Russell Shorto
Gospel Truth: The New Image of Jesus Emerging From Science and History, and Why It Matters (Riverhead Books, 1997; also entitled Gospel Truth: On The Trail of the Historical Jesus, with a new preface by the author and a new introduction by John Dominic Crossan, Open Road Media, 2012)

Russell Shorto's popular and commercial book that described Jesus Christ as a “first-century Palestinian Jew whose life became the basis for a world faith” may be dismissed, for example, by the book by George A. Wells The Jesus of The Early Christians: A Study In Christian Origins (Pemberton Books, 1971), that itself used a 19th Century German Encyclopaedia for its basis. Except that Humanist books are not deemed popular, even if they happen to be endorsed by Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003).

It is a matter of common knowledge that Christianity originally existed within the form of a sacrament that was later clothed in flesh and blood during the mid-second century. First century Christianity was to know nothing about what was to become later during the mid-second century about its own religion – and first century Christianity would soon become forgotten, by placing first-century material behind the much later Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the canon of the New Testament. The origin of Christianity is never even remotely approached in the Jesus Seminar, even though the information has been known about for literally centuries.

This is only but the beginning of the Studies of Christian origins, because even material found in 19th Century German Encyclopaedias is not repeated by today's “experts” (eg, Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument For Jesus of Nazareth, HarperOne, 2013).