How to Become a World Expert on the Historical Jesus

(OR: Your Summer Reading List in Seven Jesus Books)

I once had a professor give me a comforting piece of advice:

“Read seven books on the same subject and you will become the world expert!”

Just seven books? That doesn’t sound too difficult! And yet it makes a good deal of sense: if you attentively read seven books on a specific area within a discipline, you will of course become extremely learned on that subject.

Since the professor in question was a Jesus scholar (and this is a historical Jesus blog), I thought it would only be fitting that I recommend seven of my favourite Jesus books.

Read these and you – yes, you! – will become a world expert on the historical Jesus.¹

1. Dale C. Allison Jr., The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus

In past generations, Jesus scholarship has had certain towering figures: an Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann in Germany, a C.H. Dodd or E.P. Sanders in England.

New Testament scholarship is now more diverse, and scholars no longer look to certain figures as ‘great men’, around whom schools of thought are built. Yet if there is one figure who looms large, it is Dale Allison of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Allison has made a number of contributions to Jesus research. He is perhaps best known for his magisterial commentary on Matthew (with William Davies), a number of longer works on the historical Jesus, and most recently, a book I personally consider to be the greatest volume ever written on the resurrection of Jesus.

Allison has also written several personal works with a more theological bent. Night Comes is a reflection on the afterlife, in which he comes close to universalism, while Encountering Mystery is a journalistic account of religious experience in a secular age. In these smaller volumes, Allison’s mastery as a prose-stylist is on full display.

The work that has most shaped my thought, however, stands between these two kinds of books. At only 160 pages, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus is Allison’s attempt to reflect on the part he has played in historical Jesus research, including a candid reflection on how his methods have changed over his career.