Reddit mentions of Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World

Totally agree. If anyone is interested in learning more, I recommend the book Rebecca's Children by Alan Segal. It is academic and nuanced without being too jargon or footnote heavy.

I'd recommend a couple of books as starters. The most basic is The Early Church by Henry Chadwick. That gives a solid, broad overview of almost the exact time period you have in mind.

From there, you can expand your reading a bit. Jaroslav Pelikan is one of the central contemporary authorities on Christian history, and his five volume magnum opus The Christian Tradition is probably as hefty a reference as any layperson will need. Elaine Pagels' studies extrapolating on the evidence afforded by the gospels is also fascinating stuff. I'd recommend starting with The Origin of Satan. Another is Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World by Alan Segal. The temporal scope of that one is much narrower, and it pays equal (if not more) attention to the origins of Rabbinic Judaism, but it's a strong source for understanding the initial import of Christianity.

There aren't many good biographies on Jesus' life simply because we don't have very much historical information on him, instead scholars learn the historical culture that Jesus would've lived in to figure out his story. A good intro into learning about the historical Jesus is Zealot by Reza Aslan, even though it has a few issues in scholarship, it does a great job illustrating Jesus' cultural context. After that I would recommend it this book and [this book] (http://www.amazon.com/Rebeccas-Children-Judaism-Christianity-Roman/dp/0674750764/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463547894&sr=1-1&keywords=rebecca%27s+children). After reading these you'll find that the gospels aren't necessarily the most historical depiction of Jesus, and that there's a lot of variation between the gospels. If you have any more questions feel free to message me.