On Earth Did Jesus Become A God?: Historical Questions About Earliest Devotion To Jesus by Larry W. Hurtado
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $10.73 Scholarly argument for a historical basis both to Jesus and establishes the early belief in his divinity. Without endorsing the "truth" of Christian beliefs, this is another important witness to the historical presence of Jesus and the movement he inspired.
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 | The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus' Genius by David Flusser
Buy new: $13.60 / Used from: $10.49 A pioneering modern Jewish scholarly interpretation of the historical Jesus.
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 | Jesus in His Jewish Context by Geza Vermes
Buy new: $18.90 / Used from: $12.50 Another important Jewish scholarly view of the historical Jesus
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 | The Historical Figure of Jesus by E. P. Sanders
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $4.64 Another scholarly work on the historical Jesus.
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 | Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture) by Daniel Boyarin
Buy new: $22.45 / Used from: $17.50 An important scholarly witness (from a non-Christian expert) to the early development of Christianity from the Jewish milieu of the first century.
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 | Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine by Bart D. Ehrman
Buy new: $19.99 / Used from: $0.01 While devoted to debunking many of the false historical claims found in the background to the Da Vinci Code, Ehrman (an agnostic NT scholar) also articulates support for the historical Jesus, and the general reliability of the NT sources (even while he does not regard them as inerrant, inspired documents as traditional Christians do).
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 | JESUS: APOCALYPTIC PROPHET OF THE NEW MILLENIUM
Ehrman's own take on the historical Jesus.
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 | The Early Church Fathers (38 Vols.)
Buy used from: $450.00 THE source for extra-biblical historical evidence for what the early Church believed. These encompass the writings of important bishops, theologians, sages, monks, councils, and so forth, as well as key marginal figures.
All are also available FREE online from sites like the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCel dot org), and many early texts from earlychristianwritings dot com (ECW).
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 | Greek New Testament: With English Introduction including Greek/English dictionary/flexible (Greek and English Edition) by Kurt Aland
Buy new: $32.75 / Used from: $27.00 For serious students, only the Greek will do! This is a scholarly critical edition of the New Testament in the original Koine Greek, with variant readings and a helpful dictionary. Those who haven't taken a Greek class won't get much out of this. To them I suggest blueletterbible dot org or a good parallel english/greek New Testament.
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 | The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader by Bart D. Ehrman
Buy new: $36.95 / Used from: $7.49 Ehrman here presents the text of the New Testament writings alongside other early non-canonical works (both "heretical" and "proto-orthodox"), in his own translations. Here we get a non-Christian scholars critical interpretation of background of each text alongside the actual works.
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 | Septuaginta (Greek Edition)
Buy new: $50.37 / Used from: $38.00 The Greek LXX critical edition, for advanced students only.
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 | The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today's World by Thomas Nelson
Buy new: $22.61 / Used from: $24.77 A modern translation of the Septuagint (LXX, an important Bible for the early Christians), the Greek translation of the "Old Testament" with additional books not found in most Protestant Bibles today (but considered inspired scripture by Catholics and Orthodox).
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 | The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English by L. C. L., Sir Brenton
Buy new: $29.67 / Used from: $24.75 An older translation of the LXX that some still prefer over the new. Again, it has importance as the Bible of many of the early Christians, and is the text frequently quoted by the New Testament writers when referencing the "Old Testament."
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 | A New English Translation of the Septuagint by Albert Pietersma
Buy new: $19.36 / Used from: $25.26 Another translation of the Septuagint, if the others don't strike your fancy.
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 | BibleWorks 8
Pricey, but recommended tool for the serious bible student. Many similar tools can be found online, but not in one handy package with comparison of the different languages, translations and notes.
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 | The Critical Meaning of the Bible by Raymond E. Brown
Buy new: $11.95 / Used from: $2.88 An introduction to the use of the historical-critical method (the leading method of scholarly interpretation of the Bible through the 1970's) by a Catholic scholar, the late Raymond Brown.
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 | The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin Classics)
Buy new: $13.60 / Used from: $9.27 The DSS do not mention Jesus nor Christianity. However they provide an important witness to early sectarian views from Messianic Judaism that were in opposition to the mainstream (if there could be said to be such a thing). It is an important witness to the fact of the diversity of early Jewish thought around the time of Jesus.
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 | The Nag Hammadi Library by James M. Robinson
Buy new: $16.07 / Used from: $3.43 A translation of the collection of Gnostic Christian writings discovered in Nag Hammadi. These were not "thrown out of the Bible by Constantine." They portray Jesus far different from the canonical works, often as more divine than human (if human at all). However most scholars consider these to have been written after the NT.
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 | Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D. Ehrman
Buy new: $13.59 / Used from: $7.59 An overview and discussion of the non-canonical (some say "Apocryphal") Christian writings of the early centuries. Like his other books, Ehrman makes no bones about his own skepticism of traditional Christian beliefs, while at the same time presenting a fairly standard secular scholarly evaluation of the historical reliability of the NT writings and the formation of the biblical canon.
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 | The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations
Buy new: $29.69 / Used from: $21.00 The earliest chunk of writers from the Ante-Nicean collection with Greek and English. Free translations are of course available online.
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 | The Real Jesus : The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels by Luke Timothy Johnson
Buy new: $9.89 / Used from: $0.99 An alternative perspective on the search for the historical Jesus (not the existence of Jesus himself) from a Christian scholar.
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