I'm really interested in this topic, but most of the material I find out there is either for a faith-based audience, or it is overly sensitive not to hurt the religious beliefs of Christians and Jews.
The best I've found so far is Reza Azlan's book about Jesus "Zealot", but even then, it's hard to tell if the praise and criticism of his book is from Christian "historians", historians who happen to be Christian, or bona-fide respected historians. It doesn't help anything that many hardcore Christian apologists even have doctorates from or tenure at respected Universities! Oy! I just want good history!!
Thanks for your help!
u/TonyLund, Since Christianity is a major world religion in which many Western values find their grounding, and since Jesus of Nazareth is considered historically of immense religious importance, one simply cannot separate religion from Jesus.
This is more a question about methodology than a question about actual historical events. (If you have a specific question about an historical event or specific questions about a person's life, please ask those, too.) Let me explain...
You’re obviously coming here with a bent on finding certain answers that, perhaps, you'll only accept if they match your preconceived notions of what you should find. But that's clearly putting the cart before the horse. I gather this from your remarks:
"...historians who happen to be Christian, or bona-fide respected historians."
Those are not mutually exclusive categories. One can be both.
"It doesn't help anything that many hardcore Christian apologists even have doctorates from or tenure at respected Universities!"
The fact that an author, even one with whom you vehemently disagree, has a doctoral degree or has tenure at a respected university, is at least prima facie evidence that their arguments are worth giving a listen, not to be dismissed out of hand.
With all that being said, to answer your question, I shall leave you with these recommendations. A good historian, or researcher of any kind, should have epistemic openness and be willing to discern the primary historical records on their own terms. N.T. Wright’s (2003) Resurrection of the Son of God, as well as Mike Licona's (2010) The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, are two good examples of this (despite being Christians, alas). Both Wright and Licona examine not only the biblical record, but they also contend at length with the contextual extra-biblical historical records to see whether the accounts line up.
More specifically: what the contents of the bible actually are, where they came from, how they were chosen and why, etc... both old and new testament.
So, for example, I remember reading about how most of the Book of Revelations is actually a rant about Rome written in code... this is a much different (and more interesting to me) history than the claim that its a divine prophecy of our current modern era. I've also read a lot about how various myths in the bible share narrative DNA with other ancient myths. I'd love to learn more!
Also, historical Jesus (as opposed to Jesus the religious figure) is a big topic of interest!