In quoting the Bible I have used the King James or Authorized Version. Published first in 1611, the Authorized Version is neither the first nor the most accurate English translation. It may not even be the greatest, but it is certainly the most familiar, the most resonant, and one of the most endowed with meaning, flexibility and gravity. Even at the end of the 20th century, it is hard to see that it would present serious difficulties of understanding to speakers of English. For those who prefer more modern versions, there are many, including the New English Bible, the Jerusalem Bible and the Good News Bible, all of which have their supporters.
There are, of course, countless books purporting to be biographies or studies of Jesus himself. Many of them say as much about their authors as about Jesus. A short, up-to-date and well-balanced account is Humphrey Carpenter’s Jesus (Oxford University Press, 1980), which includes pointers to reliable further reading on the subject.
A less direct, but probably more fruitful way of beginning to study the subject of Jesus and what he means is to survey the relevant historiography. Here I would particularly recommend The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1986, by Stephen Neill and Tom Wright (Oxford University Press, 1988). All the influential writers on Jesus and the New Testament over the past couple of centuries are there, from Niebuhr and D.F.Strauss in the early 19th century, through to Harnack, Renan, Schweitzer, Bultmann, Barth and Dodd, up to the present.
All are put in their context, allowing the reader to come to a reasoned evaluation of what they say. Naturally, this would be impossible for someone who had read just one book, however good or famous, whether it was Renan’s, say, or Schweitzer’s, or A.N.Wilson’s, or even this one. It is particularly important to remember the need to evaluate what one reads in this area, one in which nearly every view has, and can be shown to have, elements of tendentiousness.
On the Gospel texts themselves, the Penguin D.E.Nineham on Mark, G.D.Caird on Luke, John Marsh on John, and John Fenton on Matthew. Nineham’s introduction to the Mark volume contains a judicious introduction to Jesus and the Gospels as a whole.
On the history of Christianity, there are again many, many books. Characteristically sweeping, comprehensive, learned and acerbic is Paul Johnson’s one-volume A History of Christianity (Penguin, 1978), a good starting point for further investigation. On the interpretation of Jesus and images of Jesus over history, Jaroslav Pelikan’s Jesus Through the Centuries (Yale University Press, 1985) is something of a pioneering work, taking the subject thematically. It is informed by considerable learning and a generous spirit.
All the books mentioned will send the interested reader in a host of different directions, and provide more or less adequate signposts for their journeys.