The Early History of the Hebrews Book

I cannot possibly recommend this, or indeed any Edersheim book, highly enough. Though his style is perhaps more academic than might be desirable in a "casual" Theological treatise, with references and footnotes and asides galore, they are worth wading through for the treasure within.

This is the first of Edersheim's works that I've worked through as an adult, and it is definitely a different read as an adult than it was as a teen. Edersheim exudes knowledge in every paragraph, knowledge that has, unfortunately, been dismissed as irrelevant by many in modern Christendom. We've become so enamored with reading the Bible as if it were God's personal letter to us as individuals that we forget that it was, indeed, written at a specific time in history, with historical customs and beliefs shaping how the Word was communicated to believers at the time.

This book was especially helpful to me in reading the Gospels (particularly Jesus's disputations with the Pharisees), as well as Paul's Epistles to Jewish believers. Judaism, as it exists now, is a product of 2000 years of rich intellectual tradition and growth in the post-Temple era, and it is easy for Christians to simply conflate the modern Judaism with that of the Pharisees, forgetting the impact of the Sadducean and Essene movements in the first century A.D.

I would say that this should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the historical context of the New Testament. It opens and elaborates on so many elements of the text that would otherwise be a mystery to those of us reading it in the 21st century.