Bookstore
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TOP PICKS
Harrison, Jeffrey. Jesus of Nazareth. Insights from Jewish culture, archeology, and the land of Israel into the original setting and meaning of Jesus’ life and ministry. The book version of our Jesus of Nazareth seminar with lots of additional information. Order now!
Harrison, Jeffrey. The Jewish Roots of Christianity. How the Church was uprooted, strayed from the truth, and how God is pointing the way home. The book version of our Jewish Roots seminar with lots of additional information. Order now!
Harrison, Jeffrey. The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John. Second Edition. Using the Bible to interpret the Bible. This is the book version of our Revelation seminar, complete with lots of additional information. Order now!
Edersheim, Alfred. The Temple: Its Ministry and Services. One of many editions available, including free e-book versions at archive.org. An authoritative yet captivating description of worship in the Temple in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. Order now!Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. One of many editions available, including free e-book versions at archive.org. Written in a popular, devotional style that may at times seem old-fashioned. But it includes essential insights into Jewish culture and religion that are difficult to find elsewhere. Edersheim was a master of the Jewish sources. A must read! Order now!
Edersheim, Alfred. Sketches of Jewish Social Life. One of many editions available, including free e-book versions at archive.org. Another Edersheim masterpiece about life in the time of Jesus. Order now!
Juster, Dan. Jewish Roots: A Foundation of Biblical Theology. An excellent and very readable overview of Messianic Jewish (Jewish Christian) Theology. Although Dan unfortunately buys into dispensationalism in his more recent writing, this, his first effort, is solid. Order now!
Moseley, Ron. Yeshua: A Guide to the Real Jesus and the Original Church. Another one of those
Israel guys.Highlights the recent discoveries that have helped recover the Jewish nature of Jesus and the earliest Church. Order now!
Biven, David and Roy Blizzard, Jr. Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus: New Insights From a Hebrew Perspective. In-depth analysis of several of Jesus’ most challenging teachings. Shows the depth of the information coming out of Israel that helps us better understand the teachings of Jesus. Order now!
Biven, David. New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus: Insights from His Jewish Context. More in-depth analysis of Jesus’ teaching. This doesn’t necessarily mean he gets everything right. (I disagree with his conclusions in sections 12, 16, 17, and 21.) But it shows the level of information that’s available and that serious students need to know about. Order now!
OTHER JEWISH ROOTS BOOKS
Brown, Michael L. Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: General and Historical Objections. The first in a five-volume set on Jewish objections. His earlier book, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood, also worth reading, is an account of the horrible history of persecution of Jews by the Church. Here he deals honestly and openly with Jewish objections. Order now!Young, Brad H. Jesus the Jewish Theologian. Reflects important research coming out of Israel. Puts Jesus’ teachings back in their original Jewish context. Much of this book is excellent, with the exception of Brad’s interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on divorce, which attempts to minimize the strong opposition between Jesus and the Pharisees on this topic. (I also disagree with his conclusions in sections 8, 14, and 20.) But then we must always discern everything we read! Order now!
Young, Brad H. Paul the Jewish Theologian: A Pharisee Among Christians, Jews, and Gentiles. This is an important contribution to putting Paul back in his original Jewish context. It reflects the new direction of scholarly thinking about Paul as a Hebrew among Hebrews. Order now!
Young, Brad H. The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation. This is Brad’s second, more accessible book on parables. It compares the parables of Jesus to the parables of other rabbis in order to better understand how parables are intended to work and what they mean. This is an important corrective to centuries of Christian misunderstanding of parables. Order now!JEWISH FEASTS
Kasdan, Barney. God’s Appointed Times: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Celebrating the Biblical Holy Days. A Messianic (Jewish Christian) guide to the Biblical feasts. Order now!Sampson, Robin and Linda Pierce. A Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays. This book comes highly recommended. The feasts are one of the major ways in which Judaism instills its teachings into the hearts of Jewish children. Christians (by whom this was written) can learn much—and have fun doing it! Order now!
JEWISH HISTORY
Flannery, Edward. The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism. Paulist Press, 1985. The dark side of Christian history. Every Christian must learn what happened so we can repent of the past and never let it happen again! Order now!
Herzog, Chaim. The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East. Put on your helmet and get ready for the trenches. Battle by battle, war after war, Herzog leads us through the military side of the rebirth of the State of Israel. Order now!
Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. From Abraham to Modern Israel, Johnson, a Gentile writer, brings life and color to each of the many periods of Jewish history. Order now!
Dimont, Max. Jews, God, and History. A view of Jewish history from the inside out. The writer, who is Jewish, surveys the vast sweep of Jewish history. What he occasionally lacks in objectivity is more than made up for in the sheer human interest of his story. Order now!Shanks, Hershel, ed. Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. A detailed history of early Christianity and early Rabbinic Judaism, though it neglects the Jewish Christians. Takes into account many of the latest discoveries. Order now!
PRIMARY SOURCES
Josephus Flavius. Josephus: The Complete Works. William Whiston, trans. One of many editions available, including free e-book versions at archive.org. Josephus was born seven years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. He was an eyewitness to the Jewish War that led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. He is our primary source for much of what we know about Jewish history in and around the time of Jesus. Order now!Danby, Herbert, trans. The Mishnah. One of many editions available, including free e-book versions at archive.org and searchable versions at sefaria.org, . If you really want to dive into the Jewish context of the New Testament, the Mishnah is a must. It’s a written version of what in Jesus’ day was called the Oral Law. Order now!
TECHNICAL/SCHOLARLY
Finegan, Jack. The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church. Revised Edition. A technical catalog of archeological discoveries impacting the New Testament. Too dry for the average reader, but it’s the most complete and up-to-date source on New Testament archeology in a single volume. Order now!Lindsey, Robert, ed. A Comparative Greek Concordance of the Synoptic Gospels. (3 volumes). Why do I list such an obscure scholarly work here? Because yours truly wrote the computer code for the compilation of volumes 2 and 3. It gave me an excuse to stay in Jerusalem and date my soon-to-be wife, Karen. If not available on Amazon.com, you may be able to find it in a used book store.