Books like Will the real Jesus please stand up? by William Lane Craig

This book traces how the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was God emerged and evolved in the early church, revealing the historical, textual, and theological steps that shaped the doctrine of Jesus’s divinity.

Lee Strobel guides readers on a rigorous investigation into the evidence for Jesus as the Son of God, challenging scholars and examining historical, textual, and scientific arguments.

Here is the first comprehensive, balanced account of historical Jesus studies. Beginning with brief discussions of the early days of historical research into the person of Jesus and the methods developed by researchers at the time, Mark Allan Powell offers insightful overviews of some of the most important participants in the contemporary Jesus quests: Robert Funk, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, E.P. Sanders, John Meier, and N.T. Wright, among others. Powell concludes by outlining issues and directions for research that will likely guide these quests into the next century.

John Dominic Crossan's nonfiction biography of Jesus presents the historical figure as a courageous revolutionary, philosopher, and political agitator who challenged the prevailing social order, offering a powerful, controversial portrait for Christian readers.

"Jonathan Reed, brings the Galilee of the historical Jesus to life in this accessible and extensive archaeological survey. Drawing on his years of field experience in Galilee, Reed illustrates how the archaeological record has been misused by New Testament scholars, and how synthesis of the material culture is foundational for understanding the Galilean origin of Christianity and the Jewish culture from which it arose. This new study demonstrates the necessity of considering the specifically Galilean local conditions in the interpretation of New Testament texts. In the first section of his book, Reed shows how settlement patterns and artifacts from Galilee point to close ties between Judean and Galilean Jews during Jesus' time, as well as the ways that Roman urbanization projects at Sepphoris and Tiberias commercialized agrarian peasant life in Galilee. In a second section Reed focuses on the archaeology of Sepphoris, the largest city in Galilee, just north of Nazareth, and Capernaum, Jesus' base of operations at the periphery of Roman power centers. In his final section Reed concludes that our understandings of New Testament texts are enriched considerably by a careful study of the Galilean context of the writings."--BOOK JACKET.