The best books about the (actual) origins of Christianity and Judaism

This book was published in 1992, prior to the recent revolution in our understanding of Jewish and Christian origins, but no book has done more to revolutionize my own understanding of Jewish and Christian origins than this one. What is so important about this book is not any specific fact or revelation, but rather the framework that Margaret Barker establishes for understanding the complex development of Jewish concepts of divinity. Barker shows how the polytheistic roots of Semitic religion led to ongoing turmoil within ancient Judaism and interpretations of the scriptures in ways that indicated there were two or more divine beings, not one.

Along with his other book, Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch, Russell Gmirkin puts forward compelling evidence to show that many of the most revered works of Jewish scripture were produced after the conquests of Alexander the Great, hundreds of years later than widely believed. Relationships between the Jewish Torah and the works of Plato have long been acknowledged by scholars, dating back to antiquity. Jews had long claimed that it was Plato who had derived his concepts from their writings, but here Gmirkin shows convincingly that the relationship goes the other way around. This realization has profound implications for our understanding of the origins of Judaism and Christianity.

The key to understanding the development of Judaism and Christianity is understanding how the problem of evil was interpreted in antiquity. There are many books on the subject, but Neil Forsyth’s is my personal favorite. His book is very thorough, covering the topic from ancient polytheistic Mediterranean mythology up through the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostics, and early Christianity. We can see that within religions of Semitic origin, there was fierce debate over whether evil was introduced by God himself, other heavenly beings such as angels or sons of God, by Satan, or by human beings. This led to debate over who the ruler of this world, the “material world,” really was. Was it God? Was it Satan? Was Satan actually God? These questions were of critical importance when Christianity emerged, and Forsyth’s book provides essential context.

Trobisch is a highly respected Net Testament scholar, and his insights are on full display in this short, but important, work. The exact origins of the New Testament have long been shrouded in mystery. Many people think of the New Testament as a collection of independent writings. Here Trobisch provides an important framework for understanding the New Testament as a whole. He reveals many important clues about who, when, how, and why the first edition of the New Testament was created. Trobisch shows the overall unity of the editorial features of the New Testament.

In this book Tom Dykstra provides an extensive background into the scholarship of the Gospel of Mark, explaining how so many people have misunderstood the work for so long and why other interpretations of the Gospel were sidelined. While my book reaches many similar conclusions to Dykstra’s regarding the relationship between the Pauline letters and Gospel of Mark, our approaches are very different and Dykstra provides important scholarly context.