this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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Thank you for this fantastic post! I used to be something of a comparative religion nerd myself but fell out of it sometime ago but have been wanting to get back to studying again.
You seem like a good person to ask this question: what books would you recommend that try and uncover what the original Christianity movement started by Jesus was?
The one book I've found that investigates what scholars actually believe to be the authentic sayings of Jesus (or as close as they can ascertain based off of comparison of the various Gospels) is a book called "The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus" by a group of biblical scholars that created the Jesus Seminar.
Is there any other books you'd recommend in that same vein?
Kautsky wrote old but still good book Foundations of Christianity (1908). Not exactly what you want but extremely relevant for anyone who is interested in materialist analysis of early christianity.
two suggestions
John of History, Baptist of Faith: The Quest for the Historical Baptizer. James McGrath, 2024. This one isn't about Jesus specifically. It is a deep investigation of his teacher, John the Baptist. In discussing this topic McGrath explores the political and religion situation in Judea at the time; John and Jesus's existence and relationship and how they were claimed by two emerging traditions, the Gnostics and the Christians, and reshaped by those groups to suit changing theology.
They Suffered under Pontius Pilate: Jewish Anti-Roman Resistance and the Crosses at Golgotha. Fernando Rubio, 2023. This one takes a look in detail at the Gospels' stories, arguing 1) Jesus was arrested, tried and executed by the Romans for rebellion, not the Jewish priesthood for blasthemy; 2) the early christians transformed his fellow martyrs, on his right and left, into bandits to dissociate their movement from rebellion; 3) the focus on Jesus and his divinity is a complete departure from his teachings which; 4) replace the actual socioeconomic sufferingsof the period and his parables with focus on the spiritual sufferings (e.g. transformation of "blessed are the poor" to "blessed are the poor in spirit")
I've been exposed to this argument before, and it has profoundly changed how I read the Gospels. The cracks that break it all down are two very single observations:
The Romans by all objective accounts were the Christkillers, not Jews. It was the Romans who scourged Christ, it was the Romans who drove the nails into his body, and it was the Romans who almost ran a spear through his body in order to hasten his death.
Despite the objective fact that the title of Christkiller should be placed upon the collective heads of the Romans, do the received Gospels actively portray the Romans as Christkillers or do they try to obfuscate this objective fact?
A lot of the parables and events also make more sense when you remember that Judea is being occupied by Rome. Jesus chasing out the tax collectors was him decolonizing a temple by throwing out Roman collaborators. Jesus telling the young rich man he's not going to heaven is basically him telling off some Roman collaborator who got rich out of selling out his fellow Judean. Judas was the ancient equivalent of a Palestinian working with Mossad for money.
There's really nothing off hand I can offer that answers your specific question, unfortunately. I can look through some stuff and see where I got my ideas, but that'll take more time than I have tonight.
for books on thinking about religion and athropology more generally, i have to recommend Existential Anthropology by Michael Jackson (no relation hee hee) - despite not being specifically about religion, i feel it... really is helpful in creating a useful mindset for approaching religion & human society-centric topics in an academic and scholarly manner - tbqh it gets frustrating that this kind of education isn't a more important part of marxist studies, because it would radically alter the left's ability to engage with people for whom religion is often the dividing line between us and them.
i can possibly assemble a few others. I'll see what I can do - DM me so i don't forget about this and i'll throw some stuff your way when i have time.
In the mean time, i can at least point you to educational (non polemical/apologetic and backed up with real data) videos.
I highly recommend Religion For Breakfast and Let's Talk Religion. The former has a doctorate and is a pretty serious scholar. His videos often invite the view to comport themselves to a more academic understanding of the material before explaining things.
I would be careful to rely overly on materials that are speculative or are kinda... normie facing? the stuff that's made for sale as something you might readily find at barnes & noble or half-price books - as that stuff will not be trying to teach you how to think about and approach religious topics in a neutral, truth-seeking manner.
This is a Religion For Breakfast video about the parallels between modern fandoms & similar phenomena, and classical religion, and iirc to make sure the distinctions are understood he tries to read the viewer in to a more helpful mindset to think about these things in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU8w4KxoyRk
Let's Talk Religion is also ace stuff, but is more Islam-focused, and is, imo, really quite valuable in a very similar way.
I do read, but this stuff is a lot better to put in my head than entertainment slop, so i tend to favor it when i'm trying to distract myself. Lets me learn while being lazy.
They post their sources, back up their claims and analysis, and are generally a good starting point for deconstructing religious matters.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I don't think there is any consensus about it. There seems to be multiple sources for non-primary texts through the years. As well the accounts we have seem to be a combination of different local legends from diffrent times. I think there is one thread to pull though. Some more modern biblical scholars think the underlying set of works exist. They called it the Q gospel set. I have no idea how valid any of that is though. Plus, it basically seems like a bronze age peasant yearning for the good old days of primitive communism to me.