First, there was Jesus (Yeshua), the baby born in Bethlehem. Then the baby grew up and, for one year, led an itinerant, mostly rural ministry. Fast-forward 2,000 years. Jesus' teaching has become one of the world's great religions, but it also has fragmented into countless schools of thought. Somewhere along the way, the teaching was obscured by a wide variety of conflicting religious, political, and theological forces. Who was Jesus the man, and what did he actually teach? In The Gospel of Yeshua: A Fresh Look at the Life and Teaching of Jesus, veteran journalist Skip Johnson combines ancient testimony with modern Bible research to produce a richly detailed portrait of the life and teaching of Jesus. This biography presents Jesus' teaching as his disciples would have heard and understood it, and it focuses on how anyone can attain happiness beyond human imagination, regardless of present circumstances.

Jesus was a Jew who was born, lived, and died within first-century Judaism. His lifestyle was characteristic of the Jews of that day. Since the New Testament is highly Hebraic- background, writers, culture, religion, traditions, concepts, etc.- any full understanding needs this perspective.

There can be no doubt that Jesus, 'a religious genius' as Geza Vermes describes him, lived and taught in Palestine some 2000 years ago. The influence he has had is incalculable. How though can we distinguish between the doctrines shaped to the needs of the burgeoning Christian church and the original views laid out by Jesus himself? How can we dig back through the additions, misinterpretations and confusions of later writers and two millennia of tradition to get back to the authentic gospel of Jesus? In his new book, Vermes subjects all the sayings of Jesus to brilliantly informed scrutiny. The result is a book of unique value and novelty--scraping aside the accretions of centuries to come as close as we can hope to be to the true Jesus.

Jesus is not who you think he is. The year is 75 CE. Joseph ben Jude, the nephew of Yeshua, is frail and ailing, but he gathers together stacks of goat-skin parchment and picks up a reed pen. He has a prophecy to fulfill before his death: that he will record the story of his uncle Yeshua. A former Essene and now an Ebionite—the first generation of non-Gentile Christians—Joseph grieves over the destruction of the Temple. He fears the End Times are near. He is also troubled by the accounts already being told of his uncle. His grandmother—a virgin? His uncle—the son of god? Simon Peter—head of the early Church and not his uncle James? Follow Joseph as the suppressed story of Yeshua and the early Church unfolds, revealing a message of hope that resounds throughout the ages and speaks to us even more urgently today.

When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament and shows the great impact they had upon the Bible we use today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible. Since the advent of the printing press and the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus's words or Saint Paul's writings. And yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological, and political disputes of their day. Both mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. For the first time, Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made and how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible. Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes -- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.

Modern-day Christians often bring their own presuppositions and assumptions to the reading of the Bible, not realizing how deeply their understanding of Christ's life and teachings is affected by a 21st-century worldview. In Understanding Jesus, author Joe Amaral delves deep into Jewish history, societal mores, and cultural traditions, closing the gap created by geographical distance and over two thousand years of history. Using a chronological approach to the life of Christ, he guides the reader through significant events such as Jesus' birth, baptism, and crucifixion, pointing out illuminating details that that the Western mind would normally miss. Amaral's premise is that to understand Jesus, we must understand the time and place in which he was born, the background from which he drew his illustrations, and the audience he spoke to. Throughout the book he explores specific terms, places, and events for their significance and shows how they add richness and meaning to the text. Topics include the connection between Jesus and John the Baptist, the annual Feasts and why they are important to modern Christianity, Jewish customs such as foot-washing, clean and unclean foods, paying tribute to political governments, and the significance of various miracles. In Understanding Jesus, Amaral draws back the curtain on a way of life that existed during the reign of the Caesars, and in doing so, reveals truths about the way we live more than two thousand years later, half a world away.