Further reading (157)
Metadata comes from Open Library and Crossref. Amazon links have no affiliate tag. A minority-view note is the shelf label, not a verdict.
popular-scholarly · 2003
Lost Christianities
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2005
Misquoting Jesus
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2014
How Jesus Became God
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2012
Did Jesus Exist?
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2018
The Triumph of Christianity
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2011
Forged: Writing in the Name of God
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2020
Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife
Bart D. Ehrman
primary-texts-anthology · 2003
Lost Scriptures
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2023
Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly
Love Thy Stranger
Bart D. Ehrman
Open Library has no date; Amazon page verified
primary-texts-anthology · 2011
The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations
Bart D. Ehrman
popular-scholarly · 2025
The Bible Says So
Dan McClellan
scholarly-survey · 2024
Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years
Paula Fredriksen
scholarly · 2017
Paul: The Pagans' Apostle
Paula Fredriksen
popular-scholarly · 2018
When Christians Were Jews
Paula Fredriksen
scholarly · 1988
From Jesus to Christ
Paula Fredriksen
popular-scholarly · 1979
The Gnostic Gospels
Elaine Pagels
popular-scholarly · 2003
Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
Elaine Pagels
popular-scholarly · 2012
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
Elaine Pagels
popular-scholarly · 2025
Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus
Elaine Pagels
scholarly-popular · 2024
God's Ghostwriters
Candida Moss
popular-scholarly · 2013
The Myth of Persecution
Candida Moss
popular-history · 2022
Heretic: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God
Catherine Nixey
Open Library gives 2022; publisher/year differ by market. Verify before display
popular-history · 2017
The Darkening Age
Catherine Nixey
scholarly-survey · 2009
Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
Diarmaid MacCulloch
scholarly-survey · 2024
Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity
Diarmaid MacCulloch
scholarly · 1995
The Rise of Western Christendom
Peter Brown
scholarly · 1988
The Body and Society
Peter Brown
scholarly-biography · 1967
Augustine of Hippo: A Biography
Peter Brown
scholarly · 2012
Through the Eye of a Needle
Peter Brown
scholarly-survey · 1971
The World of Late Antiquity
Peter Brown
memoir, recent · 2023
Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History
Peter Brown
scholarly-survey · 1968
The Early Church
Henry Chadwick
scholarly · 1986
Pagans and Christians
Robin Lane Fox
sociology · 1996
The Rise of Christianity
Rodney Stark
scholarly · 1984
Christianizing the Roman Empire
Ramsay MacMullen
scholarly · 2004
Nicaea and Its Legacy
Lewis Ayres
scholarly · 1988
The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God
R. P. C. Hanson
scholarly · 1987
Arius: Heresy and Tradition
Rowan Williams
scholarly · 1997
The Canon of the New Testament
Bruce M. Metzger
scholarly · 1964
The Text of the New Testament
Bruce M. Metzger
scholarly · 2017
The Formation of the Biblical Canon
Lee Martin McDonald
popular-scholarly · 2008
The Lost History of Christianity
Philip Jenkins
popular-scholarly · 2010
Jesus Wars
Philip Jenkins
illustrated-history · 2006
The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity
Christoph Baumer
scholarly-survey · 1992
A History of Christianity in Asia
Samuel Hugh Moffett
scholarly · 2003
What Is Gnosticism?
Karen L. King
scholarly · 2003
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala
Karen L. King
scholarly · 1999
Rethinking "Gnosticism"
Michael Allen Williams
scholarly · 2010
The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity
David Brakke
scholarly-classic · 1934
Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity
Walter Bauer
primary-texts-anthology · 2009
The Nag Hammadi Scriptures
Marvin Meyer
primary-texts-anthology · 1986
The Gnostic Scriptures
Bentley Layton
primary-texts-anthology · 1997
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
Geza Vermes
primary-texts-anthology · 1999
The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations
Michael W. Holmes
scholarly-classic · 1958
Early Christian Doctrines
J. N. D. Kelly
scholarly-classic · 1950
Early Christian Creeds
J. N. D. Kelly
scholarly-classic · 1971
The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600)
Jaroslav Pelikan
scholarly · 1983
From Nicaea to Chalcedon
Frances M. Young
scholarly · 2002
Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity
Larry W. Hurtado
popular-scholarly · 2016
Destroyer of the Gods
Larry W. Hurtado
scholarly · 1993
The Historical Figure of Jesus
E. P. Sanders
scholarly-classic · 2017
Paul and Palestinian Judaism
E. P. Sanders
scholarly · 1991
A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus
John P. Meier
scholarly
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
John Dominic Crossan
scholarly-confessional · 2003
The Resurrection of the Son of God
N. T. Wright
Scholarly work written from a confessional (Christian) standpoint.
scholarly · 2021
The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History
Dale C. Allison
scholarly-confessional · 2008
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
Richard Bauckham
Scholarly work written from a confessional (Christian) standpoint.
scholarly · 2001
The Case Against Q
Mark Goodacre
scholarly · 2012
Thomas and the Gospels
Mark Goodacre
scholarly · 2014
The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary
Simon Gathercole
Open Library matched a different Gathercole book (Composition of..., 2012); using Crossref (Brill 2014)
popular-scholarly · 2006
The Misunderstood Jew
Amy-Jill Levine
scholarly · 2020
The First Biography of Jesus
Helen K. Bond
popular-scholarly · 2018
What Did Jesus Look Like?
Joan E. Taylor
scholarly · 2012
The Essenes, the Scrolls, and the Dead Sea
Joan E. Taylor
scholarly · 2002
The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Jodi Magness
scholarly · 2019
Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth
Jodi Magness
scholarly · 2020
The Origins of Early Christian Literature
Robyn Faith Walsh
scholarly · 2019
How the Gospels Became History
M. David Litwa
scholarly · 2021
The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea
M. David Litwa
scholarly-minority · 2000
The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
Dennis R. MacDonald
Scholarly minority position (debated in the field).
minority-view · 2014
On the Historicity of Jesus
Richard Carrier
Minority view: argues Jesus did not exist as a historical person; rejected by most specialists in the field.
minority-view
The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems
Robert M. Price
Minority view: argues Jesus did not exist as a historical person; rejected by most specialists in the field.
popular-scholarly · 2006
The Jesus Dynasty
James D. Tabor
popular-scholarly · 2012
Paul and Jesus
James D. Tabor
scholarly-minority · 2014
Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels
Markus Vinzent
Scholarly minority position (debated in the field).
scholarly · 2004
Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity
Daniel Boyarin
popular-scholarly · 2011
The Jewish Gospels
Daniel Boyarin
scholarly · 2007
Jesus in the Talmud
Peter Schäfer
scholarly · 2018
Jewish-Christianity and the History of Judaism
Annette Yoshiko Reed
scholarly-edited · 2007
The Ways That Never Parted
Adam H. Becker
scholarly · 1987
From the Maccabees to the Mishnah
Shaye J. D. Cohen
scholarly · 2018
God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts
Brent Nongbri
scholarly-survey · 2019
A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths
John Barton
popular-history · 2019
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
Tom Holland
popular-history · 2012
In the Shadow of the Sword
Tom Holland
Open Library work date 2001 is wrong; earliest ISBN edition 2012 (Little, Brown)
scholarly · 2015
The Bible in Arabic
Sidney H. Griffith
scholarly · 2007
The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque
Sidney H. Griffith
scholarly · 1997
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It
Robert G. Hoyland
scholarly · 2014
In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire
Robert G. Hoyland
scholarly · 2012
Muhammad and the Believers
Fred M. Donner
scholarly · 2012
The Death of a Prophet
Stephen J. Shoemaker
scholarly-minority · 2022
Creating the Qur'an: A Historical-Critical Study
Stephen J. Shoemaker
Scholarly minority position (debated in the field).
primary-texts-anthology · 2021
A Prophet Has Appeared
Stephen J. Shoemaker
primary-texts-anthology · 2015
When Christians First Met Muslims
Michael Philip Penn
scholarly
The Qur'an and the Bible: Text and Commentary
Gabriel Said Reynolds
Metadata not matched today (Open Library/Crossref); search link only
scholarly · 2020
Allah: God in the Qur'an
Gabriel Said Reynolds
scholarly · 2021
Controversies over Islamic Origins
Mun'im Sirry
scholarly · 2017
The Qur'an: A Historical-Critical Introduction
Nicolai Sinai
scholarly, recent · 2023
Key Terms of the Qur'an
Nicolai Sinai
scholarly · 2019
The Qur'an and Late Antiquity
Angelika Neuwirth
scholarly · 2013
The Qur'an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions
Emran Iqbal El-Badawi
scholarly-revisionist · 1977
Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World
Patricia Crone
Revisionist thesis; influential, largely not accepted in its original form (the authors later modified it).
scholarly · 2018
The Making of the Medieval Middle East
Jack Tannous
scholarly · 2017
The Crucible of Islam
G. W. Bowersock
scholarly · 2013
Before and After Muhammad
Garth Fowden
popular-scholarly · 2018
Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires
Juan Cole
primary-text-translation
The Life of Muhammad (trans. A. Guillaume)
Ibn Ishaq
Guillaume translation (OUP, 1955); metadata not verified via API today
scholarly · 2018
Christian Martyrs under Islam
Christian C. Sahner
scholarly-intro · 2006
An Introduction to Syriac Studies
Sebastian P. Brock
popular-scholarly · 2013
Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women
Kate Cooper
public-domain-classic · 1859
History of the Christian Church
Philip Schaff
public-domain-classic · 2000
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
public-domain-classic · 1908
The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries
Adolf von Harnack
public-domain-classic · 2011
The Quest of the Historical Jesus
Albert Schweitzer
public-domain-classic · 1924
The Apocryphal New Testament
Montague Rhodes James
public-domain-classic · 1981
The Apostolic Fathers
Joseph Barber Lightfoot
popular-scholarly · 2021
God: An Anatomy
Francesca Stavrakopoulou
popular-scholarly · 2011
Unprotected Texts
Jennifer Wright Knust
scholarly · 2017
The Fate of Rome
Kyle Harper
scholarly-survey · 2012
The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity
Averil Cameron
scholarly · 2018
Gospels before the Book
Matthew D. C. Larsen
popular · 2013
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Reza Aslan
Popular book; some claims contested by specialists.
popular-anthology · 2013
A New New Testament
Hal Taussig
scholarly-textbook
The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide
Gerd Theissen
textbook · 2012
New Testament History and Literature
Dale B. Martin
scholarly, recent · 2026
The Triumph of Christianity Redescribed
Éric Rebillard
scholarly, recent · 2025
The God of This House
Caroline Johnson Hodge
scholarly-minority, recent · 2022
Resetting the Origins of Christianity
Markus Vinzent
Scholarly minority position (debated in the field).
popular-scholarly, recent · 2023
Queens of a Fallen World
Kate Cooper
reference, recent · 2023
The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity
Bruce W. Longenecker
Eds. Bruce W. Longenecker & David E. Wilhite; Cambridge University Press 2023 per BMCR 2025.01.07 review
scholarly, recent · 2024
Slaves of God
Toni Alimi
scholarly, recent · 2024
Christ the Emperor
Nathan Israel Smolin
primary-text-translation, recent · 2024
Remembering Nicaea
Jeremy M. Schott
primary-texts-anthology · 2022
Invitation to Syriac Christianity
Michael Philip Penn
popular-scholarly · 2022
Journeys to Heaven and Hell
Bart D. Ehrman
reference · 2020
The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea
Young Richard Kim
scholarly, recent
A Social History of Christian Origins: The Rejected Jesus
Simon J. Joseph
scholarly-minority, recent · 2025
The Origins of Christianity in the Calendar Wars
Alfred Osborne
Scholarly minority position (debated in the field).
scholarly, recent · 2024
Division of Empire
William Lewis
scholarly, recent · 2024
Citifying Jesus
Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli
scholarly-confessional · 2022
Jesus among the Gods
Michael F. Bird
Scholarly work written from a confessional (Christian) standpoint.
minority-view · 2020
Jesus from Outer Space
Richard Carrier
Minority view: argues Jesus did not exist as a historical person; rejected by most specialists in the field.
scholarly · 2020
Muhammad and the Empires of Faith
Sean W. Anthony
scholarly · 2021
The Imam of the Christians
Philip Wood
scholarly · 2022
Eusebius the Evangelist
Jeremiah Coogan
scholarly-biography · 2022
Helena Augusta
Julia Hillner