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Introductory understanding of the Bible and the origins of Christianity begins with these:
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)
Gospel Fictions
Pagans and Christians
Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence
Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
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And to explore and study the subject further, I highly recommend these:
Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed
Ken’s Guide to the Bible
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995–2013
Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria
The New Interpreter’s Bible New Testament Survey
The New Interpreter’s Bible Old Testament Survey
The New Interpreter’s Bible One-Volume Commentary
Acts: A Commentary
The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, New Updated Edition
The Greek New Testament with Concise Greek-English Dictionary
The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English
Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land
New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Volumes 1–4
Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics
The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus
The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
The Dionysian Gospel: The Fourth Gospel and Euripides
Synopses of Epic, Tragedy, and the Gospels
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I also have recommendations for understanding Ancient Science and Modern Philosophy.
