Book Recommendation: The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9L7G/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

I highly recommend this book. Sanders does a phenomenal job of approaching the subject and research objectively, as a historian and scholar, with some incredible insights into the religious, cultural, and political setting of Palestine in the 1st century - as well as a dive into the biblical texts and some of the complexity involved with the Gospels as sources. For Christians and non-Christians alike, this is a great resource for diving into the 1st century, the source texts, and the historical figure of Jesus. -Aaron

From Publishers Weekly:

What, if anything, can be known with certainty about the life and work of a first-century itinerant preacher named Jesus of Nazareth? Since the 19th century, scholars have attempted to answer that question; and out of their studies, Jesus has emerged variously as a Cynic philosopher (Crossan), a “marginal Jew” (Maier), an apocalyptic preacher (Schweitzer), a teacher (Robbins) and a magician (Smith). Sanders (Jesus and Judaism) portrays Jesus as a miracle worker and eschatological prophet whose deeds point to a coming Kingdom of God where good will reign over evil. Sanders’s book is a masterful historical reconstruction of the political, social and theological context of the life of the enigmatic Nazarene. The first half of the book provides a detached examination of late Judaism and the Hellenic world into which Jesus came, as well as an exploration of the authenticity of the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life. Following such introductory matters, Sanders recounts the gospel narratives in an attempt to separate myth from history and to determine how much we can actually “know about the historical figure of Jesus.” The result is a thorough, accessible and conservative study that should have a wider appeal than other recent work on the historical Jesus. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.