Here are 97 books that The Inquisitive Christ fans have personally recommended if you like
The Inquisitive Christ.
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Ever since I was 12 years old, I told my mom I would figure out this thing called, “life.” It wasn't until 7 years later that I started my journey to dive deep to find the deep profound truths of this world, our life, and how it all works. I've read over 1,000 books on many topics that span from mindset, psychology, neuroscience, near-death experiences, spirituality, universal laws, and much more. I wanted to find out how this all works so I can help myself which in return, can help the ones I love and help the world. Since then, I've written 3 books that have been the accumulation of this journey so far.
This book was what I needed at the time of my life at 19. It shared the teachings of Jesus in such a simple way that is well beyond what I was ever taught for 18 years being a Catholic and had me see Jesus more in the human form than how he is normally perceived.
In this remarkable book, Paramahansa Yogananda reveals the hidden yoga of the Gospels and confirms that Jesus, like the ancient sages and masters of the East, not only knew yoga but taught this universal science of God-realization to his closest disciples. Compiled from the author's highly praised two-volume work, The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, this insightful and compact book transcends the centuries of dogma and misunderstanding that have obscured the original teachings of Jesus, showing that he taught a unifying path by which seekers of all faiths can enter the kingdom of God.…
I have just retired after teaching 35 years in the New Testament department at Denver Seminary. I have authored, co-authored, or co-edited thirty books related to New Testament studies and more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles or chapters in multi-author books. I have learned that most of the reasons people don’t believe in part or all of the Bible is because they don’t understand it properly, so my passion is to try to rectify that. The New Testament changed my life for the better, as it has hundreds of millions of other people. I just want to help that number continue to grow.
Written at a much more basic level than the first three books on my list, Roberts boils the issues down into easy-to-read, bite-size chunks that any thoughtful layperson can digest. After my own book on the historical reliability of the Gospels, it’s the next one I would hand to anyone ‘off the street’ and the first one I would give to someone ‘on the street’! Mark is an apologist with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, who has remained a person of impeccable integrity during their recent rough waters. While many writers tackle Matthew, Mark and Luke together, because they are more similar than different, Roberts includes John, who is more different than similar. A great read.
Attacks on the historical reliability of the Gospels-especially their portrayal of Jesus Christ-are nothing new. But are these attacks legitimate? Is there reason to doubt the accuracy of the Gospels? By examining and refuting some of the most common criticisms of the Gospels, author Mark D. Roberts explains why we can indeed trust the Gospels, nearly two millennia after they were written. Lay readers and scholars alike will benefit from this accessible book, and will walk away confident in the reliability of the Gospels.
I am, by training, a philosopher, scientist, and clergyman who has spent 47 years speaking on issues pertaining to God, philosophy, science, and culture at many universities. Since childhood I’ve been fascinated both by nature, as well as by why people do the things they do. As for life experience, I’ve worked in several countries, have been married for more than 44 years, and raised 6 children … all of which have been an enormously valuable arena of learning. All of this has given me a deep conviction that I need to spend my life helping people to think about the things that are most important in life.
This book was suggested to me by a professor of New Testament studies at Cambridge University as his most highly recommended book for the historicity and preservation of the New Testament Gospels. I would heartily agree.
It is rigorously pedantic and thorough—which is exactly what I require on a topic like this. It is work to read this book, but very satisfying. It may be one of the most heavily underlined books I own, and I see it as a valuable resource that sits in a bookshelf beside my desk, where it can be immediately consulted.
A groundbreaking work in New Testament studies expanded and updated
Winner of the 2007 Christianity Today Book Award in Biblical Studies, this momentous volume argues that the four Gospels are closely based on the eyewitness testimony of those who personally knew Jesus. Noted New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham challenges the prevailing assumption that the Jesus accounts circulated as "anonymous community traditions," asserting instead that they were transmitted in the names of the original eyewitnesses.
In this expanded second edition Bauckham is adding a new preface, three substantial new chapters that respond to critics and clarify key points of his argument,…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Cory Hartman (DMin, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) collaboratively crafts practical tools, interactive processes, and breakthrough content for the Future Church Company, three interconnected organizations that exist to help the church embody the movement Jesus founded. I previously served as a pastor for thirteen years and founded Fulcrum Content, a gospel communication training organization.
In the 1950s, Robert Coleman, then a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, was assigned to teach a class on evangelism. But he had a problem: he had no idea what to say. So he decided to pore over the four Gospels to discern Jesus’ strategy for winning people to his message. His lecture notes became The Master Plan of Evangelism.
The reach of The Master Plan since its publication in 1963 has been enormous. Billy Graham even wrote the foreword. But Jesus’ model of training a few was so alien to the operating systems of 20th-century churches and traveling evangelists that generations had no idea how to implement it. Not many books have been so widely read and so little applied. Yet if you only read one book on this subject, make this the one. And if you’ve already read it long ago, read it again.
For more than forty years this classic study has shown Christians how to minister to the people God brings into their lives. Instead of drawing on the latest popular fad or the newest selling technique, Dr. Robert E. Coleman looks to the Bible to find the answer to the question: What was Christ's strategy for evangelism? This convenient, portable format has an updated look for a new generation of readers.
I have just retired after teaching 35 years in the New Testament department at Denver Seminary. I have authored, co-authored, or co-edited thirty books related to New Testament studies and more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles or chapters in multi-author books. I have learned that most of the reasons people don’t believe in part or all of the Bible is because they don’t understand it properly, so my passion is to try to rectify that. The New Testament changed my life for the better, as it has hundreds of millions of other people. I just want to help that number continue to grow.
Keener is one of the few living scholars who has actually read cover-to-cover all of the most relevant Jewish and Greco-Roman background literature to the New Testament and can speak with authority about the way the Gospels are similar to and different from other ancient biographies and histories. He addresses virtually every skeptical question, is abreast of all the scholarly trends, including those that get little press because they actually support the reliability of the Gospels. But he is no fundamentalist, insisting that we evaluate the ancient books of Scriptures by the standards of writing of their day and not ours. A soft-spoken man, who has overcome personal tragedy more than once, Keener is a good friend and amazing Christian gentleman.
Demonstrates the reliability of the canonical gospels by exploring the genre of ancient biography
The canonical gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these gospels were intentional in how they handled historical information and sources.
Building on recent work in the study of ancient biographies, Craig Keener argues that the writers of the canonical gospels followed the literary practices of other biographers in their day. In Christobiography he explores the character of ancient biography and urges students and scholars to appreciate the gospel writers’ method and degree of accuracy in recounting the ministry of Jesus. Keener’s…
For decades, I both worked as a psychiatrist and volunteered as Santa. A fun idea came to me back then on an exhausted Christmas morning. During my training. I had heard stories, some real, some apocryphal, of involuntary hospitalizations of patients with delusions of being either Jesus or Santa. But what might happen if a patient with similarities to Jesus were hospitalized concurrently with a patient with similarities to Santa? Would they be friends? enemies? frenemies? And to what extent might these two really be Jesus and Santa? The final story—December on 5C4—re-enacts Jewish myths, Christian tales, and Santa legends as these two characters plot a shared escape!
I love how this novel humanizes Jesus by exploring his childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood through the recollections of his childhood best friend, Biff. The conceit is clever! Biff is resurrected and transported to contemporary St. Louis, where he is commanded to stay locked in a hotel room under the supervision of an angel until he completes a new gospel.
The story is humorous and entertaining but also moving and thought-provoking. Jesus is presented as a well-developed character and we share in his dilemma: “I ask for guidance, but I get no answer. I can feel that I am supposed to do things, but I don’t know what. And I don’t know how.” Wordly themes of lust, greed, and doubt are juxtaposed against divine themes of love, charity, and faith.
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years - except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in this divinely hilarious, yet heartfelt work 'reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams' (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes, Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the…
Barrie is an historian specializing in early Christianity. Today we now know that there were many different movements within the first few centuries, each claiming to be Christian. James’ Jewish group differed from Paul’s Christ religion and both differed from Gnostic Christianity which saw Jesus as a teacher of insight. None was dominant. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic writings add an intriguing overlay. The books selected are those that open up new ways of understanding the historical development of Christianity. Each in its own way has created a paradigm shift.
According to the gospels, Jesus had 4 brothers – James, Jose, Simon, Judas – and at least two sisters (who are not named). What happened to these individuals after Jesus’ crucifixion? Butz explores the Jewish movement that stemmed from Jesus’ brother, James. James led Jesus’ followers from the time of Jesus’ death up until his own death in 62 CE. A leader who knew Jesus his whole life, James regarded Jesus as a Jewish teacher. He differed radically from Paul, who never met the Jesus of history. This book explores the original movement that originated from Jesus.
Reveals the true role of James, the brother of Jesus, in early Christianity
• Uses evidence from the canonical Gospels, apocryphal texts, and the writings of the Church Fathers to reveal the teachings of Jesus as transmitted to his chosen successor: James
• Demonstrates how the core message in the teachings of Jesus is an expansion not a repudiation of the Jewish religion
• Shows how James can serve as a bridge between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
James has been a subject of controversy since the founding of the Church. Evidence that Jesus had siblings contradicts Church dogma on the…
We are two dads, both with three kids, who are on a journey of trying our best to raise our kids in the way of Jesus. Of particular interest to us both is exploring how Jesus overcomes evil. Does He beat up the bad guys like superheroes do? Does He drop bombs on them, like nations do? With all the struggles kids experience at school—and everything they hear about evil occurring around the world—we think it’s important for kids to learn how Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, even from the earliest ages.
We believe that at the heart of Christian theology is the truth that God has chosen to reveal himself definitively in Jesus Christ. This is how we know what God is like!
We don’t just love our enemies as an abstract ethic that we hope will work. In looking at Jesus, we now know that this is also what God is like. This book is a beautiful introduction to the theological truth that Jesus really is the image and nature of God.
The answer depends on the imagination of those we ask. Some of those answers are not very healthy--especially for children! Many ideas and images of God are harmful, such as the angry God who threatens us. Or the distant God who is not there when we need him. Or the magical God who will grant our wishes if we are good enough or beg hard enough. Such ideas of God make it hard for us to love God with our whole heart or to let God love us.
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bristol and I’m just a regular person. For a long time, I ran from God because, well, I didn’t want Him telling me what to do. Then something amazing happened. Mary Me: One Woman’s Incredible Adventure with God describes my journey into this wild new relationship with God through Jesus Christ who helped me break free from the lies I’d believed so I could be the me He created me to be. I found out God’s way cooler than I ever imagined and that He has an adventure for everyone. So, I became passionate about wanting to help others find theirs because no matter where you are with God, there's always more!
Miley does similar things in Becoming Fireas Miller does in Friendship with Jesus but with her own flavor.
Every week, she camps on a different story of the Bible.
You walk a mile in the sandals of a different character each day. That way, you develop a deeper understanding of the passage than you would if you just read it once and connected with the characters you naturally understand.
Take the story about the sisters, Mary and Martha. Everyone relates to Martha who's super busy. That's our culture these days, right? But not as many people relate to Mary who camps at Jesus’ feet wanting to take in everything He has to say.
I certainly didn't until God Mary'd me so much so that I ended up writing a book about it.
Through Becoming Fire, God will personalize the Scriptures for you, too!
Becoming Fire invites the reader to engage in the age-old practice of listening to stories to activate our creative imagination. Thirty-three meditations arranged for daily reading would enhance the prayer and Bible study of people who are seeking a personal, vital love relationship with Jesus Christ.Ideal for all ages, Becoming Fire will be of interest to the serious seeker as well as a useful tool for beginners in their spiritual journey. Each daily entry is followed by a question for contemplation and personal spiritual growth.
With its lively, demystifying approach, The Tao of Inner Peace shows how the Tao can be a powerful and calming source of growth, inspiration, and well-being in times of conflict and anxiety.
This timely guide to the timeless wisdom of the Tao Te Ching shows how to: bring greater joy,…
Mahmoud Elsayed has always been interested in finding rational answers to the big existential questions. This could clearly be noticed in his writings and philosophy. He has also worked in various and somehow diverse fields of engineering and science which allowed him to smoothly, flexibly, and knowledgeably jump from a field of expertise to another in order to make his philosophical arguments comprehensive.
Whether you are religious or not, whether you like it or not, religions and God/Gods have been a part of the human civilizations as far as we started documenting, writing, and recording history and perhaps even as far as we existed. To understand the part that religion played in our history and how it had and still could have a significant effect on how we perceive the world and reality in general, it may be crucial to understand the history of religions and how they originated. Raza Aslan gives a wonderful presentation on that in this book.
"Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary." (Huffington Post)
In God, Reza Aslan sheds new light on mankind's relationship with the divine and challenges our perspective on faith and the birth of religion.
From the origins of spiritual thought to the concept of an active, engaged, divine presence that underlies all creation, Aslan examines how the idea of god arose in human evolution, was gradually personalized, endowed with human traits and emotions, and eventually transformed into a single Divine Personality: the God known today by such names as Yahweh, Father, and Allah.
