Biographies of Jesus other than the New Testament

Can anyone recommend some books that are simply a biography of Jesus Christ? Other than the Bible here? It would be nice to see his life all compiled into a book in chronological order and including all the things the New Testament does not cover, and see the author's view on how it all happened. I'm sure there are books like this but I'm wondering if there are some favorites out there that would be recommended.

reply to post by Novise


I like the creative works of fiction, "The Gospel According to the Son" by Norman Mailer and "The Last Temptation of Christ" by Nikos Kazantzakis.

I'm not sure quite what you are looking for, but here are a few suggestions:

Assuming you meant scripture, or similar writings, look for the apocryphal works or other books typically not put into the bible, like the gospel of thomas. I haven't read any of these, but I've heard some interesting things about them.

If you were looking for fiction, as the previous poster seems to believe, Lew Wallace's "Ben Hur" was an interesting read. It wasn't so much a biography, though, but it was a fictional story that takes place during the time of Christ, and while I didn't check up on all the facts, it appears very well researched. It was also made into a famous movie, of course. It was written I think in the 1890s, and is still in print. (it's one of the best selling fiction books of all time)

If you were looking for nonfiction, but not scripture, I will recommend "Jesus the Christ" by James E. Talmage. It's written by a Mormon author. (I'm mormon, which is why I know of it and read it) It's obviously biased towards my religion, but even so I think it's a pretty good read about Jesus. The author also tried to keep to biblical references, rather than Book of Mormon references, I think in order that nonmormons would be more accepting of the book and more likely to read it, if that's an issue for you. I thought it was very good, but I will warn you that the language is fairly difficult english, and had several words I had to look up as a native english speaker. It was written somewhere around 1910 or so, but it's still in print as well.

You could try 'The Gospel Of The Kailedy'. Previously called 'The Book Of The Illuminators Having The Authority Of The Nasorines'. This being the second volume of the Kolbrin Bible.

This volume still deals with the ministry of Jesus, but includes some encounters and teachings I havn't seen anywhere else. As for his childhood and the 'missing years', I think what is out there is largley speculation.

To my knowledge, there exist no texts on Jesus, contemporary to his own time or very shortly after.

At least none, which from a neutral historical research would be considered authoritatively so.

But early christianity consisted of a motley crowd of rivalizing factions, all writing their own versions of the Jesus myth. And as in the cold war using almost any dirty trick to discredit competitors, and with the unavoidable outcome, that the victor (that's paulinism in the west) wrote, or re-wrote, history.

Accusations were raining heavily, and still are, and if any fundamentalist of any of the surviving early christian factions read this, they will be down on me like a ton of bricks.

The most realistic place to search for any authentic info on Jesus (probably not a biography though), will be in the Mandaean scriptures. Which are extensive and IMO rather boring.

Otherwise the apocryfia or the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.