Reddit reviews Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey

hmmm, it depends, do you have any background in philosophy? If so I would recommend some more academic theological work like Kathryn Tanner, Leonardo Boff, Borden Bowne, Edgar Brightman, Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Barth, etc... if not I would recommend a book like this to help you understand the philosophical framework most theologians use.

As for Biblical studies, Michael Coogan has a really good intro to the Hebrew Bible and Mark Powell has a great intro to the New Testament you can supplement those readings with work focused on the historical context like Richard Horsely's work Jesus and Empire I haven't found a good book that offers a comprehensive overview of the context of the Hebrew Bible, mostly because that covers a large span of history. From there you can go on to read people like E.P. Sanders, William Herzog, Richard Bauckham, Jon Levenson, John Collins, Adela Collins, Carol Meyers, etc.

There is a ton of great academic work out there, unfortunately many seem to shy away from it because its 1) intimidating or 2) challenges embedded theological assumptions or 3) they buy into the myth that learning about theology and biblical studies only causes people to lose faith.

>you imbecile

I can already tell this is going to be fun.

>Jesus has literally ZERO contemporary historical data.

That's not what you asked for. You asked for peer-reviewed arguments for the historical existence of Jesus, of which I said there are thousands, and to which I said you'd have a much more difficult time finding the opposite--- peer reviewed articles and books arguing that Jesus was entirely a myth.

>I’ll wait for those libraries of sources you have.

Where do you want to start?

Probably the best place for you to start is with Bart Ehrman, a leading scholar of on the development of Christianity, and he's also a popular skeptic speaker and writer. In addition to publishing he's written popular books about how many of the books of the Bible were forgeries, and how the belief that Jesus was divine developed in early Christianity, he also wrote an entire book laying out the widely accepted case that Jesus was likely a real historical person, written directly to skeptical lay people like yourself.

If you want a great introduction to the scholarly debate about the historical Jesus, you could start here or here. I also think Dale Allison's work is great critical look at some of the issues at work in the debate. There are lots of historical reconstructions of Jesus' life. Some of the more popular ones like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan tend to sell books to liberal Christian audiences, so I've always thought E.P. Sanders treatment was perferable. I'll spare you the links to scholars who identify as orthodox Christians, like Luke Timothy Johnson or N.T. Wright. It sounded like you specifically wanted more scholarly sources and not popular books, so you could just look at the scholarly journal dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus. Or the Jesus Seminar. Or either of the following Introductions to the New Testament textbooks which are used in secular universities throughout the english speaking world:

Introduction to the New Testament by Mark Allen Powell

Introduction to the New Testament by Bart Ehrman

These are the ones I'm personally most familiar with. There are tons more like Geza Vermes and Amy Jill Levine I haven't read and I'm not as familiar with.

But I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't learn in any basic 101 intro to New Testament Class. The academic consensus is that regardless of what you think about him as a religious figure, it is extremely likely that there was a first century Jew named Jesus who started a faith movement that led to him being crucified. Why do scholars think this? Because by the time Paul started writing his letters 20 years later there was a growing, spreading religious movement that worship a crucified Jew named Jesus as their messiah, and given critical analysis of the texts produced by this movement, some of which are now in the New Testament, there really doesn't exist a coherent argument for the development of this movement that doesn't include the existence of a first century Jew named Jesus who was crucified.

I'll add that the second most common reason people are angry at Christians is because many of them have dumbed God down and those of us with any other type of spiritual inclination find that insufficient.

It really is a tragedy that abusive father narrative is what people come away with. Not your fault, but that's the Fundamentalist (American Conservative) version of Christianity, not all Christianity.

Jesus' crucifixion has a lot more in common with Obi Wan Kenobi at the end of Star Wars (not unintentional) than an abusive father. "Strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you can ever imagine," Obi Wan says. Lucas, being a big fan of Joseph Campbell, knew that was powerful for Western audiences.

Many of us believe Jesus was God in human form (Trinity), showing us His true self and showing us how to live. Jesus was victorious on the Cross, having endured and ultimately conquering all of the negative things humans could conjure up and transcended them. God is love (1 John 4:8). Jesus allowed himself to be crucified to show us love could not be conquered. He was right. Who won the day? Despite the crucifixion and the hundreds of years of Christian persecution by the Romans, Jesus won. The cross is a sign of victory. Haven't you ever wondered why we waive around an instrument of torture? Because the worst that humanity could throw at the embodiment could not defeat it.

If you ever want to know more I strongly suggest a scholarly textbook about the Bible that takes into account the historical context and the Jewish/Greco-Roman context in which these things were written. They often meant very different things to the audiences for which they were written than they do today. You have to have the context.

https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-New-Testament-Historical-Theological/dp/080102868X

https://youtu.be/swTLo8abh-I