WThe Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, a book published in 2001, discusses the archaeology of Israel and its relationship to the origins and content of the Hebrew Bible. The authors are Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, an archaeologist, historian and contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine.
WHastening Redemption: Messianism and the Resettlement of the Land of Israel is a history of nineteenth century Jewish immigration to Palestine published in 1985 by Israeli historian Arie Morgenstern. Publication of the book led to a scholarly reconsideration of the followers of the Vilna Gaon, who were not previously thought of as messianic in outlook. According to Morgenstern, the messianic impulse that motivated Jews to settle in the Land of Israel and the belief in the centrality of Eretz Yisrael were critical components in Jewish spiritual life that predated the Zionist era. He bases his findings on documentation made available by the opening of archives in the former Soviet Union and archival discoveries in Western and Central Europe.
WIggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon, also known as the Letter of Rav Sherira Gaon, and the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon, is a responsum penned in the late 10th century in the Pumbedita Academy by Sherira Gaon, the Chief Rabbi and scholar of Babylonian Jewry, to Rabbi Jacob ben Nissim of Kairouan, in which he methodologically details the development of rabbinic literature, bringing down a chronological list of the Sages of Israel from the time of the compilation of the Mishnah, to the subsequent rabbinic works, spanning the period of the Tannaim, Amoraim, Savoraim, and Geonim under the Babylonian Exilarchs, concluding with his own time. Therein, Sherira Gaon outlines the development of the Talmud, how it was used, its hermeneutic principles, and how its lessons are to be applied in daily life whenever one rabbinic source contradicts another rabbinic source. It is considered one of the classics in Jewish historiography.
WJesus the Jew: A historian's reading of the Gospels (1973) is a book by Géza Vermes, who was a Reader in Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford when it was written. It was originally published by Collins in London.
WKosher Jesus is a book by the Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, focusing on the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Originally published in 2012, the book purports to examine the origins of the teachings of Jesus within the context of Second Temple Judaism in the 1st century, and compares scholarly views on the historical figure of Jesus with the theological ideals expressed by the Jewish writers of early rabbinic literature.
WSeder Olam Rabbah is a 2nd-century AD Hebrew language chronology detailing the dates of biblical events from the Creation to Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. It adds no stories beyond what is in the biblical text, and addresses such questions as the age of Isaac at his binding and the number of years that Joshua led the Israelites. Tradition considers it to have been written about 160 AD by Yose ben Halafta, but it was probably also supplemented and edited at a later period.
WSeder Olam Zutta is an anonymous chronicle from 804 CE, called "Zuta" to distinguish it from the older Seder Olam Rabbah. This work is based upon, and to a certain extent completes and continues, the older chronicle. It consists of two main parts: the first, comprising about three-fifths of the whole, deals with the chronology of the 50 generations from Adam to Jehoiakim, the second deals with 39 generations of exilarchs, beginning with Jehoiachin.