Jesus & Christian Origins Outside the New Testament by F.F. Bruce

To what sources other than the New Testament can we turn for information about the life of Jesus and the beginnings of the Christian church? F.F. Bruce has given an answer by creating, in essence, a catalog of non-canonical writings about Jesus and early Christians. The purpose of "Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament" is to examine what non-biblical sources say about Jesus and His followers. Not everything said was true, of course. Nero, for instance, blamed the Great Fire of Rome, which burned more than 70% of the city, on Christians. F.F. Bruce examines what pagan writers such as Tacitus and Pliny say about Jesus, and what we can learn from Josephus, from Jewish rabbis, from apocryphal gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas, from the Qur'ān and Islamic traditions, and from archaeology. Bruce's analysis of these non-biblical sources offers new insight into the world of early Christianity.