The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2006) by Amy-Jill Levine is like Jesus Before Christianity in that it puts Jesus in a historical context of his time. Levine is a Jewish scholar with a lifelong interest in Jesus and Christianity. Her simple thesis for this book is that Jesus was a good Jewish person who taught Jewish people in a Jewish land. Not a hard concept, but a great amount of Christian scholarship and theology attempts to deemphasize Jesus’ Jewishness whether intentionally or not.
Levine is particularly concerned with anti-Judiasm that arises from certain interpretations of the Gospels and epistles. This particularly happens when in attempt to set aside Jesus as unique, the Jewish people and/or leaders of his time are depicted as monolithic, obsessively rule-following, unconcerned with the poor and outcast, and particularly oppressive to women. The danger is that such polar views create dangerous stereotypes of Judaism in the 1st century and today.
This is an excellent work, and I learned a lot about Judaism and Christianity. It also helps understand and emphasize Jesus and his teachings in new and exciting ways.
Panorama of the Mountains 