The Christ Files: How Historians Know What They Know about Jesus

John Dickson is an historian in the Ancient History department at Macquarie University, and in this accessible book, survey’s the sources for Jesus ben Joseph that historians look at, and how they are treated and viewed by mainstream scholarship. It’s probably worth noting what this book is not: it is not a book of Christian apologetics, and although Dickson is a co-director of The Centre for Public Christianity he criticises the way apologists often overplay the historical data and what we can establish from it (he suggests that apologetics and hyper-sceptic mythicists form the opposite fringes of scholarship). Christianity, Dickson says, makes certain historical claims, and this book looks at what can reliably known about Jesus from the historical data, and the methods historians use, whether they have Christian faith themselves or not. Dickson is an excellent writer and communicator, and takes a thorough understanding of scholarly issues and make them accessible without being patronising or simplistic. For anyone who is interested in the state of current historical scholarship regarding Jesus, this survey is highly recommended.